296. Mythology Hell Bear American Whiskey 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. Today, Mike, we're out at Jephthah Bend Farm.

It's a craft distillery Monday episode.

Yeah. This is a bottle that we picked up at the Southern Whiskey Society event down in Franklin, Tennessee. We did. This distillery was putting their wares on display there. We had a chance to taste a few things and they made sure we left with a bottle.

That's always nice when you go to an event empty-handed and you leave with stuff, right? Absolutely. We were loaded down. We were loaded for bear, Jim. You had to make several trips. Yeah. Yeah. So this distillery is out of Denver, Colorado. This is mythology distillery. They're known for their labels, really. Their labels are Pretty cool. Yeah. And the names are pretty cool too, right? Yeah. Definitely for this one right here. You know, I like it. You like it. We're both sitting here saying it several times. This is kind of the, the label on this is like half a mountain man and half Wolverine. Yeah. What would that be called?

Half mountain man and half Wolverine. Grizzly Adams.

Yeah. Grizzly Adams comes to mind. Actually, the guy on the label looks like Grizzly Adams. That's that's kind of our time. You know, does I don't think a lot of people today even know that that was a show. Yeah.

So this is the mythology. Hell bear American whiskey. Did you say hell bear?

Hell bear. Yeah, this is one of those kind of boo rise, right? We know a couple of the distilleries are are making those or blending those for gate. We just tasted one of those. Hi, West has had one for quite some time. West does, which did they have the original idea? Well, they got the name Burei Burei. They own that. Yeah. So so this is a blend of three different whiskeys, Jim. You got a two to three year old ride. That's a ninety five five. which 95% rye, 5% malted barley.

And that should bring the bite, right? Should. A little bit. A little candy bite.

A two-year-old, right? Yeah. And it's not quite candy at two though yet, is it? Two to three. A four-year-old bourbon that's 60% corn, 36% rye, and 4% malted barley. And then a five-year-old bourbon that's 68% corn, 20% wheat, and 12% malted barley.

So two-year-old rye, four-year-old bourbon and another five-year-old bourbon. A rye bourbon and a weeded bourbon. Rye bourbon and a weeded bourbon. But all three of those come together to make a two-year-old whiskey. Let's be fair about it because whiskey is always aged by the youngest spirit. Youngest spirit, yeah. So this is, even though it's a mixture of those other years, this is still a two-year-old spirit. Now, very recently, We had a two-year-old that was pretty darn good, didn't we?

We have. And I don't know. You don't know how much of each of these is in there. You'd like to think equal parts. And I don't know if that, just because it's the youngest whiskey, if there was three parts, then you would have to take the average of the three. So I would think there's three. Well, it'll be very apparent.

My guess is it would be very apparent when we taste this whiskey. How much of that rye is in there? Because that's a prominent flavor, right? Yeah.

We should be able to tell. We should be able to tell. This is 90 proof. Comes in at about $53. That's not bad, right? Yeah.

It's not a cheap bottle they've used. They've certainly put a lot of money into the and the design of the labels. But really, as we've said a million times, it comes down to the liquid inside.

Yeah, you could put a beautiful label like they have on it. You can lipstick on a pig, right? Yeah. Heck yeah. This is kind of that old elk bottle. Wild turkeys, their master's keep bottle kind of style. I like this style, you know. especially old oak. So I'm very curious about this. We call it a golden honey in the glass.

It's lighter than you might expect a four-year-old bourbon to look like, right? A Kentucky bourbon. So yeah, I would say golden honey is probably a good choice on the color of this.

Can you get a two-year-old rye whiskey in two to three years? is you think that that's old enough for a rye whiskey? Because rye whiskies are quicker, right?

Yeah, quicker. It can be. I think you can get a fine whiskey, a fine rye at three years old. Sure. Maybe even at two. I don't know. I think that it does take a little bit of time in the barrel, but where they are in the rick house, what climate they're in, what time of the year they're put in, what time of the year they're pulled out, I think it can have a big effect on it.

Yeah. Give a shout out to Brandon Griffin. He's their South East market manager for mythology. He's the one that handed us the bottle. Shout out to you there, Brandon. We really do appreciate you giving us a chance to review this.

All right. Mike, what do you say we check out the nose on this? Let's do it. Cheers. Cheers. It's got a real sweet sort of corn nose on it, doesn't it?

I was going to say big league chewing gum. You know, it has that corn starch all over. It does. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Whenever you open up that big league chewing gum and it would be just chalky almost inside and sweetness to it.

A little bit of stone fruit. We didn't know the exact match bills, right? Did we know how much barley is in this? Yeah, there is barley in each one of those, I mean. Well, certainly there is some, but is there a reasonable amount? In that five-year-old, there's a 12% malt barley. Okay. All right. I'm definitely getting like a stone fruit, like a peach or pear nose on it. Yeah, the more, now that you said it, I am getting that big league chew cornstarch kind of, you know, like off the outside, but. You always say Necco candies.

And I think I was Necco's candies. And I was somewhere the other day and I found some and I bought them for you. And I was so excited. I was like, look, there's Necco candies. And I bought them and I gave them to you. Did you eat them? No, not yet.

I'm hanging onto them for a special occasion.

You got to watch out because the grandkids will get a whole lot of them. That's true. That's true.

I'm not sure if a kid today would even like them, do you think? I don't know. They probably like.

What is that? What is that?

Yeah. Where's the chocolate?

Yeah. Maybe a little bit of that Necco candy. I might even get some. Oh, heck, what are they? They're chalky like that. Not Starburst. Maybe that is what I'm thinking. Yeah, Starburst.

The fruit on this is really light though. Very, very light.

Not getting a lot of barrel influence on it. Maybe like an unripened peach.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like really firm. Real hard to firm peach.

Yep.

Absolutely.

I think you nailed it there. All right. Let's taste it. I tell you, I will say this. The nose has me wanting to taste it.

So, very interesting because they took that rye whiskey, rye bourbon, and a weeded bourbon and put it all together. I don't know that anybody else has done that. Will the wheat play well with that? I mean, it does in a four grain.

So- Now, is the weeded bourbon the four-year-old or the five-year-old?

That's the five-year-old.

Okay.

Which would make sense. It does make sense. You would want to use the older one, right? Sure. Well, heck, Jim, let's stop talking and drink. A bit of corn sweetness on that. Very, very, I wasn't expecting how light it is. It's like light as a feather on your tongue.

I mean, very, very light on your tongue. It does sort of dance across the top of your tongue and doesn't really set in for any kind of an impact. Not what I was expecting. I need to take another sip and let it sit on the front of my tongue for a minute. I want to see if I can pick up that wheat bourbon.

I'm getting a little bit of that week going. I know listeners don't get on me about this, but I don't know if you've ever taken some honeysuckle, one of the flowers. Or even some of the greenness off of it and chewed on it. For some reason, I have I've taken one of the flowers chewed on it and you get that little bitty light floral note there. Like you said, a little corn sweetness. Maybe you like your, you ever had a cream corn?

Oh yeah, cream corn. That sweetness of the cream corn? I'm trying to think what it is for me. It's a little bit. So it's kind of funny when I, when I held it on the front of my tongue, I started to pick up that sweetness. I let it roll down the sides of my tongue to the back and that sweetness settled in on the back sides of my tongue. It's kind of interesting, but it doesn't have a lot, like a lot of old flavor. It's very light, kind of tip toeing through your palate. Right. Yeah.

Like I said, like it is very like a feather. It just, and it's just a hint of spice on there. Ah, this would get me in trouble, Jim. I mean, you could power this sucker down.

This is like drinking sweet honey tea, although you don't get the tea flavor in it. I'm just sort of trying to equate it to something that is very easy on the palate. I'm getting a hint of citrus.

And you ever had like orange tea? Orange tea is not heavy on the tea. You put some honey in there in the wintertime and I might get a little bit of that. Just that citrus, it's like zest. Citrus zest is what I'm getting on this. That's the tingle of the spice I'm getting.

Yeah, I mean, the rye does play a little bit, but not playing a huge role on this. So I get a little bit more of the corn. I think it's reasonably well done for what's in it. I will say this, it's not an overwhelming kind of flavor. It doesn't really give you notes that you can start picking out and saying, I like this, I like this, I like this.

You definitely couldn't mix this at all. This is a, let's sit down as friends, have a conversation, and me and you can enjoy this whole bottle.

I mean, that's what I'm afraid of. I mean, you would sit down with this bottle and probably within a very short period of time, you'd find yourself in trouble. because it's gone.

Well, you try to stand up. Now, what was the proof on this? It's not any proof. Respectable. They didn't proof it down to 80. Would I have liked to see it at 100, 110? I would have, but you don't know how those flavors are going to play with that deal. I'd like to say I know what they're getting out of this. That citrus zest I'm getting, that corn sweetness, like I said. Maybe a lot of people have never had, you know, cream corn before. I have. I still enjoy it to this day. It doesn't enjoy me, but that's just because I'm getting a little older.

Well, I mean, it's an easy drinker. It's an easy sipper. It definitely is not something that is going to... This is not a cigar whiskey. This is not going to make you think a whole long time about what's going on. I think it's pretty simple and straightforward. I think it's well done based on the components that are in it. I think our listeners would like to know why this is called Hail Bear.

So the story of the Hail Bear Jam is a Colorado prospector ventured into darkness. In the mine, he heard a loud snap. Then he was fallen. Oh, so he walked across a board or something and it broke. Yeah, it must have. He fell down in a hole or something. Yeah. In a daze in the pitch black, he awoke, faced his face with a unique creature, part bear, part badger. Resolved that today wouldn't be his last, he rose and followed the glow of the creature's eyes. The hill bear guided the explorer to the surface, then vanished back into the mine. Well, at least he got him out of the mine. I guess it's a good hell bear. I think that Colorado prospector had been drinking too much whiskey. It probably was.

Probably fell down in the mine, got lost for two days. His wife was upset. He didn't come home. He had to come up with a story. So he admitted the hell bear. And let me ask you this, Mike, which would you rather face? Honestly, a badger or bear?

Be personally? Yeah.

Hmm.

I would personally rather go ahead and face a bear. Cause you can, you can holler a bear off. Well, your death's probably going to be pretty quick if he's going to kill you.

Yeah. But I mean, you can, you can say, Hey bear, get out of here, bear, get lost, bear, get out of here.

You know, Badger doesn't care. It's just going to tear you up. It's just coming at you and you probably not going to kill you, but it ain't going to climb a tree. No, it's going to come after you.

That's true.

Yeah. You know, for me, this is a by Jim. I like different whiskies. You know, this kind of reminds me of getting into whiskey right here and getting something new. And you're like, wow, this is pretty nice. I would call this a spring or summer sipper. Definitely a warm weather drinking whiskey.

You know, There are whiskies for seasons, right? We've talked about that a lot of times in the past. And this one definitely would play well in hotter weather because it is kind of refreshing. I mean, it doesn't have a long finish. It doesn't stick around very long at all. It's kind of a medium to short finish. It doesn't have like too much Kentucky hug or Colorado hug, does it? No, I'm not getting a hug at all.

That makes me wonder it was these sweet mashes that they were used. You know, that'd be nice to know. We don't know which distilleries it came from. We could try to take a guess. I have no clue though. 20% wheat and a five-year-old. I don't know.

I wouldn't mind. I tell you what, this would be a good whiskey to take on a fly fishing trip to Colorado or pick up in Colorado when you're out there on a fly fishing trip. Put it in camp and when you're done fly fishing for the day and you get back to camp, sit down with a bottle of this and make it disappear.

It wouldn't be hard to do. Yeah, to their credit, Jim. You know, you were saying that the mixture of all the whiskeys, right, is still a two, would be a two-year-old.

And to their credit, right on the bottle, minimum two years old. So two things we can learn from looking at this bottle that the distillery did correctly. One is aging it properly based on the youngest whiskey. The other one is calling out the fact that it's an American whiskey rather than a blended bourbon or something like that. So, very straightforward, properly labeled. You know, they even say, you know, where's blended bottle, right?

Yeah. Took no shortcuts on this, I think. I love that about them, their transparency. Now, do they have an NDA with the companies they bought the whiskey from? They probably do. Probably so.

I think in most cases, that's the truth. I think they're allowed to say minimal information about where the whiskey's come from. But in this case, they just tell you what you need to know, which is, hey, they blended and bottled it. It's got three parts in it. These are the mash bills. They don't tell you the percentages, but they don't need to do that, right? Well, you could, I think, sometimes. I can tell that the rye, in my opinion, the rye is not like a major percentage in this. Probably not more than a third.

You think? Probably less. I was thinking it probably is a third. I was thinking that hopefully these like, I don't know how many bottles of this was. And this is released in 2021. We might be a little bit late to the game on this whiskey right here, but. I had some other whiskey and you know I'm a fan of them. I'm a fan of companies that are trying something different. This is definitely something different. You know I can't say that I've had something like this before. It's very nice that citrus that You know, it's just, it's just different that spring that summer zipper that's is light enough to where I'm not going to be overpowered. We almost recorded outside today too, Jim. It was so nice. It's really nice day today. And the only thing that reason we didn't record outside, I think there were cicadas in the tree still. Yeah. And they are just a buzzing.

Well, this whiskey is a double gold candidate. So, you know, it's labeled with a double gold award. So, I think it definitely has garnered some respect at the judging table. 90 Proof, Colorado whiskey, blended well, bourbon and rye blend, an American whiskey at 90 Proof. Sips easy. I think you can't go wrong with it.

You definitely can't. There's people charging 30 more bucks for the same age stuff.

Yeah, they are. And I think this is a fair price. It's not over the top. When you talk about price per years, you have to understand that some of the whiskey in here is older, even though they have to label it as a two-year-old. There is some five-year-old whiskey in this. So we're not knowing the portions of it. I think that a $50 price tag is probably fairly reasonable. It's $53, I think you said, right?

Yeah, $53. That's not bad. I mean, you get to drink a little hell bear. A little hell bear. It just goes with, I think Denver, the mountains prospectors gold. I mean, uh, you know, we said this is kind of a golden honey. Um, you know, we got a little gold in the glass.

Yeah.

But here's the thing I could sit down with you, Jim, and we could enjoy this entire bottle. Have a great conversation. Probably just pick it apart. Um, and. say, Hey, you know, we talk about the hill bear, you know, and talk about badgers and talk about mountain men and talk about grizzly Adams. I haven't thought about grizzly Adams in a long time.

Yeah, me too. It's been a while.

That's a man my size right there.

Alright listeners, so if you want to find out more about this Hell Bear American Whiskey, go to the Mythology website and check them out. I think that they've got a number of expressions that we have not had on the show yet. Maybe we'll get a chance to do that in the future.

Mike, where can people find us on the internet? Well, you can find us on TikTok. We're trying to put some videos on there. We're just two old guys trying to get it done. So just remember, be patient with us video every month or so. That's how we kind of roll. But give us a follow on there. If you're on TikTok, we're on YouTube. a whole lot of videos on there every once in a while. Pop video up on there too. We're on Twitter. Jim, you run that Twitter account, right?

Yeah. We don't do a lot there, but there's something.

It's mostly for us, Instagram and Facebook. Instagram and Facebook. The main place you find us is on the Bourbon Roadies. It's our private Facebook page or group. Like minded folks, you gotta be 21, you gotta like bourbon or whiskey, and you gotta agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any rudeness in there. We got three great moderators, Adam, Jason, and Drew. They'll make sure you find yourself right out if you can't play nice. You can't let somebody enjoy the whiskey they're drinking.

We do two shows every week. Every Monday we do a craft distillery episode like today's. We'll pick a single expression like Hell Bear American Whiskey from mythology. We'll drink it, we'll talk about it, we'll tear it apart, we'll tell you what we think about it. You should add it to your bar. Every Wednesday we'll do a full-length episode. We usually have a guest on, but sometimes it's just a couple of bottles or Mike and I chit-chatting. We always like to deep dive a subject though and get into detail on something that interests you. So make sure you check out both episodes every week. Mike, what can they do to make sure they don't miss one?

Well, listeners, you need to scroll up the top of that app, hit that check sign, that subscribe sign, that plus sign, whatever you have to do. to make sure that app tells you, hey, these two jokers got a show that's come out today and you need to listen to it. And then you know what I'm going to say. Scroll on down to the bottom of that app. Get that five star review. Leave us some comments if you would, because you know what's going to happen if you don't. The big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come to your house dragging the hell bear with him. You'll drink some of this mythology. hell bear whiskey all night. Hopefully the hell bear stays calm. That's what we hope. By the end of the night, you'll damn sure to leave us that five star review in those comments. But seriously, those comments, those five star reviews, they open up distilleries doors to us. They get great whiskey in our hands like this mythology hell bear for us to review. Let you know, hey, what you should be drinking, what you should have on your shelf. We'd really appreciate it.

And when you see us out in town, if you run into us into a liquor store, an event, or at a distillery, make sure you come up and say hey to us. Introduce yourself. If you're a roadie, we'd love to meet you. If you're not a roadie, we'd still love to meet you. If you've got an idea for a show, if you have an idea for a bottle or a distillery that needs to be highlighted, make sure you let us know. You can always hop on our website, thebourbonroad.com. We've got a Contact Us page there. You can also send us emails. I'm Jim at TheBurbanRoad.com. He's Mike at TheBurbanRoad.com. Like we always say, probably the best way. Just hit up our DMs on Instagram. I'm JayShannon63. I'm Big Burba Chief. We'll see you down the bourbon road.

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