Frederick Stizel

Frederick Stitzel was born in Germany to Dominick and Magdelena Stitzel. Frederick came to the U.S. at age 14 with his father and two brothers, Philip and Jacob. The family emigrated to the United States was recorded living in Louisville, Kentucky in 1855. 

All three brothers would eventually open their own distillery in 1872, called Stitzel Brothers Distillery. The three brothers would conduct experiments with different mashbills of the bourbon. They produced brands such as Fortuna, Glencoe, Mondamin, and “Old Fred Stitzel.” They also experimenting using wheat instead of rye in their bourbons. They never commercially produced the wheat mash bill but instead passed that information on to Arthur Stitzel when he opened his distillery in 1903. Stitzel Brothers distillery remained open until Prohibition.

Frederick Stitzel was rated by Whiskey Magazine as one of the top 100 “greatest whiskey people” in history.  In 1879, Frederick patented a system for a tiered storage system that would allow air circulation around the barrel and become the standard for rickhouses in the United States. Before this, barrels were stacked directly on top of each other which was very risky and not the greatest as many problems could occur. Each barrels held about 53 gallons of whiskey and filled would weigh around 550 pounds. Direct stacking often caused leaking, wood splitting, and collapses. 

His system consisted of what he called rails, basically small shelves, attached to heavy duty framing to support the weight. The rails would be spaced far enough apart, so that when a barrel is placed on its side, each end would be supported by a rail. You could then easily roll a barrel all the way down to back. It also allowed for the barrels to be turned from time to time, assisting the aging process. He also designed it so that they were made in independent sections. This made them portable and easier to configure in a warehouse. You see in some warehouses using pallets to stack barrels on top of each other but this does not allow the air to fully circulate around the barrel to help with the maturation process.

Not only did Fredrick invent the tiered rack system that is used in warehouses today, he also invented a signal system for the railroad industry that would require circuits to be placed at the beginning and ends of a block of rail, that when the train drives over the circuits it will send a signal for caution or danger to the conductor.

Frederick died in 1924 and was buried at Cave Hill Cemetery. His nephew, Arthur Philip Stitzel, would go on to make a name for himself with the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery. Then later a new name for the distillery came about when W.L. Weller & Sons combined with the A. Ph. Stitzel Distillery, to form the distillery known as Stitzel-Weller. The Stitzel name is legendary in bourbon. It left its mark in history when it produced the Pappy Van Winkle product lineup, then the Stitzel-Weller Distillery picked up the nick name “The Cathedral of Bourbon.”