National Geographic Channel Shows You How Jack Daniels & Coca-Cola Are Made

A couple of posts for National Geographic Channel which is one of my favorite non-sports channels along with Food Network and Cooking Channel. Let’s preview Ultimate Factories which premieres tonight. In the season premiere, Ultimate Factories takes you into the Jack Daniels distillery and shows us how the world famous whiskey is made. We have a preview along with a couple of videos from tonight’s and next week’s episode.

ULTIMATE FACTORIES: JACK DANIEL’S: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/ultimate-factories/5154/Overview

  • Premieres Thursday, March 10 at 10PM ET/PT on National Geographic Channel
  • Encores Thursday, March 17 at 9PM ET/PT on National Geographic Channel (followed by the Coca-Cola episode at 10PM ET/PT)

Whiskey being bottled Jack Daniels Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. (Photo Credit: © Courtesy of Jack Daniels)

Ultimate Factories travels to Lynchburg, Tennessee, where tradition and technology intersect to make 150 million bottles of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 each year.  The distillery holds enough whiskey to fill 3 million bottles at any given time, fermented with yeast that descends from the same used in the original batch 140 years ago.  See some of the secrets to Jack’s unique flavor at the Brown-Forman Cooperage in Louisville, where the barrels for maturing are lit on fire to bring flavors out of the wood, and see how burnt sugar maple wood is ground up to make the unique charcoal filter that distinguishes Jack before it is bottled and shipped to more than 135 countries.

Video “The Foundations of Whiskey” – Find out how whiskey is born.

Video “Distilling Jack Daniel’s” – Jack Daniel’s has a very thorough distilling process.

ULTIMATE FACTORIES: COCA-COLA: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/ultimate-factories/5151/Overview

  • Premieres Thursday, March 17 at 10PM ET/PT on National Geographic Channel (preceded by the encore of the Jack Daniel’s episode at 9PM ET/PT)

Baton Rouge, LA USA: Baton Rouge Coca-Cola bottling company employee Leroy Jackson, Sr.  displays a spool of labels that will be used to wrap around a plastic bottles containing the world-famous beverage. (Photo Credit: © NGT)

Coca-Cola reaches more countries than there are in the United Nations, and it takes a power factory to provide a beverage with a famously secret formula consumed in over 99 percent of the populated world.  Machines in a bottling plant pump out almost 800 bottles per minute, utilizing specialized “air-veyor” belts to maximize efficiency.  Canned Cokes are filled at an astonishing rate of up to 1,700 cans per minute in a process more complex than meets the eye. And although Coke’s famously patented glass bottles are rare in the U.S., we see how Coke still provides these contour bottles for the rest of the world nearly a century after their creation.

Video “Secret Formula of Coca-Cola” – The Coca-Cola formula is so top secret, they won’t even allow filming of its creation.

Video “The Coca-Cola Can” – Find out how the millions of Coke cans get created everyday.

And that will conclude this post. One more National Geographic Channel post coming up.

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013. He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television. Fang celebrates the three Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.

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