So we have risen like the proverbial phoenix and are back with a podcast just for you, our loyal Crusaders. A little something to brighten your Friday commute. On this cast we do a tasting of some fantastic Knobs…(Knob Creek Single Barrels) and talk about some of the happenings since we last recorded. We hope you enjoy and that we come back with full force, fist shaking bourbon entertainment! Cheers!

Darren and Chris

Downloadable link: Around the Barrel #6

Hello, Crusaders!

We had ourselves one helluva time this past week on the Rogue Buss and at the Bourbon Classic in Louisville, KY. We had the opportunity to record a cast with some of our favorite people, and we’re happy to share it with you! In it, we talk about some of our experiences during the week as well as our thoughts on some timely bourbon issues. I’ll link below to everyone involved, and we highly recommend you check them out. Special thanks to Mike Woods of Sips, Smokes, and Suds for providing his recording services! And don’t worry, we’ll be coming out with some posts about our personal experiences and pictures from the week, in particular Kentucky Peerless Distilling Co., Copper & Kings, Four Roses, and Castle & Key, soon!

Cheers!

LISTEN HERE: The Grand Podcast

Bill and Matt – Modern Thirst

Ginny and Charlie Tonic – The Charlie Tonic Hour

Jonathan and Tamara – Eight Piece Box

Mike and Zane – Sips, Suds, and Smokes

Melissa – Bourbon and Banter

Special thanks to the Rogue Buss sponsor Four Roses and the Bourbon Classic!

P.S. We’ll tell you what a Rogue Buss is soon.

Just for fun I decided to record a couple bourbon sounds to use for text message sounds on my phone. I thought I would share them with you guys. One is a cork popping, and the other is a cork popping with a pouring sound. Enjoy!

Cork

Cork with pour

Greetings, Crusaders!

Like Old Rip Van Winkle himself, we have awoken from our slumber and are back with a new Around the Barrel podcast! This time around we go through some of the things that have happened while we were away: Darren talks about the Great American Whiskey Fair and becoming a Maker’s Mark Ambassador, we taste some non-bourbon whiskies, and we have a discussion about Wild Turkey. Note, we did have a few technical issues with the audio since we’re both in new places, so we apologize in advance. Double note: Elijah Craig Barrel Proof is 12 years…stated incorrect age in cast. Whoops!

***Listen here: Around The Barrel #5***

Of particular note, Albert Schmid’s new book about the Manhattan cocktail has come out. You can check it out by clicking the picture! Listen to our interview with Albert covering this book and his career here.

We’re also going to be the bourbon experts at a fun bourbon tasting, music, and food event with the Cincinnati Cyclones hockey team on February 5th, 2016! The bourbon list is still in the works, but is sounding like it’s going to be a great deal for $35. Definitely check it out, and let us know if you’re coming!

Here are our brief thoughts about what we tasted in this Around the Barrel cast. Listen to the cast for our complete tasting thoughts:

Cheers!

Crusaders, sincere apologies for the delay on getting this one out, but we had a great deal of technical difficulty in post production. If you notice anything abnormal in the cast itself, that’s probably why. And by abnormal, I don’t just mean our usual abnormal selves! In this Around the Barrel, we talk through our article about the “science” behind several of the accelerated aging techniques as well as do a tasting of the Small Batch Collection from Jim Beam. For those of you playing at home, that’s Knob Creek, Basil Hayden’s, Booker’s, and Baker’s. Also, be sure to check out our entries, as well as all the others, in the If I Had a Benjamin series over at Modern Thirst!

Cheers, and enjoy!

Around the Barrel #4: Listen Here

Ratings (listen to the cast for our full tasting notes!):

Basil Hayden’s: 7-8 years old, 80 proof. Rarity: Albino Squirrel.

Chris: 2.5 Barrels

Darren: Scratch

Knob Creek: 9 years old, 100 proof. Rarity: Squirrel

Chris: 2 Barrels

Darren: 2.5 Barrels

Baker’s: 7 years old, 107 proof. Rarity: Albino Squirrel

Chris: 2.5 Barrels

Darren: 2+ Barrels

Booker’s: 6-8 years old, 124-131 proof. Rarity: Albino Squirrel

Chris: 3 Barrels

Darren: 3 Barrels

Fellow Bourbon Crusaders, we were lucky enough to get to sit down and talk with Albert Schmid, author of The Old Fashioned: An Essential Guide to the Original Whiskey Cocktail and the Gourmand Award winning The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook. We first met Albert at a book signing in Lexington, KY about two years ago, and we were happy run into him again at the Bourbon Classic this past February. We were very excited to learn that he has a new book due out this September on the Manhattan cocktail. He is one of the most interesting characters in the world of bourbon. Just a few highlights of his impressive resume include being an accomplished writer, chef, and professor and director of Hotel-Restaurant Management and Hospitality Management Departments at Sullivan University in Louisville, KY.

This was one of our most enjoyable casts to date, and we hope you’ll think so too! We are extremely grateful to have had this opportunity to talk in depth with Albert, and we can vouch for the quality of his books mentioned above. So sit back, relax with a nice bourbon, and enjoy!

Listen to the Podcast here: BOTB Interviews Albert Schmid 

Fellow Bourbon Crusaders, you’ve been hearing about it for months, and now we finally get to tell you about it: The Bourbon Classic! It was a whirlwind of a week, but we couldn’t imagine having much more fun. In this ATB, we talk about the highlights of our experience at a slew of distilleries as well as the event itself. We have some news, as always, and a special dedication to Leonard Nimoy with our Pon Farr shot. Our individual distillery pieces will keep rolling out over the next few weeks, along with more pictures, so look for those on the blog site.

Our BBB Rating for the week was easily a 5 Barrel Unicorn, so we hope to see y’all there next year!

Listen to the cast here: Around the Barrel #3: The Bourbon Classic and enjoy some of our favorite moments from the Classic in the gallery below.

Special thanks to Andrea Parr, FSA Management Group; Larry from Mint Julep Tours, the guys from the Bourbon Review, and of course the Buss Club for letting us have an unreasonable amount of fun. Cheers!

P.S. In case you just need a quick fix of either our distillery visits or the Bourbon Classic experience itself, here are the time-stamps:

Distilleries – 16:15

Bourbon Classic – 46:22

Hello fellow Bourbon Crusaders! We’re back with another edition of Around the Barrel! If you want to know why we said Crusaders instead of Evangelists, you’ll just have to listen and find out. In this episode we talk about the Four Magic Words in bourbon (Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey), how we choose a bottle we don’t know much about, the Jalopy Point in pricing, and have a little rant about some of our issues with many of the bourbon groups out there on social media.

We also enjoy a little Turkey Shoot tasting of Wild Turkey’s Kentucky Spirit, Rare Breed, and Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel. I’ll put our ratings at the bottom in case you just need a quick fix.

As many of you know, we are attending nearly a week’s worth of media events for the Bourbon Classic next week. Let us know in the comments, on Facebook, or on Twitter (@BOTBBourbon) if you have any burning questions you want us to try and sleuth out while on our whirlwind tour of distilleries, a cooperage, and Vendome Copper.

Listen to the cast here!

Around the Barrel #2

Ratings:

Wild Turkey Kentucky Spirit Single Barrel

Chris: 3.5 Barrels   Darren: 3.5 Barrels

Rarity: Albino Deer

Wild Turkey Rare Breed

Chris: 2.5 Barrels   Darren: 3 Barrels

Rarity: Albino Squirrel

Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Liquor Barn Selection

Chris: 3.5 Barrels   Darren: 3.5 Barrels   (Note: we were both almost at 4 Barrels)

Rarity: Giraffe (need to be near a liquor barn)

Links mentioned in the show:

Bourbon Classic

Kentucky Bourbon Affair

Podcast #1: What Makes Bourbon a Bourbon? 

A Bourbon Primer

Hello, fellow Bourbon Evangelists! We’re back with a little something new for you. Sort of like our version of the Fireside Chat, we bring you the first Around the Barrel cast! In an effort to record more often and get information to you in a more timely manner, we’ve decided to start doing some casts in-between our large historical and scientific pieces. These will include news, events, bourbon reviews, commentary on the bourbon world, and anything else we get into while sippin’ around the barrel. We hope that this way we will have more time for our larger research pieces, as well as allow more time to rant quixotically about news, reviews, and miscellaneous bourbon culture. Let us know what you think in the comments, or on our Facebook and Twitter feeds!

Herein we talk about upcoming events, new releases, our coverage of the Bourbon Classic, the bourbon boom, non-distiller producers, and review some high-proof bourbons. For those of you playing at home, we review Old Grand Dad 114 Proof, Stagg Jr., and Willett 9 Year single barrel with some surprising results. Cheers!

Listen to the cast here:

Around the Barrel #1 1/18/15

Here are links to things we discuss in the cast:

Bourbon Classic

Derby Museum Legends Series

Bourbon Boom Statistics courtesy of the Courier-Journal

Maraschino Cherry Recipe – We recommend adding less Luxardo, some orange zest and about 1 tsp almond extract.

Hello fellow Bourbon Evangelists! We’re back, finally, and hopefully better than ever! In this cast we take on the first part of Prohibition from Post-Revolutionary America to the ratification of the 18th Amendment. Darren will talk about all his excellent information from the Great American Whiskey Fair in Columbia, SC. Then we also have a tasting to compare some of the recent label changes from Buffalo Trace, as well as our usual news, Cocktail of the Day, Bottom Shelf Bourbon of the Day, 2/2 MDs agree and general ridiculousness. It went a little longer than usual, but we hope you enjoy it! As always, let us know what you think!

Listen here: Prohibition Part 1 Podcast

Cocktail of the Day Recipe: The Whiskey Sour

2oz Bourbon – I used charter 101, high proof is good

½ lemon, juiced

2 tsps sugar (if you have super fine, use less, I dont, so there) or 1/2 oz simple syrup

½ egg white

splash water (because sugar doesn’t dissolve easily into ETOH)

Shake for 20 seconds

Garnish with lemon twist, maraschino cherry and few splashes orange bitters on the froth. You can serve on ice as I prefer, or in a chilled glass to be more traditional.

Today’s Tasting:

Old Charter Number 8:

      Darren: 1 Barrel   Chris: 1.5 Barrels

      Rarity: Albino Squirrel

Old Charter 8 Year Old:

      Darren: 1.5 Barrels (nearly 2)  Chris: 3 Barrels

      Rarity: Albino Bear (though increasingly harder to find hiding on the bottom shelf)

Eagle Rare 10 Year Old Small Batch

      Darren: 2.5 Barrels   Chris: 2.5 Barrels

      Rarity: Albino Squirrel

Eagle Rare 10 Year Old Single Barrel

      Darren: 3 Barrels  Chris: 3.5 Barrels

      Rarity: Giraffe

Bottom Shelf Bourbon of the Day

Ancient Age 90 Proof

      BOTB Rating: 2 Barrels

      Rarity: Squirrel 

Intro and Outro Music: The Constitution by Schoolhouse Rock