The people who keep me company at work: Whisky Podcasts

July 28, 2015 Eric Burke

You may know that my main job is as a freelance designer (ahem...eburkedesign.com). I work on advertisements, direct mail, logos, promotional materials, posters, billboards and much more while standing at a desk just yards from my bed.

My wife works a real job that pays a regular salary. A job that is nowhere near my bed.

This means that I spend a lot of my time with only dogs for conversation. Needless to say, they don’t talk a lot. And when they do it’s really only to complain that the UPS or FedEx person is here. In my need to add more human voices to my life, I listen to a lot of podcasts.

If you are a whiskey fan, you’ve surely heard of WhiskyCast. WhiskyCast was the first podcast about whisky I ever listened to, and I’ve been listening for four or five years now. WhiskyCast is hosted by Mark Gillespie. Described as “Cask strength conversation featuring news and interviews from the world of whiskey” Mark delivers just that every week. There is a news segment, a discussion segment and an in-depth segment that features interviews from people involved in all phases of whisky making from all of the whisky-making countries. It is such an interesting podcast that about a year ago my wife started making me wait for her to listen to them. Unfortunately that means I now binge listen to a month’s at a time while in the car with her. But even the older ones cause us to stop every few minutes to discuss what was just said. A 45 minute show may take us an hour and a half to listen to.

Add in the fact that Mark is just a wonderful guy to listen to (and to talk to should you get the opportunity) and this is a can’t miss podcast for whisky lovers.

For the longest time that was the end of my whisky podcast list. But recently I was made aware of another whisky podcast.

(Full disclosure, I was made aware of it because Mark Bylok became one of the patrons of bourbonguy.com when I had a Patreon.com campaign going.) The Whisky Topic is a podcast is hosted by Mark Bylok, author of the Whisky Cabinet, and Jamie Johnson who runs a bourbon club in Toronto. Its tagline is “a casual conversation with whisky.” And it is exactly that. It is two friends, occasional guests and whisky. The conversation ranges from whisky topics of the day to whatever the guest is an expert in.

And they really do have exquisite taste in guests. While I’ve been listening, they’ve had their area’s brand ambassador for Jim Beam, Davin de Kergommeaux, Josh Peters from the Whiskey Jug, author Reid Mitenbuler and…me.

That’s right, I am going to be a guest on this week’s episode. We chat about topics ranging from Templeton Rye to experiments in blending to my favorite “everyday” bourbons and maybe even lying to your doctor. I haven’t heard the final edit yet so I’m hoping they make me sound smart. That episode should be available for download sometime Wednesday. But every one of the five or so I’ve listened to so far have been great. If you are a whiskey lover, this is another one to add to your favorite podcast app.

So, now I have a question for the rest of you. Do you know of any other whiskey shows we should all be listening to? If so leave them in the comments below. I’d love to find a few more. I need all the human voices I can get.

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The year 1870 and a review of Old Forester 1870 Original Batch

July 23, 2015 Eric Burke

A close up of the label of a bottle of Old Forester 1870 Original Batch.

1870. Old Forester claims that George Garvin Brown started selling his Old Forester brand of whiskey in that year. And since renowned bourbon historian Michael Veach backs that up in his book Kentucky Bourbon Whiskey, I have no reason to suspect they are fibbing. In the story, Old Forester was the first bourbon sold exclusively in bottles.

But 1870 is not a year that I, living in 2015, have thought too much about. And I’m going to guess that you, dear reader, haven’t either. So let’s learn a little bit about what was going on in the country in the year the bottled bourbon trend started.

Construction begins on the Brooklyn Bridge in January of that year. For many of us who have never been to New York City, it is one of the symbols that immediately comes to mind whenever the city is mentioned.
African Americans technically gain the right to vote with the passage and ratification of the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution. It will actually be universally enforced almost 100 years later.
Reconstruction is ending in the former Confederate States of America as Virginia, Texas, Mississippi and Georgia become the last states readmitted to the Union.
If, like me, you are a Big Ten Football fan, you’ll be interested to know that the institution that would become the Ohio State University was founded in March of this year under the name the Ohio Agriculture and Mechanical College.
If you are, instead, an ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) fan you may be interested to know that Syracuse University was founded this year as well.
The US Department of Justice was founded in June of this year. I’m not making any comments…
Christmas becomes a federal holiday meaning that Congress gets one more day to officially not do their jobs.
The first woman to legally cast a vote in the United States (since 1807…can you imagine the home life of the guys who voted to take away a woman’s right to vote???) does so in Wyoming in September.
The forerunner of the National Weather Service makes it’s first prediction. There is no mention of how accurate it was.

And of course the reason we are interested in 1870 today is that I recently bought a bottle of Old Forester 1870 “Original Batch.” The company says that George Garvin Brown—I wonder if we are allowed to say his name without the middle name, I never see him listed as George Brown—bought bourbon from three different distilleries to make Old Forester. So to honor that they chose bourbon from three different warehouses with three different entry proofs and ages. Sounds pretty cool, though it makes me wonder: just how many entry proofs does Brown Forman use?

Old Forester 1870 Original Batch

Purchase Info: $38.99, 750 mL. Total Wine, Burnsville, MN.

Details: 45% ABV

Nose: Floral apples, brown sugar and freshly painted walls

Mouth: The first sip is nice and spicy with cinnamon and cayenne. It’s sweet. Fruity pears and melon lurk underneath.

Finish: Decent length with lingering oak and more sweetness.

A smiling face showing that I like this bourbon.

Thoughts: This is a really tasty bourbon. Is it twice as good as Old Forester 86 proof at $19.99? No. But bourbon math rarely works in such a linear fashion. It is too expensive for a regular purchase. I mean, it’s even more expensive that Woodford Reserve where I bought it. But I could see splurging now and again on this spicier and oakier expression of your typical Old Forester/Woodford flavor profile.

Barbecue Sauce made from MB Roland Kentucky Black Dog

July 21, 2015 Eric Burke

Disclaimer: I consider Paul and Merry Beth of MB Roland to be my friends and in my statement of ethics I promised to disclose when I am sharing one of my friend’s products and to only review them when it was truly something I really liked. While there is no review, one of their products does play a featured part in this post.

A pulled-pork sandwich with chips and a bottle of MB Roland Kentucky Black Dog in the background.

Minnesota is a cold place. We normally get snow until April. We get cold rains until mid June. And the threat of snow starts coming up sometime between mid September and the end of October. But summer? Summer is grilling season. Sure summer doesn’t last long, but that means that you just need to make the best of it. Every night from the Fourth of July until Labor Day the air in my neighborhood is filled with the smell of someone’s grill. It’s a magical time.

Last week, I finished the last bottle of barbecue sauce from my last trip to Memphis. There is a barbecue place there that makes a sauce I just love and I stock up every time I drive through. In a pinch it’s available on Amazon, but I got to thinking that it might be fun to make my own. And of course, if I was going to do that, it would probably have to have some whiskey in it.

The idea of a whiskey barbecue sauce is not new. There are a ton of them out on the market. Go into any store and you’ll probably find two or three. The problem is that most of those are very sweet. I personally don’t care for sweet sauces. They just aren’t my thing. I like a sauce with a tad more tangy vinegar in it. Of course the first thing I did was look online. I looked at whiskey based sauces and most of them still looked too sweet. So I took a step back and thought for a minute.

A bourbon based sauce would be sweet to complement the sweetness of the bourbon, but what if I didn’t use bourbon? I started diggging through my whiskey shelves. When I pulled out the MB Roland Kentucky Black Dog I knew I had hit upon something. Black Dog is unaged whiskey distillate. The first step of creating it is to smoke the corn. And that smoke really comes through on the finished product. It is sweet, but hits you with a full head of smoke. I thought that this would be the perfect thing to build my sauce upon. I also grabbed some of their St. Elmo’s Fire, a cinnamon and cayenne flavored spirit to add a little heat.

The first step in making this was to see what it would taste like when I substituted it for bourbon in a whiskey barbecue sauce recipe I had used before and enjoyed. (I like this one from AmazingRibs.com because I really like what making the whiskey reduction does for the sauce.) I tried it and it was pretty tasty. Still too sweet for me, but I could tell I was on the right track.

So then I got down to work and after some delicious trial an error came up with the following.

Black Dog Barbecue Sauce

Makes about 1 cup of sauce. (All quantities are U.S. Fluid Ounces.)

Start by making the reduction:

4 oz MB Roland Kentucky Black Dog
1 oz MB Roland St. Elmo’s Fire

In a small sauce pan, bring the spirits to a boil and let reduce. When you are finished you want to have a little over a tablespoon of liquid remaining. Please supervise this step. You are putting flammable liquid over heat and you don’t want it to catch fire. Once you have the reduction finished, remove from heat and add the everything else to the sauce pan.

Everything Else:

3.5 oz Tomato Ketchup
2 oz MB Roland Kentucky Black Dog
1.67 oz Dark Molasses
0.75 oz Apple Cider Vinegar
0.5 oz MB Roland St. Elmo’s Fire
0.5 oz Worchestershire Sauce
0.5 oz Dijon Mustard
0.5 oz Tomato Sauce
Pinch of Kosher salt
Pinch of black pepper
Pinch of granulated garlic powder
Pinch of granulated onion powder

Stir thoroughly and bring back to a simmer. Let it reduce until it has reached your desired thickness.

I’m really proud of this one. The sauce is sweet from the MB Roland spirits, ketchup and molasses but tangy from the vinegar and vinegar containing products (ketchup, mustard, Worchestershire, etc). It has just the tiniest touch of spice and enough smoke to play really nicely with meat.

This was pretty tasty on a burger, but where it really shined was on some pulled pork that we brought home from a local barbecue joint. I’m going to need to head back to Kentucky, I think. My bottle of Black Dog is almost empty.

Ask Arok: Eagle Rare Barrels

July 16, 2015 Eric Burke

A barrel holding distillate made from Buffalo Trace' Rye Bourbon Mash #1. Someday it might become Eagle Rare, Buffalo Trace, George T. Stagg or Benchmark bourbons.

It all started with one little article shared on twitter. “Reverend Nat's Eagle Rare Bourbon Barrel Aged Revival Cider.” It’s a hard cider that they claim was aged in barrels that previously held Eagle Rare. This prompted a response on Twitter.

@arok is there such a thing as an Eagle Rare barrel? Gonna guess that isn't what was on it when it was dumped.

Andrew Elms ‏(@elmsandr)

Now, I’m going to guess that Andrew is asking this question with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek since I suspect he knows the answer to his question already. But still, it is a good question and one that someone who isn’t obsessed with bourbon might not know the answer to.

First a little background. Eagle Rare is a bourbon produced by Buffalo Trace. It is dumped out of barrels that were filled with distillate made from Buffalo Trace’s Rye Bourbon Mash Bill Number 1 (though I have been told that very occasionally a mash bill number 2 barrel will hit the flavor profile and become Eagle Rare). This same distillate is also used to fill barrels that will become Old Charter, George T Stagg, Buffalo Trace and Benchmark. Buffalo Trace has four mash recipes that are fermented and distilled to create all of their brands. There is the aforementioned Bourbon Mash #1. There is Rye Bourbon Mash #2 which is used to create the distillate that will eventually become Ancient Age, Elmer T. Lee and Blanton’s among others. There is a Wheat Bourbon Mash used to create distillate that will become the Weller line as well as the younger Van Winkles. And there is a Rye Mash that is used to create the distillate that will become the Sazerac Ryes and Thomas H. Handy Rye.

If you do a search online you will find no end to the things that claim to be aged in a certain Buffalo Trace brand’s barrel. There’s a Buffalo Trace, a George T. Stagg and a Van Winkle barrel aged Tequila. There are numerous beers aged in Stagg, Buffalo Trace and Van Winkle barrels. And there is the Eagle Rare barrel aged hard cider mentioned above. To name just a few.

Which brings us back to the question: Is there such a thing as an Eagle Rare Barrel? The answer is: kinda.

You see, there is no barrel that was filled with the intention of it being Eagle Rare (or Stagg, or Van Winkle, etc) when it was emptied. Every barrel that is filled with something that might become Eagle Rare will be labeled Mash #1 (or on a rare occasion Mash #2). So if your perspective is driven by what went into the barrel, then no. There is no such thing.

Of course, what went into the barrel and what came out of it were two completely different things. All sorts of factors act on that distillate to change it from Mash #1 to Buffalo Trace or Eagle Rare or (Benchmark for that matter). So if you look at it from the perspective of what came out of the barrel, then most certainly there is an Eagle Rare barrel. There is a barrel that held Eagle Rare. It just happens to be labeled Mash #1 (or on a rare occasion Mash #2).

So who is right? I tend to look at it from the "what came out" side. Blanton’s and Elmer T. Lee are both single barrel bourbons that came from the same distillate, but they taste much different. Old Charter tastes much different than Buffalo Trace or Eagle Rare even though they came from the same mash recipe. Based on that, as long as they are being honest about what came out of the barrel, I’d say Buffalo Trace is well within it’s rights to sell an empty barrel as an Eagle Rare Barrel or a Van Winkle Barrel or a George T. Stagg Barrel. Especially if people are willing to pay extra for it.

Do you have a bourbon question you'd like answered? Just get in contact with me using one of the icons in the sidebar to submit one. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find it from someone who does.

I.W. Harper 15 Year Old Bourbon Whiskey

July 14, 2015 Eric Burke

IW Harper 15 year old bourbon in decanter shaped bottle. A glass of bourbon on the side.

On Friday I adopted another dog. Her name is Maddy and she is a five year old American Eskimo. She came to our attention on Facebook of all places. Our city has a local Facebook group where people can list items for sale. A couple of weeks ago one of the items listed was Maddy.

Maddy doesn’t have a particularly sad story. She had an owner who rescued her when Maddy was 14 weeks old. She loved her very much and spoiled her rotten. And the love was very much returned. But then her owner met a man. And as is sometimes the case, they had a baby. All of a sudden, Maddy’s owner didn’t have the time or energy to give Maddy the attention or exercise she needed.

Maddy tried to give her owner time to come back around, but between the baby and her job as a nanny, Maddy’s owner was leaving her alone for longer and longer per day. When it started reaching 12 hours per day, she knew something had to be done and was smart, loving and brave enough to try to find Maddy a new home. She had two separate potential new owners express interest. Both flaked before anything permanent could happen.

But as they say, the third time’s the charm. When we saw Maddy’s photo, we knew we had to at least meet her. As I often do with dogs, I immediately fell in love. We did a couple visits to make sure she would get along with our other dog, Whiskey and on Friday she came to our house for good.

The most interesting thing about getting an American Eskimo is people’s reaction. It is almost always something along the lines of: “Whoa. That’s going to be a big one.” In reality, they are thinking of a Samoyed or something along those lines. An American Eskimo is slightly larger than a Pomeranian. It’s funny how so many people can collectively make the exact same mistake regarding something.

Of course we all do this. We just know what something is and so never bother to look. Myself included. I have an idea of what something is and buy it or avoid it based on that idea even though I’ve never had it. Case in point the I.W. Harper 15 year old bourbon that was recently released. After living with the regular release for a while, I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste $60 on something named I.W. Harper, even if it did say 15 years old on it.

The I.W. Harper story and Maddy’s story have a few similarities. They both started out well loved by their original owners, but as time went on, circumstances changed. More and more, they needed love that they weren’t getting. Eventually things got bad enough that a change was needed. There were some down times. In I.W. Harper’s case, it was taken out of it’s home market. Maddy couldn’t find an owner that would want her. But then circumstances changed. Maddy found us. I.W. Harper…well it’s certainly getting some promotional love. The regular release wasn’t really worthy of it. Let’s see how the 15 year fares.

I.W. Harper. Bourbon Whiskey, Aged 15 Years

Purchase Info: $59.99, 750 mL. Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: Aged 15 years. 43% ABV. Really pretty bottle that looks like an old decanter.

Nose: Caramel cookie dough mixed with faint red berries. Sweet with some clove spice.

Mouth: Decent spice: ginger and cloves. Sweet brown sugar and a nice hit of oak.

Finish: On the longer side of medium. Lingering sweetness and oak.

Thoughts: I really like this one. There is enough oak to be interesting but not so much as to be overwhelming. It’s sweet, but has nice spice. It’s a limited release, but if it sticks around long enough, I could see myself picking up a second bottle. At the same time, it isn’t so good that I’ll be too sad if I don’t get another chance at it.

Oh and in case you were curious, here's a photo of my new sweet little Maddy. She loves to ride in the truck.

Review of the new release of I.W. Harper

July 9, 2015 Eric Burke

I just wish there were more. Sweet, spicy, rich and floral sum this up nicely. The color is even beautiful. It is a joy to look at, smell and taste. Just yum.

That's what I said about a small mini of I.W. Harper from the early 70s. It was delicious. It was also a one of a kind deal. So it was with great interest that I read that I.W. Harper was being brought back to the US. I didn't imagine that a new version would taste nearly as good as the one from 40 years ago, but I wondered if there might be some sort of family resemblance.

Yes. I got over that pretty quick when I remembered who owned the brand now. I'm not one of those folks who think that Diageo (the current brand owner) is specifically out to stomp on the notion of fair priced whiskey that tastes good. But they have gone on record as saying they think there is extra profit to be taken in American Whiskey. And have put out some bourbon with pretty steep prices. Plus they don't actually have a distillery making bourbon right now. So whatever they put out was probably bought from someone else.

All this is to say that even before I picked it up, I knew this wouldn't be anything like what I had had before. But that tiny voice saying "what if..." got the better of me. And so I bought it.

I.W. Harper

Purchase Info: $29.99, 750 mL. Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN

Details: 41% ABV.

Nose: Old wood, sweet banana, apple slices, floral perfume

Mouth: Thin and flat. Brown sugar and wood tannins.

Finish: A bit of the floral notes from the nose show up before being steamrolled by bitter oak tannins.

Thoughts: Very disappointing. The nose was light, fruity and delicate. The mouth was flat and full of wood. When I first nosed it I thought I was getting one whiskey. I ended up getting another that I didn't like as much. As far as quality, this is a solid meh. It's not terrible, but for almost $30 you expect something more than a mixer. I'd give this one a pass.

Dry Fly Straight Triticale Whiskey

July 7, 2015 Eric Burke

So. Craft whiskey.

I haven’t written about a craft whiskey in a while.

There’s a reason for that. I’ve been burned too often to want to pull the trigger on buying them when I see them in the store. I used to try every whiskey I could get my hands on. Big producers, small producers, bottlers, blenders, it didn’t matter. And I loved the idea of supporting small distilleries with my love and money. But there was a problem.

Out of all the ones I tried, I remember a handful that I really liked. There are very few would I want to spend my money on a second time. I know how the process works. I know that economies of scale play a big part in the “craft price,” but there weren’t many that I felt were…well…good. Much less good enough to justify an inflated price.

So I haven’t picked one up in a while. But I have tried a few at whiskey events, just to know where things are at. And in doing that I found a couple of producers that I felt warrented another look. One of those was Dry Fly Distilling out of Spokane, Washington. I’d heard their name, seen their product on the shelves, even read some reviews. But as I said, I’ve been burned before. I just didn’t want to drop the coin until I could be assured I’d at least be interested by the product. After trying it, I felt it was worth the risk. Especially for one where it was made out of an interesting grain.

Triticale is a hybrid grain. It was bred from wheat and rye in the late 1800s, but, according to wikipedia has only recently been commercially viable as a crop. If you want to know more you can read it yourself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triticale). But what interested me about it was what it would bring to a whiskey. Would it be anything like other rye or wheat whiskies I’d had? Would it be soft or spicy? Would it be any good?

Dry Fly Straight Triticale Whiskey

Purchase Info: $29.99, 375 mL. Casanova Liquors, Hudson, WI. (It sells for between $39 and $49 for a 750 mL around the Twin Cities.)

Details: 44% ABV. Straight with no age statement so if all the rules were followed we should assume this is at least four years old in new barrels.

Nose: Bubble gum. Banana fruitiness. A light touch of caramel and baking spices.

Mouth: Spicier than I’d expect at 88 proof. A touch solventy at first. Sweet banana bread at the front of the mouth transitions to a nice minty rye spiciness as it moves toward a swallow.

Finish: A tad solventy again on the finish. Sweet and spicy. It fades to a nice bitterness that makes you want another sip.

Thoughts: I’m very pleasantly surprised by this. The more I taste of it, the more I like it. The only knock I have is that solvent note, but it seems to fade fairly fast. I’m guessing that as I finish the bottle it may even disappear. It tastes young, but I really like it. I can’t wait to try more by these guys.

Woodford Reserve Rye

July 2, 2015 Eric Burke

Back in August 2012 I said the following:

"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."

I was talking about the Woodford Reserve Master’s Collection New and Aged Cask Ryes that were released in 2011 . I enjoyed the experience of trying the same juice aged in two different types of barrels and I enjoyed the whiskeys. So it was with some interest that I read that Brown Foreman was releasing that rye expression I had asked for.

I read varying comments around the web at the time of the announcement. Most of them were...not positive. But I tried to remind people that Brown-Forman was the company that until recently was producing the very tasty Rittenhouse Rye for Heaven Hill. Even if nothing else about them making it was applicable, at least they knew how to handle rye in such a way it made a tasty whiskey. Didn't seem to help much.

I decided to just wait and see. I knew it would be some time before we got Woodford Rye here in Minnesota. Heck, we've just received the first release in the Old Forester Whiskey Row series (1870). Coincidentally, right around the time the second release hit the stores in Kentucky.

My wait and see approach lasted until business happened to take my wife to Cincinnati. Flying into Cincinnati lands you in Kentucky. In Kentucky fairly close to the Party Source. So I told her that I would be happy to stay at home all alone while she had fun at a conference if she would bring me a few things back. One of those was the Woodford Reserve Rye.

This weekend we decided to taste it.

Woodford Reserve Rye

Purchase Info: $38.99, 750 mL. The Party Source, Bellevue, KY

Details: 45.2% ABV. Batch 002

Nose: Mint, cedar, honey sweetness, black tea

Mouth: Cinnamon and clove, mint, black tea, buckwheat honey.

Finish: Decent length. Cedar, mint, black tea.

Thoughts: I’m very impressed with this rye. It has an interesting depth of flavor while still retaining the standard minty/spicy rye character. It’s tannic, but not overly so. Sweet, but not cloying. Spicy, but not overly hot. Black tea was a bit of a surprise note for me, but it seemed to work well. There are hints of the flavors of the bourbons produced by Old Forester/Woodford Reserve. I’m guessing that is coming from the yeast. Overall, I like this as much as I thought I would. It’s tasty.

Blog

Old Forester 1870 Original Batch

Black Dog Barbecue Sauce

I.W. Harper. Bourbon Whiskey, Aged 15 Years

I.W. Harper

Dry Fly Straight Triticale Whiskey

Woodford Reserve Rye