Battle of the Bigs: Head-to-head Review of Jim Beam and Jack Daniels

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Today the internets are all abuzz with the news that Beam, Inc of Deerfield, IL was purchased by the Japanese company Suntory. On twitter there is shock, on Facebook there’s anger, racial slurs and xenophobia in general. Everyone has an opinion. Me? My thoughts on the matter are really boring. I’m generally apathetic as to which multinational conglomerate owns the distillery where the whiskey I’m drinking is produced. Or where they call home. Or where their stock is traded. I know bourbon jobs have to stay in the US, so ultimately I don’t really care.

But in the spirit of the news of one of America’s own moving to Japan (not really) I decided to do a head-to-head that I’d been thinking of for a while. Japan’s Jim Beam (not really) versus the local boy Jack Daniels. 

I’d been thinking of this, not because either of these end up on my shelf at home very often, but because I travel a lot. And when I’m sitting in a hotel bar somewhere, I’ll as likely as not be faced with the choice between these two with maybe a Maker’s thrown in for good measure. When faced with this prospect, I’ve often made a run to the local liquor store to try to pick up a replacement or gone without. But maybe, just maybe there is something that I am missing. I mean these are the two biggest bourbons* in the world, there has to be something to them.

Right?

Jim Beam (White Label)

Nose: Initially it’s just like standing in the Jim Beam warehouse that they let you go in while visiting the distillery. Oak, alcohol and dust. After a bit of teasing, there is some wet rock, a floral note and a bit of crisp sour apple. 

Mouth: Thin. Watered down tasting. Past that: corn, a little vanilla, pencil shavings and more sourness. 

Finish: Gentle is the only word for this. Lingering Corn. 

Thoughts: I’m not a fan of this one. The thin mouthfeel and sour flavor are off-putting to me. That said, I’ve had decent cocktails made with this so it has it’s place. It’s just not in my glass. Maybe it’s in yours?

Jack Daniels Old No. 7

Nose: The nose on this one is really quite nice. Cherry, vanilla, a hint of chocolate. It reminds me of the chocolate covered cherry cordials you can buy at Christmas.

Mouth: Dusty, dried corn and some vanilla

Finish: A gentle burn with more corn and a lingering dusty bitterness.

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Thoughts: Disappointing. The palate does not live up to the nose. But unlike Jim Beam, I can see why it’s popular. This is gentle and sweet enough to appeal to the new or non-whiskey drinker. And since many people never move beyond the first thing they fall in love with, I can see it. Will it have a permanent home on my shelf? No. But that’s not because it’s bad, it’s just meh.

Overall: If forced to choose between Jack and Jim neat, I’d go Jack. But that said, I doubt I’ll ever be buying either of them for that reason (bars almost always have one halfway decent beer on tap). And as with all whiskey reviews, your milage may vary. Try it yourself. Maybe you’ll love them. 

*Jack Daniel’s Sour Mash Tennessee Whiskey meets all the legal requirements of bourbon and could be called bourbon if they chose to. So for the sake of stirring the pot, for this post, I choose to call it bourbon. Because sometimes I like to see people who care way too much get upset.

Double Blind Review: 3 Unrelated Ryes

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I recently realized I had about one pour left of two different rye whiskies. I needed the shelf space so I poured them into small bottles and stuck them onto one of my shelves. They sat there for a while. 

A long while.  

I like rye. But unless it is amazing, I normally put it into a cocktail. A sazerac or a manhattan made with a decent rye whiskey is one of the best things that a person can imbibe. I'd had both of those in cocktails and neat. I mostly preferred them in a cocktail. But I like rye. And these two had only one pour left. If I was going to review them, I was going to have to not put them into a cocktail. I was going to have to put them into a glass all by themselves and think about them. 

Cocktails are good. They do not tend to lend themselves to the contemplative tasting. But that's part of their charm. They taste good. And that's their purpose. A bad whiskey can be interesting, a bad cocktail needs to be dumped out. 

So here is a double blind tasting of those two ryes that I normally used in cocktails and another that I felt belonged since I like three way tastings way better than two... 

So there. 

I started in the usual double blind fashion of pouring and then letting my wife mix them up. I knew which whiskey equaled which number, she knew which number equaled which letter and neither of us knew what was in any of the glasses.

Rye A:

Nose: Honey, slightly soapy. Hints of grass follow.

Mouth: Sweet up front, mint and grass follows

Finish: This is a hot one. There's a tingle through the entire mouth. It fades into a bitter citrus pith in the throat.

Overall: I like this, but I'm not sure this is something I would drink alone. It hits all the notes I want a rye to hit, but it isn't one that I'd go to neat on a regular basis. 

Rye B: 

Nose: Sweet. Butterscotch with a hint of baking spice

Mouth: Soft is the best word I can use. This is a sweet one. 

Finish: Minty cool plus heat. This is the Icy-Hot of finishes. But it fades pretty quick. 

Overall: I loved the mouthfeel of this one. There was an elegant softness that I wasn't expecting. I know that two of these are 100 proof or over and one is 80. So I'm guessing this  is one of those. I don't care. I think I'm in love.

Rye C:

Nose: Fresh mown hay, then a hint of banana and mint.

Mouth: Thin. There isn't a lot of flavor here. Sweet and spice with a hint of bitter, but you gotta search for it.  

Finish: Finish is where this brings its game. It fades from the sweet into a bitter spice. There isn't a lot of heat, but this leaves a tingle.  

Overall: Standing on it's own, this is a meh. I wouldn't put it into a glass, but if I was at a bar I wouldn't turn it down depending on what else was back there. It's really just ok.  

So what was what? You can see which three were being reviewed in the image above. So I'm just going to spill it. A was Rittenhouse Bottled in Bond. B was Wild Turkey 101 proof. C was Old Overholt. I was a little surprised at how much I liked the Wild Turkey, because none of these are very expensive. If you can find Wild Turkey Rye 101, it's pretty reasonable. Rittenhouse is under $25 and Old Overholt was bought for like $11 or so. Not really surprised that they ended up where they did. 

My wife checked my work tonight. She thought I was mostly right, but when she tasted the Rittenhouse she proclaimed: "ooh. I don't like this." Since she doesn't actually like rye neat, I wouldn't take that too hard if I were them.

Well, now I'm off to pour what's left together and make the world's most strangely concocted manhattan.  Well, as far as the whiskey is concerned. The manhattan will follow my standard recipe. 

Review: Woodford Reserve Double Oaked

​There are a lot of bourbon drinkers out there that do not like Woodford Reserve. Not sure what it is about it. The taste? The price? I don't know. But the fact remains that I know very few bourbon drinkers that will lay claim to liking Woodford Reserve. I've yet to hear someone say it was their go-to bourbon. Of course, some like it but, don't like the price.

I'm going to tell you a story. It's a story about a man on a mission. You see this man's wife was a fan of Woodford Reserve. And she had just heard that they were putting out a second permanent bourbon under the Woodford name.

And she wanted it. 

So the man went on a multi-store search for the mysterious Double Oaked. ​It was an elusive prey. Not just there for the taking, Double Oaked had to be earned. And earn it the man did. He went to the liquor store near where he works.

Nothing. ​

He went to the store across the road from that one. Nothing. ​He stopped at his favorite. No go. He stopped at his second favorite. They had a place on the shelf, but had sold out. Finally he stopped at the one closest to his house. In desperation. This was his last chance to capture the prey that would make his lady oh so very happy. 

They had it. At first it didn't register. The copper colored embossed label. He looked right past it. But then there he came to his senses. He reached out his hand and grabbed it. It was his. ​His wife was happy. It was a good Friday.

Notes:
​Nose: brown sugar and apples
​​Taste: Baked apples with all the spices. Moves toward bitter tannins.
​Finish: This has a lingering bitterness that is lightly tinged with a carmel sweetness.​

So that story above? Pretty good, huh? Yeah, none of it is true. Well my wife did send me out after Double Oaked, but I found it at the first store. Probably because I had wisely chosen the biggest store in the richest suburb I drove through on my way home from work. And boy did you need a deep pocket to buy this one. I don't know what it goes for now, but when I bought the bottle shortly after it came out, I paid almost $60 for it. Which wouldn't be much, but it is pretty average bourbon. Good, I like it. But like the folks I mention above, I also do not like the price.

UPDATE: I revisited this bourbon after five and a half years. My opinions have changed in the intervening time. Check it out!​

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Two Empties and reviews of them.

People who know me well know that I am a geek. Not just with bourbon. No, not just with whiskey. No, not just in the computer sense. No...

Will you let me finish? Goodness. 

Ahem. Thank you.

I am a geek because I love knowing how things work. I have this immense curiosity that leads me to want to explore variables. It's one of the reasons I was good at that whole sciencey thing when I was studying astrophysics at the University of Minnesota. You know, before I got even more curious and dropped out to explore a bit more of life.

For the longest time, as a geek, I could use up all my curiosity in the pursuit of technology. Computers, the internet, learning to build web sites, learning to build computers, following the evolution of communities and socialization. But after a while I realized that I wasn't curious about that stuff anymore. I had followed it from toddler stages all the way to young adulthood and I had a pretty good idea of the person it was going to be. I was still it's friend, I liked it's company, but I just wasn't curious anymore.

I've baked practically since I was old enough to read the recipes. I loved the way that you could put all these pieces together, pop it into the oven and have something so different come out. Once I became interested in sprits, I found that while cooking was interesting, it was flavor that I was really curious about.

Flavor is amazing. Flavor curiosity is the reason I have 34-odd flavor infused vodkas in a small dark refrigerator in my office. Curiosity is the only reason that anyone would infuse vodka with black pepper. (Which, by the way, starts out sweet...then a nuclear bomb goes off in your mouth.)

Curiosity about flavor variables is also one of the reasons I love whiskey. From relatively minuscule number of ingredients an almost infinite number of flavor combinations are made. But, while the actual food-style ingredients are important, the process-ingredients are just as much so. The container, the temperature and the time. These are all things that cooks have known for a long time. A dark pan in an oven that runs hot burns baked goods, sometimes before they can even finish baking. The flavor is much different than that of a baked good in a glass pan baked at an even temperature for given time frame. In whiskey speak: a new barrel in a hot warehouse provides a much different flavor profile than a used barrel in a cool one. (That's not an exact analogy, but it's the best I can come up with right now.)

Variables. There are so may variables in whiskey. But the problem with most whiskies is that you get to taste all the different variable at once. Maybe you'll get one or two that have the same "recipe" but they were stored in different places for different times in. To top it off the people choosing the barrels were looking for different flavor profiles when they chose the barrels to go into the whiskies. Too many variables. 

Which is why this particular set of empties was so cool. It was the same juice. Aged for supposedly the same time. One batch in a new barrel, one in a used barrel. You really got to taste exactly what the effect of each variable was. This experiment was expensive. It ran about $100. But if there is one thing that I will consistently spend money on, it's my curiosity.

Now, since I said there would be a review, here are some tasting notes:

Woodford Reserve Master's Collection New Cask Rye:

Color: dark amber to golden brown

Nose: Initially I found Apple Jolly Ranchers, but after a little while it began to take on more of a earthy caramel scent

Taste: A sweet woodiness mixed with the grassy flavors of rye

Finish: Not much burn, a grainy funk that lasts a decent amount of time.

Woodford Reserve Master's Collection Aged Cask Rye:

Color: a light straw color

Nose: Honey, apples, sweet clover

Taste: Grassy and sweet, very grain forward

Finish: Short and sweet, low burn

And just because I was curious, for a while I took to mixing them 50-50: strong spearmint on the nose. Not generic mint, wintergreen or peppermint. Spearmint. Grassy grain on the tongue. Long warm finish with more grassy notes.

Overall I liked this whiskey. I didn't care for the price. $100 is a lot for this, but the experience and the satiated curiosity were worth it, even if the whiskey was not. Based on this, if Woodford released a permanent rye in the price range of their original bourbon, I'd give it the occasional look.