170. New Spring and Summer Bourbon Releases

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

We would like to thank our friends at Premium Bar Products for sponsoring this episode. If you're ready to step up your game at your home bar, check out premiumbarproducts.com to choose from their wide selection of glassware, all of which can be custom engraved with your personal message or logo. And there's no minimum order. So after the episode, head over to premiumbarproducts.com and check out everything they have to offer. Now let's get on with the show. Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we're sitting down to record a long version episode, just you and me.

Yeah, it's been a minute.

Yeah, it has been a minute. You had a road trip. We had a bit of vacation. We took some time off. You're coming off night shift now.

Yeah, this is last night was my last night.

Yeah. So slept into three today. You're ready to get back to a normal life, right? That normal schedule. Hopefully, hopefully. Well, a lot of things are returning to normal now, I think.

Seems like it is. All the distilleries are opening back up. Kentucky's opening back up. A lot of bourbon being released right now. It is the spring time for spring and summer releases that people look forward to. So if you're a bourbon hunter out there, wow, what a time, right?

Everything's opening back up. I mean, everybody looks forward to the fall releases, right? That's the big stuff. But the spring, May and June, which is where we are right now, there's some pretty nice stuff being released. And we've actually got a couple bottles for the show today we want to talk about.

Yeah. You know, the second one I really like. I know you. Now, let's be fair about it.

We're not going to mention which one it is yet, but it's batch related.

It is batch related. That's right. And we've both got some. batches that just got released too, you went and found a Maker Smart Cast Strape, which is a second kind of batch of that, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So I think the original one, the one we had on the show last year was a 109 proof. This one's like a 110 and change. So I'm kind of looking forward to cracking that bottle and trying it out.

I got a photo the other day from you and you're shopping and you found a bottle and I was like, wow, Jim's out getting himself some bourbon. So yeah, it is spring season and stuff. Early summer season of bourbon hunting and people were out there hunting those bottles and we're getting all kinds of photos in our bourbon roadies. of people that are searching out those bottles like the old Fitzgerald bottle and bond spring release. A couple people have gotten bottles of that, which is nice to see that our roadies are actually picking up those bottles.

Yeah, and it's not just the big boys that are releasing. They've got bottles that are releasing right now. A lot of the craft distilleries have got some special releases. You can look for stuff from High West and King's County, new riffs, got some new stuff out. I think, if I remember correctly, Wyoming Whiskey has a new one.

They do, yeah. That's exciting stuff. Our friends over at Bluegrass Distilling in Lexington, they just released their We did bourbon. It's a bottle and bond. I think you actually got to taste that. We both got to taste it. We did.

Isn't that the barrel we upturned? Yeah. I remember that. That was delicious a year ago or more. And it was already at four years. So what's it at now?

Should be at five years.

Yeah.

So some great bottles. So the first bottle we're going to sip on today though. I'm always iffy about these bottles. They are very pricey. retail MSRP, they run about $100. Comes in a nice box that's kind of laser edged on there. It is the Blood Oath pack number seven from Luxro, newly acquired from MGP. Hopefully they'll keep this up. This is a 98.6 proof.

That's an odd number. That just happens to be the optimal temperature for the human body, right? Is it? 98.6. Isn't that what you wanted to say when you put a thermometer in your mouth and pop it out here? I hope it says 98.6.

Oh, it's been a long time since I had a thermometer in my mouth. So usually today they got those digital ones. Yeah. I guess I always think if it's not above a hundred degrees, I'm all right. If it starts blinking red or orange, then we got some problems.

This is blended. This is blended bourbons, right? So, we've got three different bourbons that make this one up, if I'm correct. Now, what are those? Then we got a 14-year old bourbon in there. These are all rye bourbons in here. They've got a 14-year-old rye bourbon. You've got an eight-year-old rye bourbon and then you have another eight-year-old rye bourbon in there that's been finished in sauternes barrels. Where are those? Where do those come from? Well, sauternes is a white wine. It's a sweet white wine from France, from the Bordeaux region. It has a number of different grapes that make it up. I'm not a wine expert but I would tend to say that this is going to impart a very, probably a very fruity and sweet, depending on how much effect is that on it. You know, because it is only a third of the mix and it's also a Rye Bourbon that's just been finished. So, we'll see how much that plays in there.

Yeah, our good friend Adam Boothby. He actually did a review for us, our top roadie, our top dog in the roadies, right? He actually reviewed this, and this is what he had to say about it. He said, on the nose, it was beautiful old oak, molasses, caramel, hint of cocoa, almost an overall scent of cookie dough. On his palate, he had oak, sugar cookies, molasses, light pepper. This is a sweet bourbon, two thirds through. It makes a turn, adds apricot and sweet grape juice. Well, likely from the grapes used to make the wine. It all blends together so well. He said, the finish is medium at most. The molasses, light cinnamon, cocoa, and apricot are most prevalent, but do not leave you wanting to jump to the next sip fairly quickly. So overall, after handing the glass to Sarah with my usual, you need to try this. Her sip simply ended in the words, oh my. In our home, that means buy one more if you can. So he says it'd make a great after dinner sip.

Well, Adam's got a great palette. So I trust his review. I imagine this is probably the reason you ran out and grabbed a bottle.

Well, I didn't just run out. You know, I just, you know, happened into a store. Actually, I got a text from somebody. I'm not going to say who I got it from and said, Hey, these bottles are up at the store. The two bottles we're trying today. Would you like them? Um, I was like, yep, I'd like those both of those. I didn't even ask about the price. Went up like the next day. Um, the person that texted me wasn't in the store, but the other guy that's in the store knew who I was. And he's like, Hey, How you doing big chief? He pulls out a sack that has big chief right now. And then he went in the back and tried to get me another bottle, but I'd already had a, they offered me a bottle of 1792 foolproof. And you know, you can only have so many of those under the shelf that are open or unopened. I didn't need another one. Now, full proof is still in the squat bottle, right? Yeah. You've seen the new, you've actually seen the new bottles that are tall and kind of weird looking, right?

Yeah. Sort of the same shape, but just stretched tall. Probably so fit better on a bar, but it fit in a well maybe, I don't know, for the small batch. Sure.

Yeah, I just, I'm one of those guys that don't, I don't feel like I want to be greedy. I see posts on social media. I don't have nothing against those people that do that. I'm just not that guy. If I saw six bottles up somewhere and I could buy them all, I'm probably not going to do it. I might ask you or another good friend to, Hey, would you like a bottle? But I'm not a greedy person to where I'm going to buy every bottle off the shelf. Yeah, I get that.

I get that.

So,

I think we're failing at our main mission, which is to get straight to the whiskey. Yeah. We have been talking for a minute. I should let me talk this long. Let's do it. All right. Cheers. That's sweet. It is fruity, but that oak is ever present on that nose. Isn't it?

I can get a little bit of that sweetness from you. Like you said, a sweet white wine, maybe.

A little bit of cinnamon, kind of like walking into a bakery. They just made cinnabons, maybe. Alright, I want to taste it. Let's do it. Cheers.

Cheers. Oh yeah.

You know, you said that cinnamon bun. I don't know if that's because you said it, but I tasted that. It's got a little bit of spiciness to it.

Yeah, but it's creamy. It's almost like with that cinnamon and sugar mixture sort of runs down the cinnamon bun. I almost think it leans a little bit more towards like like a cinnamon and raisin bread pudding.

I could get that raisins because that wine in there.

It's been a while since I had some really good bread pudding. I'm trying to remember where we had bread pudding at.

Yeah, I can tell you. Was it Barnate? No, we were at Bourbon's Bistro and we both had had had several drinks and Vivian and Mel came and met us for dinner there after we did an episode. They went around the table after dinner and everybody ordered dessert, but nobody wanted dessert, right? I'm the only one that wanted dessert. I wanted dessert that night pretty bad because they said bread pudding. And you were like, hey, can I have some of that? And then the girls started eating some and I was talking and somebody else came up to us. There were several bourbon industry leaders in there that night. The next thing you know, you'd eaten all my dang bread puddings.

I do love some bread pudding. Speaking of Buzzard Truce, they just released their peated rye. So that's on the release too, isn't it? Yeah. A lot of the craft distilleries have some pretty special releases out right now, so keep your eyes open. These are things that are going to go away pretty quick.

Yeah. I mean, people are hunting those and they see them or if they get a whiff of it. Elmer T. Lee's out right now. You get that on the, not on the shelf, but it's out there. Get that from your favorite best friend who owns a liquor store. Yeah. Weller is coming out with their foolproof CYPB. That's something I've been looking for. I'm not going to go out there and chase it down and I'm not going to overpay for it, but if I saw it, I'd take a bottle of it.

This is a nice zipper. There's no doubt about it. It's got a very nice depth to it of flavor. The oak is just, it plays a part the whole way through, but those Sort of that baking cabinet, the bread pudding, the cinnamon, the ooey gooey cinnamon roll kind of flavor.

Get a little bit of bitter bite to it on the back end. I don't know if that's that oak calling out to me, and I think that's what it is.

Yeah, I think there's a little bit there. It's from that 14-year-old, what is contributing to it, that it's been in the oak for a while. You're getting that little bit of tannic presence. This is an excellent whiskey. Now the finish is, I think I agree with Adam on it. It doesn't like hang around for a long time, but it's pleasant. It's got a little bit of chocolate coming through on the finish. Like I don't want to say Tootsie Roll, because it's not a sweet chocolate finish. It's more of a dry chocolate finish.

I get that cocoa powder. Maybe that's a little bit of the bitterness I'm getting. Not a whole lot of Kentucky hug on this though. Very slight, which is surprising to me. I thought there had been more of a Kentucky hug to it, but very little at all. Folks, if you haven't been down to Lux Row, it is a very, very nice distillery. They actually cater to veterans in there. If you're a veteran, if you're active duty military, you'll get a free tasting in there because the tastings do cost money in there, but they line it up. They'll put every one of their bourbons out for you, bring some chocolates out for you. They do a really nice job down there.

Nice place. Great bar, great tasting room, wonderful gift shop. New building, right?

Relatively new. It's relatively new. There are some historical buildings there, which is nice to see that they've kept that historical stuff where there are newer grounds and stuff. It's right outside of Barstown. You don't have to drive that far. It's right down the road from Barstown Bourbon Company. If you wanted to grab a bite to eat over at Barstown Bourbon Company and then run over to Luxro or vice versa, they're both kind of close to each other.

Any word on how operations are going to continue now that they're under the MGP umbrella? Are they going to be able to operate autonomously?

Those are their pretty close lip about what's going on, right? Yeah. And this, that's a place we haven't been into do an interview. We've been trying to, we'd like to get in there and I'm sure that question is going to come up when we get in there. Um, it'd be nice to, it'd be nice to see them continue how they are. Um, and maybe not bring too much of that Indiana juice down because they got their own steel there and it's running, they're pumping some whiskey out. There's no doubt about that. Yeah.

Yeah. They're making a lot of whiskey down there, no doubt.

And they got some great brands, you know, like this Blood Oath right here is some of their limited stuff, but they got the Rebel brand. Both of us love the Rebel tin here, right? just a great whiskey. And then they came out with their distillers collection, which are single barrels from that. Which is phenomenal, right? Yeah. It's like six years, seven years, great weeded bourbon. If we talked about last week, we reviewed that. legends weeded bourbon and how that, if you couldn't find like a well or full proof, a big boy bottle, other bourbons to look for and that Stillers collection is something you might look for in that price range. Or even like you went out there and got a Makers 46 Cast Strength, batch two, That's something to get. 55 bucks. How can you beat that?

$55. Yeah, we've got some friends coming in this weekend from Iowa, and they'll be hanging out for a bit. Trying to think, well, what's the perfect whiskey to have for somebody who's coming in from out of town? Everybody knows Maker's Mark. No matter who you are, where you're from, what part of the corner of the United States you're from, if somebody tells you they've got a bottle of Maker's Mark, you know exactly what they're talking about.

Yeah. If you're not a whiskey nerd like we are, right? You might not know. You know it's a bourbon, but maybe you don't know the difference between a weeded bourbon and a rye bourbon. But every whiskey nerd out there knows it's a weeded bourbon. Exactly.

But you break out that red wax bottle and they recognize that.

Oh yeah, most definitely.

So I thought, hey, that'd be good to pick that up for this weekend. Now my friend is coming and he's also a big martini fan.

So you got some gin?

Yeah, we got a little bit of gin and some vermouth. Olives and juice. We're going to make some dirty martinis, I'm sure.

Vivamy, you're headed to St. Louis. My first weekend off night shifts. We've got some old friends that live there outside of St. Louis. We'll do some wineries over there. We'll drink a little bit of whiskey. We're going to take her. She loves some bourbon cream. You definitely want to check that out. Speaking of bourbon cream, Jim. I want to mention a new giveaway we're about to have. So another one. Another giveaway. Wow. How did the last one go? I think it's going great, you know, or tomorrow really. By the time this episode comes out, it'll already be done. But we partnered with Jamerson Candles. He did a little stave tasting set and a candle as a playing cards. from his highly bourbonated collection. And what a great giveaway, right? And I paired five bourbons with that four ounce pours, which equals out to a whole bottle of bourbon. I mean, that's a pretty good giveaway. Oh, absolutely. So this giveaway, There's the old salt coffee company, kind of like us, two old salts, right? Yeah. You're a Navy veteran. I'm a Coast Guard veteran and army veteran because I was on army watercraft, but two old salts, old salt coffee company. They're going to send us some of their coffee, two of their coffee cups. And what do you think I'm going to pair that with? Bourbon cream? Yeah. I'm going to give away, we're going to give away a bottle of Buffalo Traces bourbon cream. Cause you can't find that stuff anywhere in the United States, but here we can get it all day long. So I thought that'd be nice to pair that coffee. Is it really only available here? Yeah. A lot of people haven't even heard of it before. Oh, wow. Most people drink Bailey's average cream. Yeah. But you go to other States, they can't find it. It'll be a limited release, allocated release. So. I thought that'd be a nice giveaway from us to our listeners out there. So if you're a listener and you follow us on Instagram or if you follow us on Facebook, you're part of our roadies, I always put an extra way to win in there for our roadies. Make sure you check that giveaway out.

Absolutely. Mike, I feel terrible. I want to comment a little bit more on this, but I'm out.

I think I'm about to join you there because it was that good. It is really good.

My take on this is it's an expensive bottle. It comes in a beautiful box. It's a well-known release that happens on Cadence and there are people that wait for it to come out. I'm going to say this. I'm going to say that it's worth every penny of the $99 that you spent on it. I think it's very, very good. I love the the way that that sulturn finish actually comes out. And you know, we didn't really get to talk too much about the finish. It is sort of a medium finish. Does have that little bit of a chocolate note on it. But you also get those raisins, you know, that white raisins, I think is probably what I'm going to say. White raisins. And aren't white raisins what you put in bread pudding? I don't know.

brown or red grapes. I've seen them in there. I guess it depends on who's making it and what they're baking out of. But I think you're right. Traditionally it would have been made with white raisins.

I think I'm just going to say for me, I'm getting the bread pudding, the cinnamon bread pudding with white raisins in it. Very creamy, just rich. Absolutely delicious. I think it's a great sipper. After dinner, absolutely. Before dinner, fine. Evening on the patio, absolutely. I think it fits in all those cases. And a 98.6 proof, I think you can still sip on this into the warmer months. Yeah, it's not too overly hot.

It doesn't have that big burn to it. I'm not disappointed that I bought it. I think it was a great buy for me. It'll be a nice sip for some people come over to my house, pull off the shelf and say, hey, could I try that right there? Yeah, let's give you a pour and let you try something kind of special. I don't ever keep it in a box. I don't know why I don't.

I got boxes like that sitting around everywhere as you do too. Yeah, I've tossed all my boxes. Actually, I did. I had a whole bunch of them, all my twos from all my EH tailors. I had kept all those for the longest time. And finally I said, you know what? I've got enough of them. I've got enough. Let's get this stuff out of here.

And your bar is filling up even more since last time I've been over here. Yeah. It's kind of filling out and, you know, it's looking nice. It's getting there.

So definitely a sipper. Definitely want to share this with friends at 99 bucks, a hundred dollars a bottle. Difficult to find, probably not going to gift it, but there might be that special someone.

It had to be somebody really special. Maybe if you have a son or a daughter that's into drinking bourbon and you got your first grandchild or something like that, this would be a really nice bourbon for them.

This will be a nice corner piece on your bar that you can pour from when somebody comes over and says, Ooh, what's that?

Or we can compare it to the last couple of releases. Sure.

Absolutely.

Well, listeners, we'll be right back for our second half.

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All right, well, we are back. The first half was a blast, Mike.

Got to drink the Blood Oath, pack seven. Definitely a great taste of whiskey. Yeah, most certainly. This half, though, we've got something I'm looking forward to. I'm hoping it's just as good.

I think it's going to be for everything that I saw on this. A lot of people are saying how good it is. This is the Larseny barrel proof A121. You've seen it out there. It is 114.8 proof.

Okay. So, this one ranks right up there with those higher proof weeded bourbons.

Yeah. You know, I just love them to death. I can't say enough about them.

Now, we know that from the past that these larceny batches, they differ a little bit. They don't all taste the same and they're all good, but they're not all equally good. That's probably the best way to say it.

Yeah, I think once you go into different batches, you might get some variance in there. Probably like the Maker's Cast Strength, I'm sure there's got to be some variance in those batches a little bit. Right. So, you know, when you think about those small batches, this is probably not a small batch that people think it is. They're probably putting a lot of juice out and stuff. They are still hard bottles to find though.

Yeah. No, this is A121. 114.8 proof. Same bottle. No changes there. Nope.

There's nothing special about the bottle or anything. It's just a batch. A little bit darker liquid in there though. You know, it's not proofed all the way down.

All right. Well, let's check it out.

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Big time Werther's original. Even butterscotch. Yeah, I can get that. Very butterscotch-y.

A little bit of, just a hint of oak in there. The floor notes are coming through for me. Maybe like walking in a rose garden. I'm probably saying that because Vivian's been trying to get me to buy some knockout rose bushes to put in her entrance way. And some of our neighbors have them, so I stopped by and looked at them. Like took a big whiff and you know, them things are just loaded down with those roses. So I get that whiff of roses. She says that roses don't smell, but. I think roses. I think they do too. They smell like roses. Yeah. Isn't that a, that's a saying, right? That's a saying.

I tried to tell that to her. They're always saying other stuff smells like roses, right? But you know her. She would say that. Yeah. So, this has got a very oaky nature to it, but I still, I'm going to say butterscotch as hell on this one.

Yeah, it's sweet. Maybe even some good honey, like some local honey.

Yeah, and you know, for 114 proof, it's not attacking my nose. It's not got a lot of ethanol coming off of it.

Not at all.

Well, heck, I say let's just cheers.

Yeah, the first thing I noticed on that was the texture. Very creamy, very thick, upfront, not a huge impact of sweetness. Did you get a lot of sweetness?

I did. I'm getting some sweetness, but what I'm getting is that Pop Rocks is just like, it kind of exploded. It's just like the bam. Hey, I'm here and I'm going to keep working my way back. That molasses is there. that butterscotch you're talking about. A little bit of oak, just a hint.

Yeah, I'm getting the molasses. I'm getting a little bit of like the butterscotch to honey to molasses transition across the palate. So it's definitely got a honey effect because of its thickness, because of its viscosity. It really wants to stick to your tongue and just keep giving you a lot of flavor up front. Not getting a lot in the back.

And this thing has got, it's done work. It's get some Kentucky hug going on. You know, this is a spring release gym, but. I wouldn't call this a spring or summer sipper. No, definitely not. This is more of a deep fall, deep winter sipper right here by warm fire. It's not overly spicy though.

It does have a little bit of that pop rocks going on like you said, but not a tremendous amount of spice. It's not a back of the palate kind of whiskey. It does have that hug, but But I'm not getting that fire in the back. That bite. I'm going to say if you like a few cubes of ice in your whiskey, then this would stand up fine during the summertime. Otherwise, probably a bit heavy for a summer sipper.

Most definitely. So what would you say a couple of your summer sippers are?

Well, I mean, we've had a few on the show recently. Uh, the one most recently that I can think of, uh, was the country smooth bourbon.

Oh yeah. That thing was, uh, nice and light. Um, uh, low, really low proof for a whiskey for a summer sipper. That's perfect. Yeah.

Or to put a cocktail or to make a cocktail or even, you know, a high ball or something like that. I think it's a good choice for that. We had one last year. Yeah. A couple last year. Oh, that was this year, wasn't it? When did we have the Penelope? Oh, heck, I don't know.

That might've been in the fall time that we had it, but that was a good summer sipper. Penelope, Penhook, some of their- They're right on. Right on as a perfect we did last year. Basil Hayden, a lot of people beat up Basil Hayden, but it's low proof, pricey, but a great summer sipper though. Yeah. So some of those lighter, lower proof whiskeys, even Jim Beam is a good summer sipper in a cocktail. If you're sitting out by fire, grilling, barbecuing, whatever you like to do, those are some whiskeys that you might want to drink in a cocktail or something like that that aren't going to light you on fire. I'd say old granddad for the spice. I guess in my mind, old granddad bottle and bond kind of goes with barbecue for me. Either one doing it, you know, or it makes a nice cocktail. And it's not going to pick your pocket, right?

That's right. Yeah, I think any of the big boys in the 80 or 90 proof range are going to be fine. Typically, I would say in the summertime, you want to keep that proof down just a little bit. It gets a little hot coming off the lawn mower. You're not reaching for a glass of bourbon. reach for an ice cold beer usually. Yeah, most certainly.

Buffalo Trace is another whiskey out there that's, you know, it's 90 proof. It's a good, make a good cocktail out of that.

Yeah. Now we're sitting there drinking the, you know, the barrel proof larceny, but the standard issue larceny at 94 proof is probably a good choice as well.

And that's what Mel drinks, right? That's what she drinks. That's, that's right.

We've always got a 1.75 of that under the cabinet in the kitchen. Absolutely that. And, uh, Lately, I've been keeping the Old Forester rye for myself.

That makes an excellent cocktail. It does. Usually, if you go anywhere in Louisville, they're going to have Old Forester's standard bourbon and a rye to make cocktails out of.

Now, that rye at $19 a bottle, you can't beat it. I've been buying a lot of the the daily drinkers that we use here at the house. I just get them at Costco when I'm grocery shopping. Costco's got a limited selection, but they've got some good stuff.

Yeah, the prices are hard to beat at Costco. They are a big box store. We were talking about that. I saw their Costco Kirkland brand in there, which is from where? It's from 1792 Barton distillery, right? Yeah. Barton juice, I think it's over four years old. That's a pretty good price for that stuff. I'm not telling you to go out and shop at Costco, but you don't have to be a member at Costco to go into the liquor store.

Yeah, Barton has my favorite white dog. Now, they don't sell it, but you can only get it on a tour. But boy, every time I go on a tour of Barton, I love to get a little bit of that white dog.

Well, that's some summer sippers out there that we both agree on. Woodford Reserve's another whiskey that you could definitely sip on. Their weeded whiskey is very nice. It's got that 90.4 proof, like we said. Really, really nice whiskeys from Woodford Reserve. that are great summer sippers, I think, great for cocktails and stuff. I noticed something we didn't talk about, something that I know you're going to be looking for, is Wild Turkey's Master Keep Toasted Oak Finish.

Yeah. I love checking out the Master Keep. Which one did we have on the show last year?

Last year we did, the Master's Keep we got was their Bottled and Bond 17-year-old. That's right. This year, it's just going to be that toasted oak barrels, 101 proof. Now, you know, I all about that toasted oak, right? Yeah. It's double-oked, what most people would call it. I think that's a great bourbon to go out there and try to find. You know, I'll be trying to go, probably to just go over to Wild Turkey and try to pick up a bottle. Absolutely. You know somebody over there, right? Well, we do know somebody. That's coming out in June, which is really when this episode is going to be coming out.

Maybe you want to look for that swing by Woodford at the same time and pick up their new, uh, Brandy finish 375 that they just released just a few days ago, I think, didn't it?

Yup. That'll be, uh, around a $50 price range for a little 375. Uh, so just so you don't have no sticker shock of the price of it. That's what those usually go for. They're very proud of it. Yeah. So you got, you got anything else going on, Jim, besides, uh, anything else you're looking forward to this summer?

You know, I just started making some beef jerky. I've been playing with meat stuff a lot. You know, I've been playing with a lot of meat stuff lately. I did a capicola. I'm aging a capicola. I've been making some bacon. I got inspired by you. You made some bacon. It was just phenomenal. I said, wait, I got to learn how to do that. Made some sausage. I tried some sausage. My sausage was OK. Now I'm making some beef jerky, but I got my capicola aging, dry aging, in the fridge. And sometime mid August, we should have some charcuterie. You just didn't hang it up anywhere, right? You doing yours in the fridge. I'm doing mine in the fridge inside of the Umai dry bags. Yeah. So, kind of interesting. I might write that up if it's good. If it's good. If it's good.

Well, I think we have a whole bunch of traveling that's about to happen. We're going to St. Louis and next weekend after that, that I'm off, I'm actually taking Vivian on a surprise vacation kind of for herself, for her birthday weekend.

Now, she knows she's traveling. But she doesn't know where she doesn't know where you already bought the tickets and everything. Everything's already, everything's already planned.

That's odd for me. I'm not a planner.

So you can't say it on here because she listens to the show.

Yeah, we can't say it. Just if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook or on the roadies, you'll see some posts from there where we're going somewhere we wanted to check out. And we'd either one of us been there. We always like to go somewhere new. So that. So I might fly out to Oregon in July to do some fishing out there with my brother. Everything's opened back up, so it's time to travel a little bit. I'm back on day shifts, so I get to hunt a little bit of whiskey. I'm getting texts from people that, hey, I got these bottles for you. You know, it's a nice time of year. It's just beautiful outside. I am going to miss, I told you, the sun rises in the morning because when I'm driving, it's 30 minutes home from downtown for me, 30, 35 minutes. And when I leave work, I get on I-64 coming out of downtown and I get to see all the bridges on the Ohio River. And it's just this most amazing sunsets or sunrises you can ever get. We're going to miss those bottle shots with the sunrises too. But you do those in the sunset too. I do get sunset shots and you'll probably see more of those from our back deck. We get some amazing shots out there, some amazing sunsets out there on our road and I really like those. So hopefully you'll see some more, some different shots coming back out. Some of my barn shots I like to take. Yeah, we'll be trying to put some more content out there. Hopefully we make some TikTok videos now. We'll have a little bit more time. I can stop by here after work when we do some more work. So yeah.

Absolutely. So let's talk a little bit more about this larceny. So this is something you just picked up, right? And what was the price on a bottle? 50 bucks. $50. We're talking about 114 proof, weeded whiskey from a big boy, Heaven Hill Distillery. I'm going to say it's a buy. It's definitely a buy. Well, 50 bucks. How are you going to beat that? Yeah, this is definitely butterscotch forward.

I think this is a little less sweet than last year's releases. More oaky. It does have that butterscotch to me. Probably not my favorite out of all their releases. Still a great weeded bourbon. It's not going to go to waste in my house. That's for dang sure.

That's night and day from the blood oath. Yeah, those are two different. The first sip of this, I had blood oath on my mind, first sip of this was boom, caramel butterscotch, caramel butterscotch. Totally different.

Yeah, two good, two very good whiskies that represent Kentucky very well. If you haven't been out to Heaven Hill, you need to go and check them out. If you get out there super early in the morning, you might be able to pick up a special bottle that just released. Yeah. If you get out there super early, get in line, you might be a person that's able to get an old Fitzgerald bottle and bond. They got so many nice bottles out there.

Then you go have breakfast at Mammy's. Yeah.

I mean, how are you going to go wrong? That's right. You can't mess up breakfast. That's right. At least I don't think you can.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

All right. Well, Mike, I really enjoyed this. We've had two fresh releases on the show today. There's a lot more out there. We're probably going to have a few more here in the coming weeks. You know, we definitely need to tap into that new Makers 46 cast drink.

Yeah. See what it's all about. I look forward to it.

Yeah. I hope I really see some differences between the Makers 46 batches. I mean, it's a wonderful whiskey. It was delicious. I mean, it stood out. heads and tails above a lot of other whiskeys, I think. And I just hope to continue that, but I'd love to see some variation between the batches.

Yeah, that's nice to see. I mean, I guess that if you have one whiskey a drink, like old granddad bottled Bond, right? You like to see that same stuff over and over and over. But if you're truly a bourbon enthusiast and you like to taste different stuff, you want to see something different. And I think that's what we're trying to give all of our listeners out there is something different every day. Absolutely. So where can everybody find us on the internet, on social media? So as I've been talking about this whole episode, you can find us on Instagram, you can find us on TikTok, you can find us on YouTube, on Twitter, and obviously you can find us on Facebook. We also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. You got to answer three questions to get in there. RE21, do you like bourbon and do you agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any of what?

Absolutely no rudeness. We're a bunch of family in there. We don't want trolls. We don't want people tearing each other down, lift each other up. That's what it's all about, right?

Yeah. It's about helping each other out and having a positive outlook on life and a positive outlook on bourbon. Whatever you're drinking from the lowest, the bottom shelf stuff, if you're drinking 10 high bourbon, which is I don't know if that's underneath the shelf, but it's pretty low.

They set that on the floor, I think. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Definitely. But if that's what you're drinking, hey, and you want to post that and that's what your daily drinker is, you mixing the cocktail, hey, have at it. I've drank it. I think you drank it before, Jim. So everybody's at some point in their life and stuff. We're just trying to promote the bourbon culture. That's right. Every bottle sold raises up the industry. That's definitely true. A lot of these places we're talking about too, and people are taking shots of, are small businesses. And it's nice to see that American dream come true. Somebody had a vision, they had an idea, they put it together and they're making a nice business out of it.

We talked about the roadies a few times. The bourbon roadies is a great place for you to come and learn about bourbon, share your bourbon experiences with people, share your pictures, share your life. I mean, if you have a wedding or a birthday or retirement party, whatever it is, we'd love to hear about it. Even a death in there.

When you raise a glass. Yeah, raise a glass or like today's Memorial Day. Raise a glass to those men and women that served and sacrificed everything for our freedom so we can do things like this podcast right here. Because this is our freedom of speech.

Absolutely. We do two shows a week. We do a short episode every Monday called The Craft Distillery Monday. It's a review of a bottle. We'll take a single bottle, a single expression, and we'll dive into it, and you'll get to hear sort of Mike and I take on it, whether we think you should give it a shot or not. Usually,

Pretty good though, aren't they? Yeah. I think most of them that we taste are just simply amazing. If you're a distillery out there and you want us to try your whiskey, you have something you'd like us to try. You want a fair shake at it. You give us a call. You send us a message either on Instagram or Facebook or at Mike at the Bourbon Road or Jim at the Bourbon Road. You send us a message. We're definitely going to get back to you. We want to get your whiskey in our hands, in our glass so we can taste them and review it.

Absolutely. And every Wednesday, we do a long format show like today's show where Mike and I, sometimes we'll have a guest on, we'll travel out, we'll go visit a distillery, we'll bring a musician on or an author or a comedian or somebody sitting down and drink bourbon with us. But sometimes it's just Mike and I and we're diving into a couple of bottles, talking about new releases today, what's going on, a little bit about summer sippers. It's always a fun time. It's always a fun one hour. This is probably going to come up a little bit short, but we always have a great time. We always want to hear what it is you think we ought to be doing better, right, Mike?

So if you were listening to us right now, you want to go up there and hit that subscribe button, but also you want to go down there and hit that review, give us a five-star review. If you think we're five-star, leave us some nice notes. Tell us what you think. helps us open doors, helps us get better. You can also reach us on our website, too, Jim.

Absolutely. So on our website, we usually have some blogs about recent episodes. You can listen to the episodes there. We have our store. You can buy our Glencarens, our hats, our t-shirts. All of our swag is on there. But also on there is a Contact Us page. Feel free to fill that out. We always get back with you, and we do it pretty quick. through Instagram. I'm jshannon63. I'm OneBigChief. And we will see you down the Bourbon Road.