222. The Kitchen Table at James B Beam Distillery

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.

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. This is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are once again at Jephthah Bend Farm. It's a twilight in the evening.

Yeah, I keep peeking out the window to see if I can see deer rolling across the field.

We're supposed to have a storm coming in tonight. We haven't had any rain in like two weeks, though.

I know. I was talking to somebody at work about that. And they were like, it's going to be flooding. It's going to be flooding. And, you know, we always worry about that. But I was like, the ground is dry. I was like, I know. And he was like, well, how do you know? And I was like, when you drive your tractor across your field and the ground doesn't move, it crunches a little bit. Yeah. I was like, it's dry. I was like, we need water. I was like, the creek is, our creek is still flowing. But I can tell it's time for some water in the system.

Well, it's, it's good to get a little bit of this right now because this is that last little bit of, uh, rain that's going to come in before the weather gets a bit colder. Cause we're, we're, we're pushing Christmas.

We are coming around Christmas. You notice we, we still have, but no Christmas stuff up in our house yet. It's, it's just, uh, I don't know. It's just us. Have you guys decorated for Christmas? We did.

We did. We got it all decorated. We did it this weekend. So it's done. We're all set. Now we didn't go all out this year. Normally we go out stair rails, loft area, two trees, all of that this year. Melody wasn't feeling great. She was feeling a little under the weather. So we just did the basics. Uh, but we did put the Christmas tree on Alexa. So we just say, Alexa turned on the Christmas tree and she does. Wow. So. That's kind of there. That's our new thing is your grandkids are going to have a blast with that.

Well, speaking of Christmas, you know, it's a great Christmas gift to buy this time of year.

I know what you're going to say, but let's hear it, Mike.

You need to buy some bourbon barrel aged maple syrup from our good friend, Kevin Holly up at seldom seen farms in Ohio makes the perfect Christmas gift. You can put it on pancakes, waffles, biscuits, if that's you. But what we like to do is we'd like to make cocktails out of it.

It makes a fantastic old fashioned. Now, Quick recipe, half ounce maple syrup, two ounces of bourbon, a few shakes of bitters, you're there. That's how simple it is. Where can they buy that at, Jim? You can get that on seldomseenmaple.com. Seldom Seen Farms is a real maple syrup farm. They've got like 2,000 trees, right? Yeah. They're making it. They're basically taking that maple syrup and they're rendering it down and they're putting it into barrels and they're letting that that combination of bourbon and maple just blend. I mean, that's two great things in life, right?

Yeah. Maple syrup and bourbon. So make sure you pick up a bottle of that for Christmas, a couple bottles, give it to your bourbon drinking buddies, your bourbon drinking family. Hell, you might even be able to see me and Jim a bottle. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jim, this week you got to do some pretty special things. Jim Beam treated you to a special night.

It was a great night. Melody and I, my wife Melody, we both got invited down to Jim Beam Distillery down at the American Steel House. And we got to attend an event that was pretty special. Now, Jim Beam has been more or less closed down since the beginning of COVID.

Yeah.

And they're one of the last distilleries to reopen, just recently reopening to tours and otherwise. And I think the reason, I'm not sure, but I think the reason they took a little bit longer to open, I think they were being careful for one thing, but I think another thing, they had a little bit of construction going on.

So you don't want to mix the public with that construction, traffic, heavy equipment, moving around. They're kind of up there on a hillside, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. So if you pop in off of I-65 in Claremont and you pop into the Jim Beam distillery now, there's going to be one new building that you're going to get to go to. And it's called the kitchen table. Wow. Yeah. It's a restaurant. And the idea there is to kind of celebrate that country kitchen table that Booker and his family enjoyed in the day, right?

And they paired it with some whiskeys. Is that correct?

Absolutely. So one of the things that you can find when you go there is a great combination of both good country food, elevated country food, and an appropriate cocktail to go with it.

Well, heck, right now in our glass, we got some Jim Beam product, right? And one of my probably favorite bottles from Jim Beam, I poured us a bottle off the shelf. I pulled this off the shelf for us. We've had this on the show before, but this is some 12 year old Knob Creek 100 proof.

Knob Creek is well-aged at 12 years. Knob Creek is good anywhere between 9 and 15 years, right?

Yeah, 15 years. We've both had agreed on that, that it's pushing it, right? That's kind of the limit there, yeah. Because it's that oaky, super oaky tannic a little bit. But this right here in the glass. It kind of hits the sweet spot. Yeah, it's a magical. And these are kind of hidden back on my shelf a little bit. You can't see them. They're behind some Buffalo trace product up there, but uh, and for once in a while this thing comes off the shelf like a special case like this and to kind of celebrate the kitchen table at the Jim beam distillery. Um, some people might ask why I didn't get to go. Well, I got out of work. So, and it's nice when you have a cohost, um, one of us will be at an event and one might not be. So you got to go this time.

It was a great pleasure. I like to see distilleries go in that extra step. Most distilleries have the tour. You can go there, you can visit, you can go to the gift shop, you can go on the tour. Distilleries are starting to expand a little bit and add a little bit extra to it. So, the Bardstown Bourbon Company has that amazing restaurant called the Bottle and Bond Kitchen.

Yeah, they're trying to give you that Napa Valley experience here in Kentucky. A lot of places are going that route where you can stay, you can eat, you can drink and be merry. Log Steel Distillery, the Dant family has kind of put together that experience down there. But I think, did Jim Beam, you think, did they take it to a whole different level?

I think they have. I think they've created something that is... Now, for those who are not familiar with the Jim Beam Distillery location in Claremont, it's just a couple of miles off of Interstate I-65. It's about 20 miles south of Louisville on I-65. And it's in between Elizabethtown and Louisville. And it's a quick exit. Like if you get off the interstate there, if you're driving on I-65 and you get off the interstate, you can literally be parking in front of the American Steelhouse at Jim Beam within three minutes of getting off the interstate. So it's pretty quick.

Yeah, it's kind of... If you kept going on that road, that's on the road to barge town. Right. Um, and it goes through some bourbon history there. If you kept driving, you go through Cox's Creek. Um, you go through, you would go through more probably distilleries than you really realize. Um, cause four roses has their distillery Cox's Creek. There's the old, uh, Samuel's distillery there and was at Deetsville. So there's a lot of history there, but I guess what you'd really call the big boy of bourbon, Jim Beam is right there.

Absolutely. So the kitchen table, it's really a restaurant that's at least between now and let's say spring. They're only going to be open for lunch, but they are open and they are doing business and they are serving. So if you're planning a trip to the Bourbon trail, if you're planning a trip up I-65 into Louisville, if you're from this area and you want to something fun to do, I would highly recommend stopping in at the kitchen table restaurant. You park right in front of the American still house, walk up the hill, wave at Jim Beam statue on the way. head up the hill there and go into the restaurant. They've got, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the menu items they have and some of the drinks that they provided to us. But I think in general, I think you're going to find that this is a nice stopping point. It's a great restaurant. It's a good place to have a very special lunch.

Now, did that replace the barbecue joint they had on the hill up there? Because when you used to walk up there would be a barbecue joint up there. You could kind of walk in.

I know that they've got a pretty special smoker up there. I sent a picture to you. I don't know if you're familiar with that smoker or not, but Oh, I checked it out. I was a little jealous.

I'm like, I was jealous of the whole trip, but like I said, you know, we both can't always be at all places and it's nice that one of us got to go down there and at least experience that. And we're really grateful to the company that reached out to us and said, Hey, would you like to come out? Um,

Yeah, I'd like to give a shout out to Desiree Rosa over at Multiply Media. She's been instrumental in setting this up for us. And really, I have to say. Very professionally done. Jim Beam and Multiply together. They not only had things really set up to present their new restaurant well, they sent a car for us, they picked us up, they treated us like royalty. Freddie Ngo was there and he very personable, very friendly. We had a great time. It was just a wonderful evening.

Now, did you have like a favorite dish that you ate that night?

There was a lot of stuff there, but I'll tell you what, there was this pizza that had a little bit of Benton ham in it from Benton out of Tennessee. That was pretty special. That was really good. But there was a lot of stuff on the menu. I have to say, I probably should have loosen my belt just a few notches before I walked in the door because they fed us probably 20 different dishes while we were there.

Now you dressed up a little bit, didn't you?

A little bit. You know, I, I don't want to go in there too dressed down. So, uh, I just, I wore a pair of jeans, but I did put a jacket on cause it was a little chilly.

Yeah, I was looking at the photos and I was like, man, did you put a sports coat on and stuff and got dressed up down there? And I was like, you sent me all the photos of everything. And I was like, man, did he eat every bit of that?

It was impossible to eat everything they put out. But everything came out, everything that they put out, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the food, but everything they put out came with a cocktail. So it was really nice to try four or five of their signature cocktails there that were really designed by the QED group who manages that operation. The QED group did a great job there. They're partnering with Jim Beam. They're creating the menu there. They're managing the restaurant for Jim Beam, and they're real professionals. The chef there who worked with us.

Now, what was Mel's favorite dish?

You know, I'm not completely sure, but I think she really liked the, uh, the bacon wrapped beef and jalapeno, uh, hors d'oeuvres. They were, they were pretty tasty.

Really? Oh, now if everybody's wondering, you know, Jim said he paired a cocktail with, um, every meal. They actually sent a car down and pick you up. Didn't they, Jim?

They did, yeah. We got picked up by Amit Julip Tours. They sent a nice Cadillac Escalade SUV to pick us up and the driver was fantastic. Brian was amazing. He was very knowledgeable in bourbon, very knowledgeable about distilleries. We had a nice conversation on the drive down. He waited in the lot for us until we finished and he drove us back home again. really top-notch service.

That's the way to put an event on, right? And when you were down there, did you run into anybody you knew?

Yeah, the guys from Bourbon Pursuit were there. Kenny and Ryan were both there. Our friends Jake and Scott from the Bourbon Lens were there. And there were other media companies there as well. But it was a pretty nice event. We really had a great time.

So, you know, you're always, everybody, we're always talking about those events we go to and those companies like Jim beam, the distilleries will bring us in and kind of show us what they're doing to kind of let us showcase that distillery and what they got going on. So you, you, you got to eat a main course and you got a starter course, kind of a five course meal. Was that what you call it?

Yeah, I mean we had lamb ribs, we had, oh my goodness, let me just talk a little bit about some of the stuff we had. The first course was, we had, or our cocktail was a Jim Beam Highball, all right, which was basically Jim Beam white label bourbon. It had a little bit of carbonated water and a little bit of grapefruit in it just to give it a little bit of a citrus kick. and we had some spiced pork rinds, so they make those there. First, let me say that everything at the kitchen table is they do the best they can to source them locally. There's a few things they can't get there, but for the most part, everything's sourced right there in that general area, which is pretty cool. We had some spicy pork rinds. Then they had these venison poppers I was talking about a little bit ago. I think these were probably Melody's favorites. They're venison poppers. They're venison poppers. So it's a slice of a jalapeno pepper. it's wrapped in a venison steak, a small piece of venison steak. And then that again is wrapped in bacon. And then I don't know what they do with it, smoke it, broil it, you know, whatever they do to create it. Very, very tasty. They were very good. And I have to say Ryan from bourbon pursuit, he was eating those up, buddy. He would have reached across some Goddard's if I hadn't had to smack his hand away.

You know, you should have said, Hey, I got to bring somebody's big cheese. So get your hands off.

They also had lamb ribs. I have to say that Melody's not a big fan of lamb, but I love lamb. I love it when it's done right. It's definitely done right there. Um, they also had an empanada, uh, with the smoked barbecue in it and they've got a big smoker. Talked about that a minute ago. They've got a pretty dag on big smoker out back. So they're doing, they're smoking fish, they're smoking pork, they're smoking beef, they're smoking venison. They're, they're, they've got a big real pizza oven in their kitchen. Wow.

So you were just sitting there getting full. So you drink a highball. What else did you drink?

Well, in the second course, they brought out this drink called a golden hour and it was a basil Hayden. They use basil Hayden as the, as the whiskey, uh, and it had apparel and a little bit of ilet Blanc in it. It was kind of, uh, I would say that was probably Melody's favorite drink. For me, it was kind of so-so. It was a little sweet for me. This was kind of that pizza session, that smoked pork pizza. And then they had a wild mushroom pizza. I mean, you could just see on that pizza, like 12 different kinds of mushrooms on it.

Wow.

Yeah. I mean, they had chanterelles and oysters and I mean, just all kinds of different mushrooms. I didn't recognize all of them.

Well, I don't know if it's you talking about all the food or this 12 year old bourbon that's making my mouth water right now. It's pretty good bourbon. So you said it's going to be open until the spring, just at lunchtime. Do they, are they going to start serving dinner and stuff?

They are. So when winter breaks and things start to warm up a little bit, they're going to open up for dinner menu as well. But they're also going to do private events there. So you can expect to have some weddings and things like that. So if you're planning to go there, put it this way, if you're going to go visit the kitchen table and do a tour of Jim Beam, you're probably going to be fine. But if you're thinking about going to have dinner after tour hours, you might want to call ahead to make sure they're not having an event or something there.

Make some reservations. Make some reservations. Absolutely. Well, on the second half, Jim, because my glass is empty and I need to get up and get another bottle for us. Let's cover those rest of the courses. And you also got to eat some pretty amazing dessert too. Absolutely. It was really good. So I got another big bottle bourbon over there. I know you're going to love. I don't even know if you've tasted that bottle or glass I poured for you yet. Oh yeah. It's almost gone. It's almost gone. I, this 12 year, if you see some on a shelf, make sure you grab it. Um, it is a, uh, kind of a seasonal release for Jim beam. Um, I'd say, you know, it's hard to beat. All right. Well, stay with us listeners. Well, Jim, what are you, uh, what do you put in your cocktails when you're making it?

Well, you know, I'm a big fan of old-fashions, Mike. I've always been a big fan of old-fashions. And I've always made them with taking and reducing demerara sugar down and making my own bar syrup out of demerara sugar. But I'll tell you what, once I got my hands on a bottle of that maple syrup from seldom seen farms, I started using that, because that's a quick and easy grab, right? Yeah. Run over to the pantry, grab it out of the pantry, pop a top on it. And you pour a little bit, about a half an ounce, pour about a half an ounce in a glass. Uh, you put about two ounces of bourbon in there. A few shakes of your favorite bitters ice cube, stirred up ice cube. And you've got one hell of an old fashioned probably in my opinion. You can't buy a better old fashioned out in town.

What's nice about it is you know, you're getting a craft product that's been aged eight to nine months in a used bourbon barrel. So it's getting repurposed, comes from a farmer. He's taking in tapping into 2000 trees. Could you imagine tapping 2000 trees and just waiting for syrup to drip? Just, Slowly just dripping into a bucket just drip drip drip drip drip, and then you got to cook it down But he takes that time. That's a true craftsman right there Kevin Holly up there in Ohio He's about to hit that season But talk about a great Christmas gift for your bourbon drinker and stuff. I don't know if it gets much better Jim

Yeah. You definitely need to go to seldom see maple.com and check out what they have to offer for this Christmas season. I don't think it's too late, Mike. I think we can still get them orders in and still get them on, you know, in our hands before Christmas. Oh, most definitely.

He's got other products out there too. He's got some of this cotton candy that he makes out of maple syrup. Heck, order some of that. But the barrel-aged maple syrup is just wonderful. If you're a bourbon drinker and you're making breakfast in the morning, I would suggest you get some. If you're a pancake guy or a waffle guy, if you like a little bit on your biscuits, I like to get a chicken biscuit. and pour a little bit of that on there. Oh, wow.

That'd be awesome. It'd be really good. I mean, maple syrup is not just for breakfast anymore, right?

No, you could have it for all kinds of different, especially for cocktails in our life is a big thing for us. I like to make a Manhattan out of it.

Yeah, there you go.

Really great drink.

I want to see your recipe on that, man. Let's get that one online for everybody. Let's do it. All right, we are back and you know, this is our sort of Jim Bean, the kitchen table episode, but we've got something that Booker had on his kitchen table quite often.

Yeah, we got some Bookers here. It is their 2020-03. And each one of these are labeled. This is actually perfect for this kind of season, right? It's football season. College football playoffs were just announced. This was the pigskin batch.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember the pigskin batch. That was a good one. I'm looking forward to drinking it again. It's been a minute since I had it. You know, I just mentioned that, you know, that bottle would find its place on Booker's table. But, you know, if you go to the kitchen table restaurant at Jim Dean Distillery on the campus there, there's a table in the corner that's kind of got all the family names on the chairs going around. It's a circular table. And on the wall right behind that table is a picture of Booker sitting at basically his kitchen table. Now, he was a big guy, right? Booker's a big man. Yeah, he was a big man. But he's sitting at this table, his wife's there, and then they got a family friend sitting at the table with them. And I don't know what they're eating. They're eating some breakfast or something, but there's a bottle of Booker. No, there's a bottle of bourbon sitting in the middle of the table there, I'm thinking.

How appropriate is that? Yeah, I can't imagine it would be labeled because that guy probably could have just went into the distillery and did what he wanted to and grabbed himself some whiskey or sample bottle, whatever you want to call it.

You know, his grandson, Freddie was there and you know, he says, you know, there's always a bottle of bourbon on the table. That's just the way it was. That's family for them. That's family time. That's food. That's the kitchen table that they're trying to represent at the restaurant there. And I'll be honest with you, I think they hit it out of the park. It's a little elevated, but at the same time, it's down home, it's country. It feels like kind of a country house a little bit. It's still got a nice trim to it. They've got just an amazing bourbon bark. And folks, I highly recommend you take a chance and read our blog on this. There's a lot of pictures there to show you what you can expect when you drop in. It's pretty amazing. I think you'll find that that's a place that you want to visit the next time you're coming to the Bourbon Trail.

Let me ask you this, a new comparison, because we've talked about Cracker Barrel before, right? How would you compare it to like going to Cracker Barrel?

It's not as country as that. It's a little bit, it's a little more contemporary. It's kind of a nice, um, they call it fusion, right? When you mix two things together, it's kind of kitchen, country kitchen table fusion with a little bit more contemporary bourbon. And, uh, I mean, they did a great job. I mean, they really did a good job kind of making it stand out.

Now, when I think of country food, I think of catfish. And I noticed one of the photos, they had a catfish platter.

Yeah. So they had, uh, they definitely had catfish on the menu. They also had trout on the menu and they actually served them during the same course and they brought out smash. They called it a smash. It was like a granddad one one four. a little bit of lemon, a little bit of mint, a little bit of sugar. I would say it reminded me a lot of like a mint julep, but it wasn't quite a mint julep.

Now that, that bourbon smash, I've actually made one of those before and that's kind of a really great cocktail for, to me for summertime in that. when you say they brought it out with fish, because they had smoked trout, right?

They did. They had a little bit of catfish. So the catfish was like, it was in a Creole tomato sauce. It actually had kind of like chunky tomatoes with it. Really? Yeah, like little cubed tomatoes, green onions and rice, and a little bit of, and the catfish was fried perfectly. It was absolutely perfectly done. And they also had smoked trout and they had the smoked trout, man, heavy smoke flavor, really a heavy smoke flavor on the trout. And it was over like, have you ever had Faro? No, I haven't ever had that before. Faro was like an ancient wheat, right? It's an older wheat. It's a bigger grain. It almost looks like a barley. a little bit, but it's like Faro. And so they had a Faro underneath of it with a little bit of tartar sauce and that smoked trout. That was so good. And with that, they also had a burger. They had a pretty amazing burger there. It had white cheddar and a little bit of onion aioli on it. It came with some fries. I'll be honest with you. Some of the best French fries I've ever had. Really good French fries. I know we're talking about trout and catfish and burgers here, but Mano's fries were something else.

And the burger, what'd you think about the burger?

I thought the burger was really good. You know, it was a traditional burger. It wasn't anything too elevated. So if you're coming to a restaurant like that and you're like, I don't want all that, you know, elevated cuisine. I just want a burger. You're going to get just a burger, just a really good double decker white cheddar burger.

You know, that's probably what she would have ate too. Cause you know, she's such a burger, burger freak. Um, she would have been all over that burger and fries.

Yeah. And the beef is sourced right there in, uh, in, in the area. So it's the local stuff. So all this is very, locally sourced and hats off to them because you know they brought in a group to do that the QED group and I have to be honest with you the fellow that you know I spent most of the night talking to at least with respect to the food his name was Ryan Landry and he He came in with a QED group to develop the menu and to get the restaurant up and going and to install the staff and do all of that kind of stuff. And like Ryan, he works at Jack Rose down in New Orleans. Really? Now you're familiar with the Jack Rose restaurant. DC, right? Well, there's one in New Orleans as well. So this is the epitome of a, of a great, um, you know, bourbon bar slash restaurant. And for Jim Bean to bring somebody like that in to sort of set up the kitchen table restaurant, that's pretty amazing.

Well, it's nice to see that they took some time and actually put together something that fits with Jim Beam. Cause when I think of Jim Beam, I do think of country. and calling at the kitchen table and seeing that family kind of around the country table and the fusion kind of bringing that Napa Valley feel to country, right?

Absolutely. You know, one of the things that Ryan was telling me, Ryan with QED was telling me is how instrumental Freddie was in developing the menus and kind of the feel of the restaurant. So Freddie took a pretty active role in this. And I'm glad to see that because you know, Freddie, you know, at some point here in the near future, I don't know how long in the future it's going to be, but you know, Fred knows going to retire and the heir apparent is Freddie know.

Well, he's already kind of there and experimenting and putting his own flair on it. And I think you might even be able to see that in the Basil Hayden line when they went ahead and went with a toasted. basil Hayden and some, you know, brown rice in that. Absolutely. Something people don't realize that it was a brown rice and that basil Hayden kind of stepping outside the box and saying, let's try something different. We're still going to have our gym beam. We're still going to have the bookers that we're drinking right now. That's no, this is a, grown woman whiskey right here. Absolutely. It'll, uh, it'll kick you in the britches.

Yeah. We were, I was talking to Freddie about, you know, you've recently had that interview with Alex Castle and you mentioned to her, why aren't you making, making some whiskey out of rice? And I was actually talking to Freddie about that. He said, we made some out of rice. You certainly did.

Yeah, I brought that up to her. And, um, I just, to me that's neat that they are experimenting and, uh, they're stepping outside that box. And I like to see that they just didn't do a over the top cracker barrel. You know, they went ahead and did a kind of a fusion experience, you know, right down the road from us is the stave. And that's kind of that, that over the top Southern cuisine. Absolutely.

Yeah. I love going to the stave. Great food there. You know, restaurants who are tied to the bourbon culture are just amazing. You know, our friends at Buzzard Roost went down and had a little bit of food down at his restaurant down there. Pretty amazing. Yeah.

Bourbon's Bistro on Frankfurt Avenue and here in Louisville. If you haven't been there, it's a great place to check out on the Bourbon Trail. We've actually put that in our blog a couple of times and we've had Jeremy on the show a couple of times, but kind of getting back to Jim Beam and the kitchen table down there and what a great event they put on. You finished it up with dessert, right?

Yeah, so they brought out desserts and they offered coffee. They also offered a little bit of Caribbean cask basil Hayden. So you could have coffee or you could have Caribbean cask basil Hayden as your aperitif, right? And for me, I took both.

Really? You got a driver so you didn't have to worry about. Exactly.

And I think that's, you know, that's part of the reason that they probably offered drivers is they knew good and well, we were going to be getting a lot of liquor that night.

Well, you know, the other thing that Jim Beam has come out with this year that hit the shelves here in Kentucky, I'm pretty sure it's everywhere. Cause I saw it down in Louisiana too, is our Jim Beam bourbon cream. which is pretty good. Me and Vivian have gotten on a kick of drinking bourbon cream on our off days together, especially now it's getting a little colder and I wake up, it's a little bit later when I wake up, it's like 10 o'clock. And so I get up and we'll have a cup of coffee together, but that's usually the first thing I go for, some of that bourbon cream. We've been trying out different bourbon creams and I was surprised they didn't have a bourbon cream for coffee there.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't see one, not that, you know, it wasn't available, but, you know, we were, we were really getting inundated with plates and glasses and all the stuff that was coming out on the menu. And I have to say it was just, it was an amazing evening. But they did bring out, they did bring out some bourbon balls and these were a lot different than normal bourbon balls. So, you know, the cocoa was in with the inner, you know, the inside of the bourbon ball is usually like a powdered sugar and bourbon. And so the inside of the bourbon ball had a little bit of cocoa in it. And then the outside of the bourbon ball was not dipped in chocolate and did not have a pecan on it. Instead, it was rolled in powdered sugar.

Really?

Yeah.

So it was a different kind of bourbon bar.

It was really good. I have to say, one of the better bourbon balls that I've had Uh, Ryan and Kenny from bourbon pursuit where they were all over these bourbon balls. They were tearing them up. They loved these. And so did we. Melody and I liked them. I think it was Melody's favorite part of the evening. You know, she liked that jalapeno popper kind of thing with the venison on it. But boy, she really liked these bourbon balls.

She's got a little bit of a sweet tooth cause she's always posting about desserts. She does.

But then they they also had like a spiced apple granola. It was kind of like a parfait glass You know the little parfait glass and it had a spiced apples with vanilla pudding caramel and granola in it It was really good really good and then they had this and this was my favorite but I have to be honest with you I think it was the only one at the table that thought it was my favorite and They had this chocolate blackout cake. It had a little bit of crunch to it. It had fudge and cherries and bourbon whipped cream on it. I'm a chocolate nut when it comes to cake like that. It was almost like a German tort, very heavy. Very, very good. Now everybody else was still talking about them bourbon balls in that parfait, that apple thing. But man, that chocolate cake was for me. So if you're a big chocolate cake fan, if you like heavy, dense chocolate cake with bourbon whipped cream on it, I say go for that.

I was in the minority that night. The only thing, so they did two chocolates, right? And when I think of Southern cuisine and I think of bourbon, you know what I'm about to say for dessert, right? It's something I really love. And I know you love it because you ate every bit of mine one night. There's some bread pudding. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Absolutely. You would think they'd have a bread pudding on there.

Well, I think I would expect that the menu is going to change up a bit. They've got a class act running this place. The menus are well-developed. They're also paired with cocktails. So not only are you going to go in there and have a nice dish, a great dessert, but you're also going to have a cocktail that's meant to go with it, that goes well with it. You're going to have an after-dinner drink or a pair of teeth that goes with what you're drinking. I mean, you're going to experience bourbon and you're going to experience food the best way you can at the, you know, the way a chef intends it, the way a master distiller intends it to be done. Right. Kind of like this bookers right here. Right. Yeah. Um, and I'm fixing to shock some people.

To me, this Booker's right here, you're talking about all that chocolate and desserts and stuff. This right here, this bourbon pairs perfectly with any of those. It is chocolate note after chocolate note after chocolate note. I think that this would go great with that blackout cake. Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. I'm super jealous, Jim, but I'm so glad that you got to go down there and Mel got to go with you and experience What is going to happen there at Jim Beam and at the kitchen table? What a great experience and hats off to Jim Beam. for creating that experience. I can't wait for people on the Bourbon Trail to get to experience that too.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to hearing from other people, get a chance to go there. Thank you, Freddie Ngo for being the ultimate host that night. Yeah, it was a great event. We had a great time. You're such a great guy. And QED, you did a fantastic job of designing this menu, helping to the, designed this restaurant, partnering with Jim Beam, partnering with Freddie and Owen, putting this thing together. I have to say that it's definitely a bright spot off of I-65. If you're traveling I-65 through Kentucky and you're south of Louisville and you get an opportunity to pull in to the Jim Beam distillery there in Claremont. Highly suggest you do. It'd be a great time. Take a tour, spend a few minutes in the gift shop, have lunch, at least until spring, then maybe have dinner, right?

I can't wait to go out there, take Viv out there and experience it. Get back on a bourbon trail. Everything's going to open back up and it'll be a great time. Absolutely. Well, Jim, where can people find us?

on social media. Well, you can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram. We're also on Twitter. We're also on Tik Tok. We don't have a lot of stuff on Tik Tok, but we're getting there. You know, it's a, it's a, it's a young people's market, but we're, we're doing the best we can, but you won't find us on discord and you won't find us on Twitch because we just don't have enough time in our day.

There's no more time. Well, you can find us on Facebook in our private Facebook group, the bourbon roadies. Twenty five hundred people strong. Three questions to enter. Are you twenty one? Do you like bourbon? Of course, everybody loves bourbon like the Knob Creek we're drinking in the bookers. in celebration of the kitchen table being open there at Jim Beam distillery. And we also don't tolerate any ruinous. Do you agree to pay nice is what we ask you. If you can do that, come in and hang out with some bourbon drinkers, bourbon lovers. We want you to celebrate life celebrate retirements birthdays just anything great that's going on in your life what we don't want is if somebody's drinking from the very bottom of the shelf military special for you veterans out there you know what I'm talking about what they can afford that's what you can afford especially if you're just a young guy entering the service you 21 that military special something me and Jim know very well or the very top of the shelf If you're drinking a bottle, this book is right here. If that's what you're drinking, that's what we want you to celebrate. We're all about that in the bourbon roadies. We also have a website, the bourbon road.com where we post our articles, our blogs, but what we really have in there is our swag. Yeah. The bourbon bullshitter t-shirt. You've seen us both wear it. We've rocked it out there. We love to see it on the bourbon trail. Don't we, Jim?

Absolutely love to see it on the bourbon truck.

Yeah, rock that shirt out there. We like to see it, but that purchase of that shirt is what supports our podcast. That gets us down the bourbon road, gets us into great distilleries and stuff. We've got our chariots, our pickups, they take a little bit of gas. Gas prices are rising. So Come out there, buy yourself a glass, buy yourself some t-shirts, buy a flask, a decanter, get some hats. We even got some coffee mugs if you're into the bourbon cream. We know some people are. Absolutely.

We do two shows a week. We do a short episode every Monday where we kind of highlight a single bottle. from a distillery that we'd like you to know about. We let you know whether we think it's something you ought to buy or not. We'd like to have you listen into that show. We also do a long show every Wednesday, like today's show, where we do a deep dive on a subject like Jim Beam's new kitchen table restaurant. We drink one or more expressions. Today we had two. We had the Knob Creek 12 year and Booker's pigskin edition. You know, we'd love to have you listen to both shows every week. One way, that you can be sure that you will not miss a single episode that's coming out on the bourbon road is, Mike, what do they do?

Well, you want to scroll on up, hit that plus sign, that check sign, that subscribe sign, whatever you got to do, hit it on that app. Your app will tell you, hey, these two jokers got a new episode that came out this morning. It'll get you to work and back or get you to work if it's our review show. Then we need you to scroll on down, hit that five star review. You know what's going to happen if you don't? Hey, I'll bring this 12 year and the bookers and I will guarantee you the big bad booty daddy by the end of the night will have you given us a five star review. But honestly, those five star reviews, it does help us out. It opens those doors to distilleries. It gets us great guests on here. It gets you great content. We really appreciate it.

So we would love to have you listen to both shows every week. We'd also like to know what you think about the episode and you can always reach out to us. You know, Mike and I are very available. We're very approachable. If you see us out in town, definitely walk up to us, tap us on the shoulder, say, Hey, big chief, I know who you are. What burger should I buy in this here liquor store? And, uh, but, but you can always send us an email. I'm Jim at the bourbon road.com. He's Mike at the bourbon road.com. But as we always say, probably the best way to hit us up is honor DM on Instagram. I'm Jay Shannon 63. I'm big bourbon chief. And we'll see you down.