13th Colony Distillery sits on North Dudley Street in downtown Americus, Georgia, in a restored historic building that once housed a Coca-Cola bottling plant. Founded by Craig Beam (yes, from the legendary Beam whiskey family) and his business partner Justin Manglitz in 2014, this operation brings serious bourbon lineage to southwest Georgia. Craig’s the eighth generation of the Beam family to make whiskey professionally, having worked at Heaven Hill and other Kentucky operations before deciding to stake out new territory in Georgia. The story started when Craig was looking for a place to build his own distillery and fell in love with Americus during a scouting trip. The town offered incentives, the building had character, and Georgia’s grain resources made sense for sourcing. They spent over a year renovating the 6,000-square-foot space, installing copper stills from Vendome Copper & Brass Works in Kentucky. The main still is a 750-gallon copper pot still that Craig uses to produce bourbon, rye, and moonshine, focusing on small-batch production with traditional techniques he learned from generations of family knowledge. Visitors get to meet people who actually know whiskey production inside and out. The tasting room has exposed brick walls and industrial touches that honor the building’s bottling plant past, while the production area lets you see the mashing, fermenting, and distilling process up close. Tours include the rickhouse where barrels age in Georgia’s heat, which accelerates maturation compared to Kentucky. You’re tasting spirits made by someone whose great-great-great-grandfather helped establish American whiskey traditions, but in a setting that’s distinctly Georgian.