Keith Hazelbaker

New to the Louisville scene, Prohibition Craft Spirits was founded in 2016 by Keith Hazelbaker, who started in a very unorthodox way. His longtime career was as an Independent CPA. In 2015, he was introduced to two men for financial consulting and he ended up joining as an investor with the goal of them making a distillery. As it turns out, those men were using false identities and were running high-priced cons all over the country. 

After the ATF arrested the owner and raided the building in 2015, confiscating and dumping over 4,000 gallons of illegal tequila and whiskey into the back alley, Keith Hazelbaker swooped in and bought the old Baxter Avenue Building after volunteering to pay off six figures in fines and debts from the previous owner. Keith toured the country to see how craft distillers operated and decided to continue with just his son and friends. 

Keith set out to get “back to basics” distilling moonshine, gin, rum, and vodka while also sourcing agave spirit from Mexico to age in bourbon barrels and sourcing whiskey from MGP in Indiana. 

Recent expansions to the distillery property uncovered a prohibition era bootlegger tunnel that went five blocks under the city and contained several bottles of alcohol over 100 years old and several bullet holes in the walls.