92. Bourbon Basics with Four Great Pours

Cherry is a red fruit. It's also a stone fruit. Is it dark? I don't know. Plums and raisins are kind of dark. It depends on the type of cherry. I guess so. You have dark cherry, right?

You get a really tart cherry versus like, I always call them nuclear cherries. Is that Marciano? Is it Marciano cherry? Marciano. I call it nuclear cherries because they could survive a nuclear war.

You have a jar of those in your refrigerator and you don't realize it in three or four or five years later, you go, oh, I still have those cherries. You pull them out and they're just fine.

Well, I've got some of those soaked in moonshine, do you?

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 Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. Hello everybody, I'm Jim Shannon. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. Today, Mike, we are in Simpsonville, Kentucky.

Yeah, down in your basement. Yeah, and it's derby day. It is derby day. We got to get this episode done so we can take the ladies to watch the race, right? Yeah, watch it on TV. Watch it on TV.

Yeah, no fans at the derby this year. That's right. But there'll still be plenty of mint juleps, plenty of straight Bourbons being drunk today. Yeah, I'm not a mint jillip guy. Are you? No. I've had one probably half the derbies I've been to. I've probably had one just for the, you know, it's what you do.

Yeah, I guess I've had a couple of them just to be cordial at somebody's party. Yeah. Or when I first came to Kentucky, I wanted to try one to see if I'd like it automatically. I was like, this does not taste good. I don't like it. Therefore I will never drink one again. But when you go to somebody's party, they offer you one. You want to accept it, drink it.

See, I don't know what a good mint julep tastes like. I mean, I guess the ones I've had at the track are probably good ones. I would think they know what they're doing there. You would think they would, but they're just pushing them things out as fast as they can push them out. I guess so. Well, anyway, today's Derby day, we'll be watching it on TV. We'll be probably placing our bets on twin spires, seeing if we can't pick a winner. But before we get to all that, today we wanted to get to the basics of bourbon.

Yeah, we've had a couple listeners, a couple roadies on our private Facebook group, were asking about bourbon, and they're new to bourbon, and they wanted to know about bourbon and sometimes we'll get into shows and we won't talk about that stuff. We won't talk about the percentages, what a mash bill is. We don't talk about what a rack house and what a rick is. We don't discuss those things because we're with the stillers.

We'll say something like it's normal barrel size, but to them, they don't know what a normal barrel size is. Everybody that's been around for a while knows it's 53 gallons, but somebody new might not know that a normal barrel size is 53 gallons.

That's kind of the standard for most distilleries. Some distilleries are using smaller barrels to a quicker maturation, but the standard we're seeing today is 53 gallons.

Well, we've chosen four different bourbons today that we're going to drink together and talk about. Four different distilleries. Four different distilleries. And they all have kind of a story about them that helps us to explain some basics about bourbon. Yeah.

And that's why we chose those four bourbons. I think we could have did a better job picking four bourbons across the bourbon community. The first one we're going to drink is is what they say, their DSP KY1.

Right. Why don't you take a minute and explain it? And before you do, let me just say this. If you're listening to this episode, you're like, oh, gee, I don't need to hear another Urban Basics episode. Just keep this in mind. There is one big boy in the mix here today. So we're drinking a pretty bad bottle that represents

The topic we want to talk about. Sure. And we got a new bourbon that's out on the table that we're going to taste that just came out. So a big boy bottle that not everybody can purchase and a new bourbon that just came out and is very limited right now.

So just, just chill, relax, listen to a little bit of bourbon speak here. And your fellow roadies, especially those who are new to the group, will certainly appreciate some new knowledge.

So bourbon has to be at least 51% corn, right? It can have a secondary grain, which is either rye or wheat typically.

And they sometimes call that a secondary grain like you just did. Sometimes they call it a flavoring grain.

Yeah, so the rye will bring out that spicier note, whereas a wheat will bring out those sweetness and that sugary and floral notes, in Mike Hyatt's terms. Right. So yeah, that's the basics of it. Sometimes a distillery will throw in something weird in there. You saw Woodford Reserve has done a couple of them, like oat is their secondary grain. Other people are out there doing that kind of stuff. And then sometimes you'll see a four grain, hint, hint, on our last bottle we're going to drink, a four grain bourbon, where it's a mixture of those, but always 51% corn. Corn is native to America. They got here, they couldn't get those other grains as plentiful as they could get corn, so they're using what they had at the time to cook with.

So bourbon needs to be 51% corn. Its primary grain is corn. It has to be at least 51%. The remaining grains can be a mixture of other things. It must be made in the United States of America, not necessarily in Kentucky though.

A lot of people debate that, but the truth is it has to be made in America, like you said. And yes, Kentucky is home of bourbon. Some people debate that whether it's New Orleans or if it's Kentucky. Both of us would probably agree that it's Kentucky that was shipped down to New Orleans. But outside of Kentucky, there's a lot of good people making bourbon. We've showcased their bourbons on our show and I'd tell you they drink just as good as any Kentucky bourbon.

So, if it comes up in conversation, don't be surprised to hear somebody say that bourbon has to be made in Kentucky. It's a mistake that people make many, many times. And the fact of the matter is, as long as it's made in the United States, it can be called bourbon, as long as it meets the other criteria. So, aged in a new charred oak barrel.

Great. Now, when people talk about chard, they'll take that barrel, they'll put it over a flame, and it chars the inside of it. And the longer they char it, the deeper that burn goes into the barrel wood. Yeah. It kind of looks like alligator skin where you might have a number one char, which I'm not positive on the times of this. You might, Jim, you might know the times a little bit better than I do, but you'll have a one, two, three, and a four. And then you also have where they'll toast the heads or the top and the bottom of the barrel. They'll char those or they might even just toast them. which means it just gets a nice toast.

It doesn't get kissed with a flame, it just gets the heat. Sure. So, yeah, typically I think the charring process or the burning of the barrel inside usually takes less than a minute. Yeah. Sometime less than a minute, some number of seconds up to a minute. depending on that. So, we've got 51% corn made in the United States, aged in a new charred oak barrel. Can't be a used barrel. Can never have been used for anything before. It has to be brand new. That's scotch, right? Yeah. Well, scotches and some American whiskeys, you know, are used or made in used oak barrels. Barrels that once contained something else. There's a lot of fables out there about why the barrels first began to be charred. Some said that because they carried fish and they had to burn the stink of the fish out of them before they put the liquor in. That's pretty gross. That's pretty gross. Anyway, Mike, we like to get straight to the bourbon.

What is our first bourbon tonight? So the first bourbon we're going to drink is Evan Williams Bottled and Bond 100 proof. Like I said before, it's DSP KY1. The story goes Evan Williams set up his distillery on the banks of the Ohio River in 1783 and historically recognizes Kentucky's first distiller of bourbon. I brought this over. This is actually the sour mash we were talking about. Sour mash meaning they reuse that spent grain or part of it to start their next batch with. And it gives that consistency in their batches. Right.

Right. And it sort of helps to maintain pH. That's another thing that they talk about. It also takes some of that energy in the form of heat from that prior batch and moves it into the next batch and it conserves

Well, back then it would be conserving coal or firewood in 1783, which would have been an important thing. If you could imagine everybody's chopping down firewood or using coal for fire, that was a very arduous task. And the landscape would have been much different than today because a lot of people were just clearing the land of trees. Right.

So you said DSPKY1. So let's tell everybody what DSPKY1 means. So first of all, DSP stands for Distilled Spirits Producer. It's a license. It's a federal license. Dash KY is for Kentucky. Dash 1 is the very first Kentucky license ever issued.

Now, Evan Williams has two actual on the back of it. On the front, it does say DSPKY1, but on the back, it'll tell you that Bargetown Kentucky DSPKY31 is their other distillery they own. If you're new to bourbon, you're going to hear all these tales and not all of them are true. Most of it's marketing me. Some are very honest about that. Some distilleries are even more forward than that and say, I don't have a story. I just have good bourbon. So don't buy into all the, I guess, marketing of it. What's inside the bottle is what matters. All right. Well, Mike, let's get to it. Let's do it. We've been talking long enough. Yes.

Pretty good nose on this thing. It does have a good nose. So this is the white label. People call this the white label bottle and bond, and we'll talk about that in a minute. What's that run per bottle? That's probably, what is it, an $18 bottle? It's not too bad for a four-year-old bottle and bond. Sure. It is available nationwide though, right?

Nationwide.

Well, it has a nice caramel nose on it. The corn is definitely present. But we know this is at least a four-year-old bourbon. And how do we know that, Mike? Well, it's bottled and boned. Before we talk about bottled and boned, though, let's talk about the notes on this bourbon.

Like you said, the corn's coming out of it, the caramel. A little bit of toffee to me.

Yeah, I think a little bit of toffee.

What I would expect of a traditional bourbon.

It is a sweet nose though.

And I went ahead and took a sip. I watched you over there. I beat you to it this time. Well, let me, let me sip this thing.

Oh yeah. I tell you what, you cannot go wrong. with an $18 bottle of Evan Williams 100 proof bottle and bond bourbon whiskey.

Now, what the funny thing is on the side of this is, and we'll talk about this a little in the episode. What's that say on the side of that? It says charcoal filtered. That's a funny thing, right? It is a funny thing. To me, that says something a little bit about something and we'll get into that about our friends to the south in Tennessee.

We will talk about that. Well, most bourbons are filtered in some manner to remove the sediment from the barrels that come from the aging process. And a lot of times that's a charcoal filtration. Sometimes it's another media for filtration. But the idea there is to remove solid particulate so that it doesn't make it into the bottle and doesn't give you a sediment at the bottom of your bottle. And it adds no color to the bourbon. Right, no.

I've had people tell me that before.

The process of aging bourbon, the process of aging bourbon in a barrel, it undergoes some charcoal filtering, right? Because the barrel has the charcoal on the inside and that liquid is moving in and out of that charcoal layer.

Like you said, for $18, you can't go wrong with this. It's got those sweet nose of corn as very forward in this bourbon. A little bit of that sour mash, that burn that you're getting, that Kentucky hug. And we'll go into that a little bit more about a sour mash versus a sweet mash as our friend Dr. Pat Heist talked about to us. A sweet mash, they clean their tanks every time. They're cleaning them out, they're getting rid of all their waste. Nothing from the prior batch makes it into this next batch. No, none.

100% isolated, sterilized, start all over again.

Very hard to recreate and very expensive. What Pat was saying is though, with a sweet mash, you get less of that Kentucky hug, less of that feeling of an acid reflux, if you would say. I kind of like that in a sweet mash and we got a sweet mash here we're going to talk about. We will hit it.

All right, Mike. Well, I'll tell you what, the more I sip on this, I start to get a little bit of that Heaven Hill almond starts to come out. You said you got a little bit of A little toffee in there. I'm getting a little bit of almond.

So, I got a corn caramel almond kind of nice. It's a great whiskey.

Now, is it the very best whiskey from the state of Kentucky? No. Good, solid, guaranteed to be an excellent pour in your glass every single time you get it at $18 a bottle.

I would say if you're new to bourbon and you're looking to buy a bottle or you've bought a bottle and you want to kind of start over and you want to get another bottle, look for that bottle and bond on a bottle that it'll tell you something right there. It's not two, it's not three, it's four years old. 100 proof every time. You kind of know what you're getting. Right. And if it's below 20 bucks, you really can't go wrong.

And as that age goes up, this is a four-year-old bourbon here, as that age goes up, that corn flavor we're talking about that we're getting on it up front will start to go away as it ages, gets closer to eight years. It starts to build a more layered flavor profile, gets to be more complex, more deep and syrupy and so those those notes of corn or that corn forward flavor will tend to disappear in an older bourbon so for a four-year-old bourbon fantastic it is not however an eight-year-old bourbon.

No, definitely not. I don't know if they could afford to do it that way. Now we were talking about nosing our bourbon and a lot of people don't know to nose their bourbon. You don't want to shove your doughs up inside that glass and keep it inside that glass. And we're actually both drinking out of our Glen Carons from our sponsored distillery products, premium bar products. Don't just shove your nose in there. Clear out the glass with your nose. Then take that small whiff of it and try to get those nose.

Keep your mouth partially open when you're nosing because you do want that aroma to pass across both your palate and your nose. Now, your nose can pick up hundreds of column flavors or aromas, whereas your palate is limited to just four, right? Just a few. You know, it's a dream team, right? I mean, palate plus nose equals perfect experience with a cup of bourbon.

Yeah, and I think what people need to realize, if you're new to bourbon, remember, you're going to have different tasting notes than your friends. So if your friends recommend a bourbon and you don't necessarily like it, it doesn't mean it's a bad bourbon. It doesn't mean it's a drain pour. It means they might have a different palate than you or they get something different on the nose. just keep searching out there and you will find something. A cheaper way to do that is to go find yourself a nice bourbon bar and kind of go through their list and find a great bourbon that you like. That way you're not spending 50 or 60 bucks on every bottle. Right.

Are you ready to move on to the next one, Mike? I know you are.

Your glass is empty. I am. So the second one we got, Jim, is our small batch Peerless, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. This is 109.8 proof. We're stepping it up. Not too much, right? Peerless is not that old. They are old, but... It's a historical distillery, but it has been resurrected recently. So this is actually a sweet mash as we were talking about. So they're cleaning their tanks every time. They add no water to their stuff, meaning they didn't proof this down, right? So this is a barrel proof.

So this is a barrel proof, but it is a combination of more than one barrel. This is not a single barrel. In other words, this bottle was not filled from a single barrel. A number of barrels were emptied into a vat mixed together. and then that combined mixture was placed into a bottle and that's called a batch.

Now remember a small batch for distilleries can mean many different things. Jim Beam small batch could be 100 barrels or 200 barrels, where peerless it might only be 10 barrels.

So there's no real regulation on that?

No, it's just a label. Sure.

Yeah, and I guess the smallest batch is a single barrel. Naming wise, it can be a little deceiving on the bottle. If you see small batch, it could be as little as one or two barrels or it could be as many as several hundred or even more.

A good thing to do is to do your homework. A great website out there is Breaking Bourbon. The guys are really great about putting a lot of information out there about bourbons, the bash bills. And there's so many websites out there right now. Today, actually, on our Facebook group, I gave a shout out to the Mash and Drum, My Bourbon Journey, Dad's Drinking Bourbon and Bourbon Lens, of places that other people could go if they want to find that information. Those guys, they're all putting out great information. Yeah. They're careful.

They're authoritative, which means they really do know what they're talking about, right? I mean, they research They're bourbons, they research and they do careful tastings. And if we're pointing you to somebody else, it's because we respect them.

Sure. There's so many great people out there to name. I couldn't name them all today. I just like those. Breaking Bourbon is another site I like to go to. If you're standing in a store aisle and you're looking at a bourbon and you want to find it, more than likely Breaking Bourbon has it on their website. They'll tell you what the MSRP is. They'll tell you what the mash bill is. They've probably tasted it. A good website. They don't have so many crafts, but all the big boys are on there.

All right, so we've got the Peerless small batch here. Peerless is a Kentucky distillery, resurrected recently from a historical distillery that was around pre-prohibition. And Caleb Kilburn's their master distiller. He's done a fine job of crafting their bourbons and their ryes coming out of a restart of the distillery. And Mike, let's try it.

This one's got a little bit more floral on it. It does. The notes are coming out and I always find that when the proof goes up that those characters always come out.

So yeah, so this one definitely has a little bit more of a kind of a cinnamon nose on it. You know, it gets a little bit more peppery cinnamon kind of on the nose. I think that's that rye, right?

And this might have a higher rye mash bill to where the Evan Williams didn't. So, you'll hear people say high rye and that's in that 25 to 35% rye as their secondary grain.

Now, it's still got a nice sweetness on the nose and I am picking up the traditional. A lot of times, Mike and I won't say caramel and vanilla because caramels and vanillas are pretty much a given with a bourbon, right? Sure. Pretty much always going to get a caramel and vanilla. But you know what? When you're starting out, those are the easiest notes for you to pick up when you're nosing a bourbon and when you're tasting a bourbon when you're first starting out. Don't be ashamed to say caramel and vanilla because those are pretty much guaranteed to be there. And if you're not accustomed to smelling vanilla, go to the spice cabinet.

Yeah, I think that's a great way to, your wife might kill you or your husband might kill you that you're in there dipping your finger in the spice and tasting it all. What I get out of this is a childhood when I would go to the fair and you would smell that cotton candy right when that sugar's starting to burn. That's kind of what I'm getting out of this one. So you're getting burnt sugars on this. Yeah.

Yeah. Now this one, Again, we know this is right around four to five year old, around five year old, right? And not getting the, it's not so corned forward as the Evan Williams.

And that corn, like you had said, the four will start to go away as it ages and stuff. Well, let's taste this thing. Right.

Yeah. See that the peerless has got, a lot more going on. But I will tell you this, it's more aggressive to your palate. It definitely hits you with a little bit more spice, a little more peppery.

Now this would be your jam, right? Yeah, I kind of like this. Yeah, because it wasn't like a punch in the mouth. It wasn't like one of our friends, the old Carter's. there's sometimes will punch you straight in the mouth because it's right up there at that 130 range and it's high rye. Where this has that spice on the back end I could taste that you said cinnamon on the nose where I would get cinnamon on the back of my palate a little bit. Not so much of that Kentucky hug on this one like I talked about because it's a sweet mash.

I would say this is a, I would call this a black pepper bomb probably. Anytime somebody says that's a cherry bomb or it's a strawberry bomb or it's a caramel bomb or it's a rye bomb or they're basically telling you the overpowering flavor note that they're getting from it is... And for me, this is a black pepper.

This is a black pepper cinnamon kind of... I'm getting that jolly rancher cinnamon, that you know, just nice hot, not that You know, what's a jawbreaker called that burns the heck out of your mouth? Atomic fireball. I'm not getting that out of it. But a Jolly Rancher cinnamon, I get that sweetness still coming out.

Do you want to talk a little bit about finish here? Because the Peerless Bourbon does have a pretty darn good finish. The finish is that impression on your palate, that taste. that impact of the spice and the sweetness and the alcohol all put together on your palate and how long it sticks around and you get to enjoy that flavor. Sometimes that finish will have an overpowering note of oak or it'll have a note of black pepper or in some cases it might have a uh dill or juniper or you know heavy oak flavor but it's that it's that flavor that sticks around long after your sip that makes you want to come back or not want to come back that's definitely have another sip that's definitely true um and i've had that before i had that with uh you know and a lot of people would disagree with me uh george t stag is a lot of people's favorite

Hands down. They love it if they can get their hands on a bottle. They're gonna buy it Where if I see a bottle of it, I would probably buy it and say tell Jim. Hey Jim got you a bottle buddy. I Just it is not for me. I don't like it I don't think I'll ever try it again just cuz it wasn't for me. Hey a lot of people Know a lot more about bourbon than I do but yeah, it would just wasn't for me.

I And, you know, that's why there are so many bourbons out there. There's so many different types of bourbons, ages of bourbons, match bills of bourbons, because there's something for everybody. And although I'm quite surprised you don't like George T. Stag, because I think it's amazing, I can understand why you don't. And I think it's perfectly okay.

Yeah. Hey. You're bourbon your way, it's your bourbon road, you gotta decide how you go down it. There's other ryes that I just, rye bourbons, high rye bourbons that I truly do love to drink. This right here is great, obviously, because I finished my glass before you did.

Yeah, so this is my jam. This peerless bourbon is my jam. Now they're ryes, and we're not gonna talk about ryes today because this is a bourbon show today, but their ryes are phenomenal. Caleb, Corky, and the rest of the team down there at Peerless have knocked it out of the park.

Now, a lot of people talk about price of sweet mash versus sour mash. And a sweet mash, if you look on your shelves, you're going to see that the sweet mashes cost a little bit more. because they got to start over every time. So take that into factor whenever you're buying a sweet mash. And I still don't get nothing a Kentucky hug from this bourbon right here. No, but I can still taste it. I can still taste it. It's got a very long finish. So we talk about tasting where we'll have us no finish at all. We'll have a or a medium finish or that long finish. And I would call this long finish because you still get that sweetness on the back of your tongue. The spice is still there a little bit.

So there's two factors to a finish. The first factor is how long it lasts. Is it a short, like you said, short, medium or long? And the second thing, whether it's pleasurable, is it a good finish? Sure. Does it have that aftertaste that you can appreciate, that you like, that draws you to that next pour? So two things there to think about. How long is the finish and was it a pleasurable finish? All right, Mike, I think it's a good time for us to take a break. We can, well, I can continue to sip on my peerless. You're out. When we come back in the second half, we've got two more bourbons and a lot more to talk about in bourbon basics. All right, we'll see you back. We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building handcrafted rustic furniture. Family-owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled woodcrafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rotten termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeads Home Center.

Hey, we're back for the second half. Me and Jim are sitting here and we're talking about the basics of bourbon.

Basics of bourbon. Things you should probably know in your first six months to a year of being a bourbon Lover. Bourbon lover.

Bourbon lover. Bourbon liker.

You start out as a bourbon curious and then you become a bourbon liker and then you become a bourbon lover. And then I think you go over the cliff at that point, right? Bourbon hoarder.

I'm probably at that point right now, bourbon hoarder. But, you know, one of the things I would like to tell people is share your bourbon. Share it. You know, and I think our group is really great about that. You know, if you're new in the bourbon and you're listening to our podcast and you're on Facebook, go ahead and check out some of the Facebook groups out there. There are some great ones. Be very careful not to let the rudeness of some of them deter you from keeping on your bourbon road. Right.

Well, the bourbon roadies, and we've talked about that several times now, if you're listening to this podcast and you're not familiar with the bourbon roadies, we have a private Facebook group of people who are like-minded like bourbon, like to talk about bourbon, like to share their bourbon, like to take pictures of it, give tasting notes, just general bourbon chatter. But they're good people. They're not rude. They're not pretentious. If they are, they don't last in the group very long, right? Because we give them the big giant, big chief boot.

Yeah. I mean... Or not the big chief boot. In this case, the big giant moderator boot. Moderator boot. Adam and Jason right now. So the bourbon we're going to start out in the second half with is probably one of my favorites of all time. If you don't know that I'm the self-professed weeded King of Kentucky, that means that I love weeded bourbon wholeheartedly. I love it. And Jim, I was looking for this bottle. I told you I was looking for it. I was excited when I was on vacation in Florida. one of my liquor stores, the bourbon seller in Shelbyville, Kentucky. She was kind enough to call me Julie and said, hey, I got a bottle of the 46 cast strength for you and I'll keep it. Walked in there, they had one bottle left and I was like, that's my bottle.

I think there's probably only one person in the entire state of Kentucky who might challenge your title as the weeded king of Kentucky. Who's that?

Bill Samuels Jr. Well, probably. I'd have to think, but does he stick to just drinking makers? I don't know. I don't know. But his name's all over this bottle. It most definitely is. So this is a limited edition. It just came out this summer. Cast Strength. Okay. Let's talk about Cast Strength. Cast Strength means that they pull it straight out of the barrel.

So they pop the cork on the barrel, they dump the barrel out, and whatever that proof is, whatever alcohol content is in that barrel, that's what ends up in the bottle. Yeah, and this is what we got right here, 109.6 proof. Now this is a batch, again, whether it be a small batch or a large batch or whatever, this is a batch of barrels. And so when they dumped all the barrels into the batch and they mixed them together, that's the resulting proof. So some of the barrels may have been higher proof, some of them lower, but as they mixed together, it became a 109.6 proof overall batch.

Now everybody's going to wonder what this 46 means. That means it's their stave profile number for them because this had some staves in the barrel.

All right, Mike. So we've got some Makers Mark Limited Edition 46 cast strength in our glass. It is 109.6 proof and it is a weeded bourbon.

Meaning that second mash bill, it's not a rye in there. It's just a wheat and some malted barley, which is a third grain. Right. Now most bourbons will all have that third grain in there.

And usually the malted barley percentage is a lower percentage, usually less than 10%, usually around five. It could be five, eight, ten. Some cases they call them high malts if they get above ten. But that malted barley... Now, malted barley is what's used to make scotches, right? It's what's used to make Irish whiskeys. But in the case of bourbon, it's used because it contains a special enzyme that kicks that fermentation process.

Man, you're bringing that science out now.

I don't want to bring any science out. No, this is bourbon basics. No science. Just suffice it to say that If you don't want to add artificial enzymes to your fermentation process, it's good to have a little malted barley because malted barley introduces that necessary enzyme to do certain sugar conversions. in the fermentation process. So all bourbons will have a little bit of malted barley in them or should. Sure. They may add some enzymes after the fact, but nevertheless, that's the role that malted barley plays.

But it also adds some flavor too. We've seen that, haven't we? Oh, most definitely.

Typically shows itself as pears or peaches or some kind of light fruit flavor.

I'm over here nosing this thing and one of the things we should talk about is whenever somebody says legs on a glass. Okay.

So when you tilt your glass and let the liquid come up on the side of the glass and then you stand the glass back up on its bottom, the liquid will create some sort of a layer on the side of the glass.

It's almost like candle wax running down the inside of the glass. So this is like one big sheet. If you'd let it set there a little bit, the legs will start forming. It starts as one big sheet. I'm not too big into that. I don't know the science behind that really. I do know some have, they're more oily.

More oily. Viscosity, they call it, right? Thickness of the liquid is probably the best way to say it.

I don't know if that makes it taste any different or not.

Now you definitely, so we're coming off of a bourbon that was very similar to this in proof. So we had the peerless in the last glass and this is a Makers 46.

What was the proof on the peerless again? 109.8. So this is just 109.6. So pretty much the same.

This one has a little more ethanol in the nose for me. So I'm getting a little more alcohol in the nose. So some bourbons give up that alcohol a little bit easier in the glass for the nosing.

I get that same thing. A lot of alcohol in this one. I do get more floral notes out of this one, where though this one is a sour mash. If you haven't been out to Maker's Mark, I would highly suggest you go out there and take a tour. That would be one of the top ones on my tour place to start. Especially you get to stick your finger inside the beer and taste the beer and you get to dip your own bottle out there.

Yeah. So I'm getting a more syrupy and I'm going to even go as far as to say a little bit of maple in there.

And that would be typical of a weeded bourbon. Yeah.

Yeah, so syrupy, now when you're nosing a bourbon, sometimes you say syrupy. That doesn't mean that the nose is syrupy. It reminds you of syrup. It reminds you of, in this case, it reminds me of a maple syrup on a pancake. That's the image that's flashing in my mind. It's not necessarily the true flavor or the true aroma that I'm getting in my nose. So that's the whole thing about tasting and nosing bourbons. It causes you to recall memories of other flavors, of other aromas from your library that you've built up over your lifetime.

Yeah, well, I'm always pretty good about that, right?

You are. Mike's pretty good about saying, hey, that's just like this particular cereal, or this particular carnival food, or whatever. Our tasting notes on the show are not very traditional. They're more childhood, real life. What do we smell?

Sometimes it can be what we've eaten, too. And you've got to be careful what you eat and try to drink bourbon with because it can overpower. If you eat a lot of garlic, I find it's very hard. I need to almost go brush my teeth and rinse my mouth out because then I'm going to be just tasting that garlic the whole time.

So I'm going to sum up the nose here for me. It's a little bit alcohol forward on the nose. It's got a maple syrupy nose to it, a little bit of sweetness. It does have the traditional notes of caramel and vanilla, but I'm really looking forward to tasting this. Let's taste it. Now, that's good. That's pretty good, isn't it? That's pretty darn good. That hits the front of my palate.

And I don't get a blast of super sweetness there, but it is sweet. It does have that sweetness, but the surprising thing about this is it's got a lot of spice to it. Yeah. And I think that's because it's that state of profile.

Now, Randy used to call that a racetrack bourbon. It hits the front of your palate, the front of your palate, the front of your tongue. It presents itself, but it goes straight to the back and hits you with the spice. Oh, it definitely does. Randy used to call that a racetrack bourbon.

I would say this is a beautiful weeder. I got a compliment, Maker's Mark, for coming out with this. I wondered if they were going to come out with something like this, and they did, and you know I get excited when I see a wheat. Now, if you're wondering about weeded bourbons, for the longest time there weren't that many weeded bourbons on the shelf, right? If you were outside of the state of Kentucky, the only weeded bourbon you might get is Maker's Mark. Then you come into Kentucky and a couple other states surrounding Kentucky, maybe down in Texas, you would see Willer, but that was it. And then Pappy, which has been around forever, right? You would see that, but that was it. But today we're seeing these micro distilleries, craft distilleries, artisan distilleries. Most of them all have some type of a weeded bourbon. Mike, you know what I'm getting here?

So chocolate covered cherries, but take away the chocolate. So if you just cracked open a chocolate covered cherry and ate the cherry and the filling that's inside, that's what I'm getting.

So I'm not getting any chocolate, so I don't want to... I'm actually getting a little bit, you know how I love to set up a tasting at my house and we'll have guests over and I always got to put those chocolate covered almonds out and I'm getting that chocolate plus that almond, that nuttiness a little bit with it. I'm not a peanut. but more of that chocolate. I get that chocolate, but I get what you're saying about the raisin, that dark, fermented fruit. Almost a, maybe a, not a plum, but a...

I don't think I said raisin. Chocolate, what did you say? Chocolate covered cherries. I said chocolate covered cherries, but minus the chocolate. So I may be getting a little bit of chocolate there, but the predominant note for me is the insides of a chocolate covered cherry. You know, that syrup and the cherry you get on the inside.

Yeah, I guess I might get that a little bit. I guess I get more of that raisin. But cherry is still a dark fruit. Yeah, it truly is. Almost that same sweetness to it. It's not that grape, or it's that crisp fruit.

Yeah, sometimes we talk about dark fruits. Sometimes we'll say red fruits. Sometimes we'll say light fruits. Sometimes we'll say stone fruits. Yeah. And honestly, there's a little bit of overlap in all of those, right? Because a cherry is a red fruit. It's also a stone fruit. Is it dark? I don't know. Plums and raisins are kind of dark. It depends on the type of cherry. I guess so.

You have dark cherry, right? You get a really tart cherry versus like I always call them nuclear cherries, that Marciano, is it Marciano cherries? Marciano? Yep. I call them nuclear cherries because they could survive a nuclear war.

You have a jar of those in your refrigerator and you don't realize it in three or four or five years later, you always have those cherries. You pull them out and they're just fine.

Well, I've got some of those soaked in moonshine.

Do you? Well, Mike, this actually is a good bourbon to talk about layers and multiple flavors and also how it develops over time. I think this bourbon actually expresses itself from sip to sip and it changes a little bit.

I'm not positive on how old this is. I would think it's probably in that seven to nine-year-old range, knowing maker's mark. When we say those layers, always, I say complexity. Complexity of the bourbon, meaning, like you said, layers it has, and it just could go all over the place. And it's very hard to nose and taste one of these if you're not experienced. I'm not saying me and you are experienced at all.

How's the best way to explain layers? Take a bite of French bread. Take a bite of salami, take a bite of blue cheese, and eat them together at once. That's layers. In that taste that you're getting when you're chewing all that up, you can taste the blue cheese. You can taste the salami. You can taste the French bread. All of those things are there together. They make this amazing compliment to each other, right? But they all form layers and flavors. And that's kind of what we're getting here. And sometimes, just sometimes, somebody will sneak a Kalamata olive in there for you. And that kind of, you don't get it right away, but then you're like, wait a minute, there's olives in that, right?

Sure. I think that's a great explanation of it. And this kind of a bourbon has all of that. I think somewhere else we would talk about, we're not going to drink one of them today, but a finished bourbon. a really good finished bourbon. When I say a finished bourbon, they'll take a bourbon, it'll age four or five, six years in its regular cask. And then they'll go ahead and pour that out into a brum cask or a typically a wine cask. And they'll finish it in there for 12 to 18 months. And then there's art to that. That's right. Angel's Envy has definitely figured that system out, right?

They have. And their port wine finished bourbons have taken the world by storm. They're very popular, very popular finished bourbon. And that's all they produce are finished bourbons.

Now, some people say that's not a bourbon anymore. I think that's a difference in opinion. There's no law there that says it's not a bourbon anymore.

Well, I mean, it's a bourbon finished in port wine barrels. It's not bourbon. Right. You're exactly right. So it needs that extra description to fully describe it. in order to properly categorize.

Now, what has changed lately this past year is that now they're allowed to add that extra time into their aging statement.

So typically, a bourbon's age is the lowest age of all the barrels that were dumped to fill that bottle.

Yeah, let's say if it was a single barrel and it was four years old. Four-year-old bourbon. It would be four-year-old bourbon. And then they poured it into a wine cask, and it was pulling those flavors out of there for 12 months. Before, it would still be only a four-year-old bourbon. Right. Because it exited the bourbon barrel at four years. Sure. But now, the new law states that they could add that age so that it would really be a five-year-old. And I would rather just call it a finished bourbon instead of saying bourbon finished in a port wine barrel.

To me, I think that's a clear... As a consumer, the best advice I think we can give you is read the labels and understand them. the best you can. Good manufacturers, good distilleries are transparent. Sure. Angels Envy, good example. Yeah, it's a bourbon, but it's a bourbon finished in port wine barrels. It's clear on the label. You can know that. Sometimes distilleries choose not to disclose Some information, sometimes they're required by contract not to. In other words, if they're not making it themselves but sourcing it from somebody else, a lot of times that contract for purchase doesn't allow them to disclose where they purchased it from.

Sure.

But I think that letting people know as much as you're able to is important and not trying to hide something to pull one over on somebody.

You know, I'm big about that. It's transparency, transparency, transparency. It's almost hard to work with a company that's not transparent upfront. So, you know, you said educate yourself. I think that's a good thing to know. Something to tell our listeners about, if you come to Kentucky or you're going to distillery and it's your first time, you've never been to distillery, drive around Kentucky in the summertime, don't leave your bourbon bottles in your vehicles. Good point. When you're going in the hotel or something, pull them out because I will tell you personally, the cork will pop. It doesn't matter how good the wax seal is. It's happened to me. I'm sure it's happened to you before, Jim. You got to make sure that you... A good idea, what I like to do is I keep an ice chest in my vehicle if I'm going to be traveling. Keep some of those disposable ice packs in there with you. It'll keep it cool enough where they won't pop. Right.

Well, Mike, I have to say this. This cast-strength Limited Edition Makers Mark 46 has been, we've been waiting for something like this a long time and it does not disappoint. You know why I'm going to buy probably another bottle of this just to have it around?

To finish those tasting notes off, as I was sitting in my glass for a little bit, I got a little bit more leather and oak is coming out. Yeah. It's a beautiful expression. He's a weeded guy. I love it. This is right up my alley. I'm starting to get into those more higher proofs as I've been on the podcast and you've introduced me to all kinds of different bourbons and we'll have distilleries send us all kinds of different stuff. So we're getting to drink that. And now I'm right, probably 110 is my comfort level. Sometimes we get up there to 130s, 140s, and I feel really good.

Well, we've been bouncing around here a little bit. We've gone from 100 to start, then we went up and had a couple of 109s, and now we're getting ready to drop back down to 100 again.

Yeah, that's not typically what we would do. We would typically start at the lowest proof and work our way to the highest proof. Today, we kind of save this one for last because it is very special and I got to say thanks for sharing it with me. I've had to add this over here at your house before. It's a, what is it?

It's a Colonel E.H. Taylor for green. So this is a four-grain EH Taylor bourbon. These are relatively hard to put your hands on. I've had two bottles of it, a 2018 and a 2017. I think this one is the 2017, actually. So it's actually, I've had this bottle for a couple years. But it's still about half full. And I do share it with good friends. Mike, you're a great friend, so I'm obviously going to share it with you. It is a hundred proof because each tailors are hundred proof whiskeys. They're all bottled and bonds. This is a bottle and bond as well. And it is probably on the secondary market, six to $700 a bottle. It's not what I paid for it.

But if you wanted to stand in line or you get lucky. Yes. If you had a horseshoe up your butt. Yeah.

Well, we wanted to talk about match bills and what a four-grain bourbon is. So a four-grain bourbon has corn as the primary grain, then it's going to have wheat and rye and barley. So those are the four grains that are involved in this. And this particular one gained a lot of fanfare, as many of the EH Taylor bottles do.

special-released E.H. Taylor bottles. Now, if you don't know who E.H. Taylor is, you're new to bourbon and stuff, he was the ultimate salesman. Not the ultimate financier, finance guy, though, because he pretty much died piss poor, right? Yeah. Wasn't great with his money, but he had some great ideas. And if you go to Castle & Key when you're in Kentucky, that's the old Taylor distillery. you will see that the man lived large.

That's right, he did. And this is just, I'm just throwing this in there, Mike. All right, I'm just throwing this in there. If you were the first one to send Big Chief a message on the bourbon roadies and say, Big Chief loves four grain. You're going to get a sample of the H-tailor forklift.

Wow, man. That's pretty awesome, maybe, Jim. We won't mention it again. They got to pick that up and they got to do it. Well, I think somebody will. Somebody will. Absolutely. Well, let's do this thing. Let's do it. Now, something you might not see is these don't just sit on the shelf, right? Yeah, they usually never make it to a shelf. They usually stay in the liquor store back room.

But they're only provided to, you know, special customers or in the case of bigger stores during the lotteries.

So if you do see them, you will see E.H. Taylor has several different expressions. And usually the one you'll see is the small batch. And you might see that on the shelf. It will typically run around forty dollars, forty six dollars. They come in a tube. It protects the bottle. Some people collect those tubes. I started throwing my tubes away. I just was getting too many of them.

Yeah. I mean, I've got a few tubes here. I don't know. I don't collect them or anything. I just haven't thrown them away yet. They are good for traveling though.

I found the tubes. You take some paper, put in the bottom. You take a piece of star foam, cut it as round as the thing where it slides in and out, and you could put one Glen Caron in there, stick a second Glen Caron in there. So it'll fit two Glen Carons inside that tube perfectly and kind of protect your Glen Carons if you want to travel.

Yeah.

Poor man's traveling Glen Caron case, what do I call it? Yeah. All right.

Let's check it out, Mike. So that nose is pretty amazing as far as I'm concerned. That nose does not have an overpowering sweetness. It has a nice caramel waft to it. It has that oaky spice that each tailor has that spice to its nose. You get that?

I get that barrel, not barrel, but Belgian waffle smell. If you've been into a waffle house, a true Belgian waffle house and they're cooking those waffles, you know, and they're just crisp. Yeah. You know, Mike, I never thought about it like that, but you're right. I mean, it does have that. And then if you walked around the restaurant and you could smell that confectioners sugar a little bit with a little bit of that syrup being poured all over those hot waffles.

Yeah, and I'm getting just a little bit of mint in this. Do you get that mint that sort of, I don't know. Like double mint? Like double mint. Yeah, like a little bit of a little bit of mint on top of that nice caramel sweetness that's coming off on the nose.

That's definitely a beautiful nose for a hundred proof bourbon.

Yeah, because we've dropped down a bit here, so. All right, I'm going to taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. That has taken on some amazing character from the barrel. You can taste a lot of barrel notes in that. Not just the oak, but that barrel spice. And barrel spice differs a little bit from rice spice, I think. And certainly, each tailor has both of those.

I would like to taste this at like a higher proof, like around 110, 120, just to see what the difference is, I guess. I get it. D.H. Taylor is a bottle bod. They keep everything at that 100 proof for that reason. It's a beautiful bourbon, no doubt. I drink this all day long. It's not like the George T. Stagg where I'm burning my insides.

The layers are there. But are you getting that softness up front, that sweetie softness up front that's coming from the wheat? You get that little bit up front, the right on the front of your tongue. And I always get a little bit of bitterness on the tail end of an EH Taylor sip. But I think it's an okay amount. It's like a, I don't know if it's a bitterness or a tannin.

It's kind of a, I get whatever I drink this, I get not that, you always talk about Necco candies and that dry candy. Big League Chewing Gum has that same powdery stuff. I don't know what that powdery stuff is, but I get that Big League Chewing Gum in this right here. I think it's cornstarch. That sweetness. I love it. It's good. To me, it doesn't compare to the 46 because probably that 46 is a cast ring and it's a weeded bourbon.

It's kind of hard to come off 109 proof and come back down to 100. It's still pretty good. It's a darn good bourbon. This is something that is... It's kind of a legendary bottle. It's had a lot of fanfare. A lot of people have fallen in love with it. EA's Taylor Four Grains. Whoever ends up with this sample, I think I'd like to hear back from them.

Now, I've got a couple of different E.H. Taylor's. I've got a single barrel. I've got a rye and then I got small batch. And it took me a while to get all those.

Like you said, you've got to be one of those special customers.

Yeah. Am I that special customer? I really don't know. I do got some great friends that have hooked me up. I've got some great liquor store owners that our friend James over at Paradise Liquors loves to death and always reaches out to me if he has something special.

But what I would tell you if you're new to that, the bourbon world,

You can't just walk into a store and expect that liquor store owner to pull out his best bottle for you. You have to build that relationship, get to know who their names are, get to know their employees, get to go in there and shop. If I'm going to buy a beer, I'm probably going to buy it from James because James is close to my house instead of going to Kroger, where I probably could save myself some money on that beer, a dollar or two. It's paid for itself tenfold by seeing my friend down there, James.

Mike, I want you to take another sip of this four grain. Let it spend a little bit of time on your palate. Swallow it and then exhale through your nose and tell me if you don't smell Rebecca Ruth.

How do I say that? I got that bourbon ball taste. Yes, bourbon balls. It's that sweet bourbon ball flavor. Yeah. Me and Vivian on vacation, we took some friends, a big old bag of bourbon balls, the boo-boos from, you know, Rebecca Ruth's candies. If you don't know what we're talking about in Frankfort, Kentucky, there's a couple of these different chocolate shops, but the famous one is Rebecca Bruth, and she was supposedly the creator of the bourbon ball. But if you're heading out to Woodford Reserve, they got one on the highway there, stop in there, ask for the bag of boo-boos, they're half price, for almost double the

Yeah, you're not going to give them away as gifts because they're mess ups, but they taste just as good.

We did. We gave them away as gifts to some friends. Well, by the way, I mean, not like a, you know, a packaged. Yeah, it is not packaged. Our friends, she texted us the other day and said she ate. They should have eaten the entire bag before they even got home. And I don't know, there's probably 30 or 40 of those things in that bag. But I think it's a great expression, Jim. If I've seen a bottle, I would pick it up. There's no doubt in my mind I would want a bottle of it.

Well, real quick, this is another bottled in bond bourbon. We said we would get to bottling bonds and talk a little bit about what that means. Some bourbons are actually designated as bottled in bond bourbons. It's a throwback to older days, but it's still in use today. Basically, it means that the bourbon has to be in the barrel for at least four years. What's in your bottle must be the product of a single distilling season under a single master distiller. In other words, the contents of that bottle can't be a mixture of things from multiple years, multiple barrels, multiple distilleries, multiple master distillers. It has to be a single master distiller's work from a single season entering that bottle. It has to enter the bottle at 100 proof. And it has to be stored in, prior to bottling, it has to be stored in government secured bonded warehouses. So this is a way to ensure whiskey quality. And E.H. Taylor was, you know, and we're drinking E.H. Taylor right now, he was at the forefront of creating those rules, you know, because they were trying to get rid of all that what happened in the 1800s where that term rotgut came from, right?

Yeah, people were actually putting tobacco juice, all kinds of food colorings in their bourbon, or not even bourbon to make it look like bourbon, and trying to fool their customers, which there's that term, a rotgut, came from. So they wanted to ensure that none of that could be done to them. And then, you know, old Forester would come out with a glass bottle that way people could see what's inside their bottles. And we still kind of hold true to that day. I have a hard time buying a bottle that I can't see what's inside. Sure. Absolutely. I mean, you've talked about before. I'm like, one of us will say, hey, look at this bottle. And the other one will be like, can't even see the bourbon inside.

Well, E.H. Taylor, an 1800s legend in making bourbon, sort of led that charge. And today, we are protected, at least any bottle that's labeled as bottle and bond. We've had two today. One was the Evan Williams bottle and bond that we tried first in the show. And then, of course, the E.H. Taylor four grain is a bottle and bond. We had it last in the show. They are bottle and bond bourbons.

And you can pretty much be guaranteed as to the quality of what's in the bottle.

So Mike, I hope we've been able to enlighten some of our newer listeners, some people who may have not been in the bourbon world as long.

I hope we did. We had a couple of questions on our bourbon group about that, about bourbon basics or basics of bourbon. What I would say is go out there and educate yourself as much as possible. So much on the internet today. Kentucky Steelers Association is a great place to go and learn. I gave a shout out to Breaking Bourbon. Those guys are always great. Listen to podcasts, listen to YouTubers. Come into the roadies.

Come into our roadies. And just ask the question. Don't be ashamed. There's no shaming, there's no rudeness in the bourbon roadies. And if there is, we'll take care of it.

The great thing about our group is that we do have distillers in there. We've got people in that whiskey culture like Peggy Noe Stevens, Pat Heist. He's a distiller also. Guys from Leapers Fork. I could just keep going. Lisa Wicker from Widow Jane. other podcasters and YouTubers in there to help us out, help us explain bourbon, the bourbon culture, make sure you're on your bourbon road properly. And you never can tell. If you come in there and you participate with us, more than likely, you're probably going to get some samples. I try to ship out a lot of samples. At least once a month, I'll ship some samples out. Life does get busy for us. Me and Jim both got regular jobs. Life gets busy for us. We're both married, so you got to keep your wives happy, right? That's right. Absolutely. So yeah. So, man, Jim, I think this is a great episode. Hopefully everybody loves this. If you do love us, and you're listening to us, scroll up to the top, hit that subscribe button, and then scroll back down. At the very bottom, you'll be able to give us a review. Hopefully it's a five star. If it's not, we'll take it. We love it. It helps us improve no matter what. But leave us a review. Tell us what you think. It helps us open those doors to different distilleries to get different guests on. It also keeps us in those charts, which it really doesn't help us, but it is definitely nice to see. Me and Jim always talk about that. It's nice to be for this past two weeks. We were ranked in the top 100 of Apple podcasts for food.

And we've been the number one podcast in spirit's world a number of occasions.

A number of occasions. It's hard to beat out bourbon pursuit dads.

Yeah, I mean, they're the big boys. But, you know, every now and then we get to top the charts and we're very appreciative of our listeners for putting us there.

So we also post regularly on Instagram.

You'll find our posts on Facebook. We are at The Bourbon Road. We also have a website, thebourbonroad.com, where you'll find our podcasts, also our blogs we write on our episodes every week. You'll also find that we have some swag, some glassware on there from our good friends at Distillery Products. You can get some bourbon road glassware and You can find me on instagram at jshan63 you can find me at one big chief And we'll see you on down the bourbon road We do appreciate all of our listeners, and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show, and if so, we would appreciate it if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop in all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.