[Daily Beest] James Beauregard Beam was distilling bourbon well before Prohibition, and when Prohibition ended, he was eager to do it again. At the news of Repeal, Jim Beam (as he was commonly known) turned to his son Jeremiah, his brother Park Beam and Park’s two sons, Carl and Earl, and said, "boys, time for us to get back to work."But the Beams were broke. Prohibition had not been kind to them. A family knack for success in the distilling business proved to be less than translatable to other endeavors, including a rock quarry and an orange grove. So, Jim had to scramble and find investors in Illinois to fund a new distillery. Once he got the money together, with his son and two nephews, they built a distillery in 120 days, doing a lot of the work themselves. Even though Jim was 70-years-old, he was on site every day. The new distillery opened on March 25, 1935.
Before Prohibition, the Beam family brand had been Old Tub Bourbon Whiskey. To Jim’s dismay, he learned that the rights to the name had been sold during Prohibition. Despite this setback, he was undeterred and that’s when the whiskey officially became Jim Beam Bourbon. Real man; real whiskey; true story.
It’s a great piece of whiskey history, but it’s only a small, small part of the Beams’ story. The family had a huge influence on distilling in America and helped build dozens of bourbon brands, including Maker’s Mark, Stitzel-Weller, Early Times, Four Roses, Michter’s, Barton, and, quite famously, Heaven Hill.
The Beams can truly lay claim to being America’s first family of bourbon. Read on for more about the family’s incredible legacy.