As of January 1, 2025, Kentucky had 17.1 million barrels of spirits aging in bonded warehouses, 16.1 million of them bourbon, according to the Kentucky Distillers’ Association’s economic impact report released in February 2026 (Kentucky Distillers’ Association, 2026). That inventory is up 11 percent from the year before, up 57 percent since 2020, and up 175 percent over the past ten years, per the same report.
Every one of those barrels sits in a rickhouse, and every rickhouse is a building someone has to insure, staff, and pass inspection on. In 2024, NFPA rewrote the chapter of its flammable liquids code that governs sprinkler protection for barrel storage, and for the first time built it around how bourbon is racked in a working warehouse. For an operator planning the next expansion, or checking whether an existing building still meets code, that rewrite is the fact to work from this year, not the barrel count on its own.
The building wave behind the number
Kentucky Distillers’ Association members put $2.1 billion into capital projects over the past five years, 65 percent of it into buildings, and have another $1.45 billion planned for the next five (Kentucky Distillers’ Association, 2026). That construction is spreading geographically. Kentucky now has a record 127 licensed distilleries operated by 103 companies in 49 of its 120 counties, according to the KDA’s count as reported by the Northern Kentucky Tribune in October 2025 (Northern Kentucky Tribune, 2025).
More rickhouses, in more counties, built more recently, means more buildings whose fire protection was engineered under whatever code edition happened to be current the year they broke ground. A warehouse permitted five years ago was designed against an older version of NFPA 30. That gap is wider now than it was last year.
The industry has not published a rickhouse fire rate or a standard loss figure, and none is invented here. What exists is one well-documented incident. On July 2, 2019, a fire destroyed a Beam Suntory rickhouse in Woodford County holding 45,000 barrels of bourbon. No injuries were reported. Initial reporting pointed to a lightning strike during a storm as the cause, but that cause was preliminary and was not confirmed in the reporting available (Associated Press via ABC News, 2019). It is one fire, not a pattern. It is also the fire every insurer and inspector in the state has read about, and it is worth having an answer ready for what a given protection scheme would do in that scenario.
What NFPA 30 changed in 2024
NFPA 30, the Flammable and Combustible Liquids Code, renamed and rewrote Chapter 16 in its 2024 edition. It used to be titled “Automatic Fire Protection for Inside Liquid Storage Areas.” It is now “Automatic Fire Protection for Control Areas, Liquid Storage Rooms, and Liquid Warehouses,” and it includes, for the first time, dedicated sprinkler protection tables for spirits aged in wooden barrels (NFPA, NFPA 30, 2024 edition, Chapter 16).
That data did not exist before this edition. The tables are built on full-scale fire test data of actual barrel storage configurations burning, contributed largely by FM Global. Before 2024, an engineer designing sprinkler protection for a rickhouse was extrapolating from tables built for drums and totes, not barrels stacked and racked the way a bourbon warehouse stacks and racks them. The 2024 edition closes that gap for most of the liquid classes bourbon falls into.
Why orientation and configuration change the protection scheme
Chapter 16’s tables branch on how the barrels sit, not only on how many there are. Barrels on end, barrels on side, and barrels laid down each carry their own protection requirements, and the required sprinkler density and arrangement also depends on storage height and on whether barrels are palletized and racked or stacked freestanding, per the same 2024 edition of the code. A rick-and-rail warehouse with barrels stored on their sides is not evaluated the same way as a palletized high-rack building holding barrels on end, even where both buildings hold the same liquid class and the same total barrel count.
Changing the rack pattern changes the required sprinkler design, even when the total barrel count and liquid class stay the same. A renovation that re-racks a warehouse, or a new building that stores barrels differently than the operator’s other sites, needs its own review under these tables. It cannot be assumed to inherit the scheme from a sister building down the road.
The small facility threshold, and what still falls outside chapter 16
The 2024 edition defines a “small distilled spirits facility” as one under 7,500 square feet, and Chapter 16 treats that size class differently from a full-scale rickhouse (NFPA, NFPA 30, 2024 edition, Chapter 16). An operator running a small aging building or a compact still house should not assume the large-warehouse tables apply by default, and should not assume the small-facility provisions still apply once a building has been expanded past that footprint.
Chapter 16 also has a limit worth knowing before it gets treated as settling every design question: it does not apply to Class IA liquids, because no full-scale fire test data exists for that class (NFPA, NFPA 30, 2024 edition, Chapter 16). Most bourbon aging in wooden barrels does not fall into Class IA, but an operator storing a higher-proof spirit, or unsure which class governs a given product, needs that answer before assuming the new tables apply at all.
What to evaluate before the next expansion
Before adding a rickhouse, converting one, or changing how barrels are stored in an existing building, there is a specific set of questions to answer, not just a general sense that the code changed.
Start with the liquid class. Chapter 16 covers most bourbon storage but not Class IA liquids, and that single fact determines whether the 2024 tables apply at all.
The storage configuration needs to be written down, not assumed: on end, on side, or laying down, palletized and racked or freestanding, and the storage height in the building. These are the variables the 2024 tables key off, and they are the variables that change every time a warehouse is renovated or a new racking system goes in.
Square footage matters too. A building expanded since its original design may no longer sit on the side of the 7,500 square foot line its original permit assumed.
Pull the design basis for the existing sprinkler system and find out which edition of NFPA 30 it was designed against. A system engineered to a pre-2024 edition was not built on barrel-specific fire test data, because that data did not exist yet.
Take the finished protection scheme to both the authority having jurisdiction and the property insurer before construction starts. No integrator can promise in advance that a given design will satisfy an AHJ or an insurer. That determination belongs to those two parties, and it is cheaper to get their sign-off on paper than to find a gap after steel is up.
What this looks like when handled well
Versys works in bourbon warehouses across Kentucky and southern Indiana, including C1D2 and H-3 hazardous, explosion-proof buildings, and its position on this kind of work is plain: design-build lets an operator avoid paying for outside engineering that solves for a generic worst case instead of the building going up on that site. A sprinkler system sized off the wrong storage configuration, or off a code edition the local AHJ has since moved past, costs money without giving the barrels in that building the protection scheme the current tables call for.
The company also runs Building Reports barcode software to track fire and life safety devices across a facility, which matters here specifically because Chapter 16 compliance shifts every time a warehouse gets renovated, re-racked, or expanded. Knowing what device sits where, and when it was last tested, is part of staying current with a code that just changed the variables it evaluates.
For an operator with a rickhouse expansion in the pipeline, or an existing building whose fire protection design predates the 2024 code, the next step is a review against the current chapter before the next round of construction starts, not after. Versys can be reached at (270) 358-2200.
