294. Old Elk Masters Blend Double Wheat Review

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.

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Hello everybody, I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. This is The Bourbon Road. And today Mike, it's another craft distillery Monday. Yes sir, yes sir. We have a brand we're very familiar with, but definitely something a little out of the box this time.

Yeah, I'm excited about this one.

Yeah.

Now we've sipped on this bottle a little bit, so we're not drinking out of the neck.

No, we're not drinking out of the neck. We've been sipping on this now for two days. So I would say we are pretty familiar with the profile. I think we can talk about it as expertly as we can about any bourbon we try to drink.

Yeah, so this is actually from Old Elk. Our good friend up there, old Greg Metz really famous for his work at, um, MGP. And then now at old elk, he knows how to lay down some weeded whiskey or weeded bourbon. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So they, this is kind of his blending series and master blending series. This is called the double wheat or double wheat. Um, this is 107.1 proof, Jim, And it's actually a blend of their straight weed bourbon and then their weed whiskey and we know from some things put out by the company that

Even though it's not each stated on the bottle.

This is somewhere in the six to eight year old range Yeah, so the old out weeded bourbon was six years old and then the old out wheat whiskey is Six seven and eight years old. Okay that you know that wheat Whiskey is seventy one point five percent wheat twenty five percent corn and three point five percent barley so when you take a bourbon

and another whiskey, not bourbon, like a wheat whiskey or rye or anything for that matter, you mix them together, what do you end up with? No longer a bourbon, right? Yeah, you would have a straight, just straight American whiskey. So, this is an American whiskey and the color on it It's pretty dark.

It is pretty dark. You know, that hundred and seven. Yeah, that helps. You can imagine that anything you're going to keep at that barrel strength probably is going to be pretty dark. I would call this, I don't know, like dark honey. Mm hmm.

It's nice and dark for sure. Oh, Mike, I'm ready to taste it. What do you think? Yeah, let's do it. Let's check it out. Oh man, you know what? It kind of has that buttery yeast roll nose. Yeah, I could get that. Yeah, I really like that. Now, I have been sipping on this a couple of days, but I'm just now picking up that note. What does that say about a whiskey? Well, it means it's very interesting, right? Yeah. I'm getting a little bit of crackerjacks in this.

You get that peanut, but you also get that dark roasted caramel.

You do. And you know what? I think that I think that that buttery caramel that is definitely there. And that's what you get with Cracker Jacks, right? That buttery caramel. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about their, uh, mash bill for their weeded bourbon, Jim, for a minute. Uh, so their mash bill for their weeded bourbon is a 51% corn. When they wait for this, a 45% wheat and 4% malted barley. It's a high wheat. All right. That's rocking it right there. We've that might be the highest right up near near the highest. I like it.

Now, these were contract distilled in Indiana for old elk. So they got to specify kind of the parameters there just a little bit.

Now, you would think that Greg knows that equipment there pretty dang well. So do you what you call that contract distilled field that a man that came from there He probably knows what he's doing.

I mean, when you tell a company that not only do you want bourbon, but you want it made with this recipe, and possibly even told them where you want the cuts made, which you used to use, that's kind of, you're just buying their equipment at that point and their expertise in producing whiskey.

Yeah, but what I'm saying, if Greg went in there himself and did it, sometimes that happens, right? Greg used to work there. Yeah. Is there any man that knows the equipment better? Probably not. He just said, Hey, it's like, it's like renting a kitchen that you used to own yourself. That's true. I never thought about it that way. You're absolutely right. The man does know what he's doing. Yeah, I'm still getting that, that burnt caramel a little bit. Uh, you know, is it burned or just toasted? I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Um, very beautifully. I get that buttery on there. A little velvet, I guess. That's a great nose. This is pepper. Cheers. Cheers.

Wow. This is full, full flavor.

I mean, really packed with flavor. Got that. You do got the cracker jack in a glass right here. That oily feeling. You ever ate cracker jack and look at your fingers and you got all that stickiness on there, that oil and stuff from the, from the roasted peanuts in there and stuff. This is that right here.

You get that wonderful buttery sweetness up front. as it goes back over the pallet, it kind of transitions. It goes from being sweet to being a little bit dry on the back end. You get a little bit of that spice back there on the back. Definitely settles in for the hug. I'm going to say the finish is pretty impressive on this. Maybe strong medium. I was going to say you're about to say long. I'm about to say long, but man, it really takes a lot to get long out of me. Yeah. Yeah. It does.

I agree with you. It's, it is that medium, real high medium on this finish. Very beautiful. I'm getting, you get everything you want in a good whiskey with this. You get that. a little bit of tobacco, you get a little bit of that black pepper spice, you get a little bit of the leather. But what I'm looking for when I'm drinking a weeded bourbon is I'm looking for some of that sweetness. I'm looking for some of that brown sugar, that sorghum in my glasses that's been overcooked just a little bit toasted, like you said. I'm looking for that butteriness. I'm looking for some of those chocolate notes on there. You don't get all that in this glass.

I'm getting a little coffee. Are you getting chocolate on this? Yeah. I'm getting a little coffee and I'm definitely getting the butteriness of it. It's sweet upfront. It's kind of drying or bitter on the back a little bit. It's kind of a, it's playing with both ends. It's kind of hard to do that. That's a balancing act and that's, that just goes to show the skill that went into making this, this whiskey right here.

Now, Folks, I bought this myself. Um, you know, I'm a sucker for wheat, Jim. It's hard for me to even look past a bottle of weeded bourbon or weeded whiskey and not ponder whether I should buy it. And I, you know, I don't feel bad for buying this at all. Um, I did pay a hundred dollars for it. So 107 proof, six to eight years old, you know, is it overpriced? I don't know. I felt like it was a fair price cause I bought it. You know, I'm a big sucker for wheat. So, um, and how could I be the weedy king of Kentucky? And I have a bottle on my shelf.

Well, absolutely. I think we'll put it this way, Mike. I don't think you wasted your money. No, no, I definitely as well spent sometimes deep in my heart, I wish I could put a number on a bourbon, like I give this one a score of 85 out of 100, or I give this one four stars out of five. But we've made it a point not to do that. We either recommend a bourbon or we don't, and we hope to allow our comments to guide people to make their own decisions.

Yeah, I don't think there's a pricing limit on it for it. You know, I'd like to say that I don't. I do have a price limit. I think we've talked about that for two fifty three hundred dollars. It's going to have to be something spectacular, something really amazing for me. I didn't feel bad at a hundred dollars for this. You know, number one, cause it's a wheat. I know what Greg Metz is putting out. It's going to be good. I'm not going to blink an eye on it. It's that right proof. I think that 107.1 proof is perfect for this. It's nice and oily in the glass. Got some good legs as most people say, man, this is a really good whiskey. I, uh, I think I want a bottle of this. You've got a very good chew on it.

You know, yeah, it coats your mouth nice and well. Yeah, it does. It's very buttery, very viscous. It's got a great color to it. This is a sipping whiskey. This is a, um, you know, it's not overly spicy, but it's got just enough to get your attention.

Now I'm looking at your shelves over there, Jim, because we're sitting down here in your basement and I clearly see another bottle of old elk over there on the shelf. So I know you love small elk just like I do. I respect Greg for what he's doing out there. You know, you can get yourself in trouble with this bottle right here. I don't think you could polish the whole bottle this off. I was talking about scoring before. Does this get four out of five big chiefs? This is a, this would be a four, four and a half out of five for me. Big chiefs. I call it, we call it four and a half feathers. Four and a half feathers. Four and a half feathers. Yeah. Um, I, I love it. Um, you know, I can't say enough about how their bottle design is their cap. Uh, the cap on here is an actual piece of Elkhorn synthetic Elkhorn, I guess. Um, got a real cork in it. Really nice bottle itself. Well on a shelf. Um, You know, I can't say enough good things about this thing. And it just keeps bringing more character in every sip. We sipped this with some friends last night and I think some people were shocked that I had pulled it out of the bag. And we sipped this with some other distilleries as well. We did. And they were totally blown away by it. That's really nice. That's something about Greg when another distiller says, man, this is amazing. Yeah. And there was no surprise that one of the roadies got to sip on this and he was like, No, he was like, I was a little shocked that you were carrying around around a bag of whiskey. He's like, but I wasn't shocked that you pulled out a bag of weeded whiskey. Awesome. Well folks definitely check out old elk.

This expression in particular is one you're going to want to check out. Mike, what is this one?

So this is old elk, double wheat, very hard bottle to find. Uh, $99. 107.1 proof. I'm not going to go back through the two mash bills. It is a blend of their weeded bourbon and their weeded whiskey. Very, very high wheat in their mash bill, 45%. And then their wheat and their weeded whiskey is seventy one point five percent. So you're getting it right there. Yeah. Six to eight years old. Yeah.

All right. Well, great. Check that all out.

Mike, where can people find us on the Internet? Well, you can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Find us all those great places. The main place you can find us is on the bourbon roadies on Facebook is our private Facebook group. Three easy questions to get in there and become a member. is you gotta be 21. You gotta love bourbon and you gotta agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any rudeness in that group whether you drink from the very bottom of the shelf to the very top of that shelf whatever your top whiskey might be. We want you to come in there and enjoy the whiskey conversations that happen. We want you to post photos in there post celebrations Just celebrate life without anybody hassling you. If you do that, there's plenty of other groups out there for you. That's not what the Bourbon Roadies are about, but that's where we post a lot of our material. You're always going to find our blog articles in there. You'll be the first to find our gear in there if we put some gear out. We're actually talking about releasing a new piece of swag for you.

So look for that. Mike, I'm so excited about this upcoming year. We've got over a lot of really cool things coming out. We just want to tell people that 2020, the rest of 2022 and 2023 are going to be absolutely amazing and you want to be paying close attention because there's going to be some opportunities for you to be on that early list.

Let's just say that. Yeah. You definitely want to watch what we're doing. Um, don't, don't play around and miss out. Um, we actually have an opportunity for roadies to come hang out with us and help us out. So we're going to be at bourbon on the banks on October 1st, and we need some help. Um, if you would like a free ticket to bourbon on the banks, a free ticket tickets worth $65. We're going to do three shifts in our bourbon road lounge to help us do some pours at the bourbon roadie bar and also help us sell some of our swag to kind of relieve that pressure off our wives and kind of give us some time to go ahead and enjoy the crowd that's going to be there, the other roadies and stuff. So if you want to help out with that, I'm going to put a sign up list for those three shifts, three, two hour shifts. That way you get in, you get work two hours, and then you get to enjoy the rest of the event there. So you get four hours of event.

And if you don't make the list, if you were trying to get on the list and you don't quite make it, we'd still love to have you come out and you go bourbononthebanks.org and get your tickets. And we'd love to see you there. Well, we do two shows every single week. We do a craft distillery episode like today's where we review a bottle like the old elk double wheat. Uh, we'll tell you what we think about it, whether or not you add it to your bar, whether or not you ought to order a pour of it the next time you belly up old elk. Definitely a thumbs up for me. Four and a half feathers, four and a half feathers from Mike here. So definitely a winner, winner chicken dinner. Definitely want to check us out. Both shows every week, because on Wednesdays we do a full-length episode. We go into detail. We have a guest on. We have them do a full hour, do 30-minute halves.

Mike, what do they have to do not to miss a single show every week? What you're going to want to do is you want to scroll on up top of that app, hit that subscribe sign, that plus sign, that check sign. The app will tell you, hey, these two jokers have a show coming out today. Then you want to scroll on down to the very bottom of that app. Hit that five star review. Leave us some comments because you know what's about to happen if you don't. The Weedy King of Kentucky is going to come to your house with this double wheat. You're going to drink it all night long. Hell, who knows? Even the big bad booty daddy of bourbon might show up to sample some with you. But seriously, those comments, those reviews, they open up doors. The distilleries get great whiskey in our hands like this old double wheat. Get great guests on our show and make great content for you. Give you a great podcast. We'd really appreciate it.

And if you bump into Micah Ryan, if you're at a liquor store at an event, if we're at a distillery and you bump into us, make sure you say, hey, shake our hand, talk to us a little bit, let us know about your bourbon journey. We'd love to hear it. If you've got a question for us, if you think that there's a distillery in your hometown that's doing it right, if you've got an idea for a bottle, that ought to be on the show, make sure you let us know. You can hop onto our website, TheBurbanRoad.com, go to the Contact Us page, fill it out, quick one-liner, let us know what you're thinking. We'll get back with you. You can always send us an email. I'm Jim at TheBurbanRoad.com. He's Mike at TheBurbanRoad.com. But like we always say, probably the best way. Just hit up our DMs on Instagram. I'm jshannon63. I'm Big Burba Chief. And we'll see you down.

Oh, yeah.