If You've Had... Ezra Brooks Edition

This weekend I found myself with two-thirds of the entire Ezra Brooks line up. As I probably wouldn’t have more than one of the lineup at a time for quite a while, I decided to pick up the missing piece and do the second install meant of the If You’ve Had… series

In case you missed it last time, the setup is like this: "If you've had Whiskey A then Whiskey B is..." hotter, spicier, sweeter, more floral, etc. Each section is written as compared to one of the whiskeys. So if you've had that one, but not the others then that section will be of the most use to you. Remember there are no value judgments here. You get to decide based on what you know of Whiskey A if Whiskey B sounds like something you'd want to try.

Up tonight is the Ezra Brooks family. Ezra Brooks Black Label 90 proof, Old Ezra 7-year-old 101 proof, and Ezra B 12 year Single Barrel 99 proof. Mind you that with that last one, your mileage may vary since it is a sourced Single Barrel product.

If you’ve had Ezra Brooks Black then…

Old Ezra is: much darker in the glass and shows much less grain on the nose. It is thicker in the mouth and hotter. It has more pronounced fruitiness, baking spice and oak and a longer and warmer finish.

Ezra B is: darker and richer in color. It is sweeter and fruitier on the nose with pear and maple showing instead of grain. The mouth is richer, sweeter and spicier with an oilier mouthfeel. The finish is longer, warmer and shows more mint and oak.

If you’ve had Old Ezra 7 year then…

Ezra Brooks Black Label is: lighter in color and more grain forward on the nose. It is thinner in the mouth with a more watery mouthfeel. By comparison, the mouth is delicate and grain forward. The finish is much shorter, more gentle, but also more bitter.

Ezra B is: sweeter and fruitier on the nose. It is also sweeter and fruitier on the mouth with a creamier mouthfeel. The finishes are similar in heat and length but Ezra B is showing more baking spice.

If you’ve had Ezra B 12 year then…

Ezra Brooks Black Label is: much lighter in color. The nose is more delicate and more grain forward. The mouth shows more grain and baking spice but is also more bitter. The finish is more gentle and much shorter.

Old Ezra is: more tannic on the nose showing more black tea. It shows more oak in the mouth and is less sweet. The finish is similar in heat and length but shows more oak tannins.


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Hayes Parker Reserve Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey

Every so often as I prowl the aisles of local liquor stores looking to broaden my whiskey horizons, I see something that makes me pause. Most of the time that pause is because the item is intriguing. Something that I expect will be good. That I look forward to trying. 

This was not one of those times. On this particular occasion, I saw something that brought out morbid curiosity. The very same morbid curiosity that makes us do things like gawk at an auto accident, go digging in the back of the refrigerator to “find out what that smell is” or buy a bottle of whiskey that has the TerrePure name on it. 

If you weren’t aware, TerrePure is a technology that has been developed by the Terressentia Corporation out of South Carolina to rapidly age spirits. They claim they can take 6 month old bourbon and make it taste like it is four years or better. It is a claim that has many a whiskey aficionado cringing every time they read it even though the CEO throws around the medals their products have won in competitions as signs of the quality of their product. 

Of course most people who know anything about spirits competitions know that anything under gold medals are variations of a participation trophy. I mean, if no medal means it doesn’t “represent the category,” that means a bourbon only has to resemble bourbon to get a medal. Then the lowest medal (bronze) is good. So good = passing. Above that are 4 more level (Category Winners, Double Gold, Gold and Silver) which I have to assume would relate to A, B, C and D of the US letter grade system since Bronze is a passing grade which I always saw as D-. 

All of this went through my head as I stood there looking at the small rack of mini bottles hanging in the middle of the aisle at Total Wine. And it really is neither here nor there except as an explanation as to why I bought two minis instead of a full bottle. But preconceived notions aside, I did not buy this thinking that it would be bad. I bought it thinking that I might learn something. I gave the technology the benefit of the doubt. If I thought it was going to be terrible, I wouldn’t have bought it. Life is too short to waste time drinking terrible whiskey.

Soooo... 

Hayes Parker Reserve Small Batch Bourbon Whiskey

Purchase info: $1.49 for a 50 mL bottle. Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: 45% ABV. Aged at least 6 months.

Nose: Grain forward, ethanol and a vague fruitiness.

Mouth: Brown sugar, silage, raisins, spearmint. 

Finish: Fairly short with lingering minty ethanol notes. 

A frowny face because I do not like this

Thoughts: This is a bad whiskey. If this is an example of what the TerrePure process produces, they can keep it. To me, this product doesn’t taste like bourbon. In fact, it reminds me of the fact that most countries mandate 3 years of aging before you can call something whiskey. This is so bad, it makes me long for the same rule here, if only so to keep people like this from adulterating the good name of bourbon.

For another opinion, this is a photo I took of the actual tasting notes my wife took the day we tasted this one. Obviously, she was feeling a bit silly toward the end.


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Ask Arok: Does Luxco have aging warehouses?

@mindtron asked on twitter: 

@arok this is super inside baseball, but do you know if Luxco have their own warehouses? asking as I just opened the 7yr and I wondered if it was barrels meant for EC12 that started getting too oaky when young.

The 7 year he was referencing is one of my favorite value bourbons Old Ezra 101 7 year shown above. 

Now I love geeky inside-baseball questions and, to be honest, on this one I had no idea. As with all the best questions, this is a question I had never even thought to ask before. So I reached out to my PR contact at Luxco and asked them. I also reached out to a couple other bloggers that I thought might have an answer just in case they declined to answer.

As it stands they were happy to answer this one: 

“Our bourbons are not aged by Luxco; they are aged at the source where Luxco contracts.”

This answer was later corroborated by Josh Wright of SipologyBlog and Chuck Cowdery.

So on to the second part. Of course it is impossible to get know for sure, but it’s an open secret in the bourbon community that at least some of the juice for Ezra Brooks comes from Heaven Hill. And so it stands to reason that barrels that were aging a bit too quickly to make it to 12 years for Elijah Craig, might be sold off to someone who would be happy to use them in a 7 year old bourbon.

Do you have a bourbon question you'd like answered? Just get in contact with me using one of the icons in the sidebar to submit one. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll try to find it from someone who does.

UPDATE: the day after I wrote this, we received the news that Luxco was planning a distillery in Bardstown. I'm assuming there will be aging facilities there. 


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Old Forester "75th Anniversary of Repeal" gift set

Seventy-second Congress of the United States of America
At the Second Session,
Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the fifth
day of December, one thousand nine hundred and thirty-two.
Joint Resolution
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
Resolved by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is hereby proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by conventions in three-fourths of the several States: 
“Article
“Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.
“Sec. 2. The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.
“Sec. 3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.”

On December 5th, 1933 Utah voted to pass the 21st Amendment, becoming the 36th and deciding state to do so. On that day the Prohibition was officially ended. 

75 years later, the Brown-Forman company put out a special gift set of Old Forester to commemorate the passage of the 21st Amendment. Included in the box was a bottle of 100 proof Old Forester in 375 mL flask shaped bottle with an old timey looking label design, an etched Glencairn glass and a replica of the 21st Amendment. 

7 years later, I picked up the gift set at a charity auction during the Kentucky Bourbon Festival for roughly $90. If I was just buying bourbon, I would have horribly over paid. It’s not very old or special, but I was supporting a museum I really enjoy attending (that doesn’t charge people to get in) with my purchase. I paid a relatively low sum to help keep the doors open and the lights on while getting a tiny piece of history back in return. Seems like a fair deal.

Old Forester 100° (circa 2008) “75th Anniversary of Repeal” gift set

Purchase info: ~$90 at the Master Distiller’s Auction to support the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History, Bardstown, KY. 

Details: 50% ABV

Nose: Sweet and fruity with brown sugar and apricot layered over the top of the typical “Brown Forman” latex paint note.

Mouth: Spicy with a nice tingle to the mouth. Ginger, oak, vanilla and caramel. 

Finish: warm ginger and molasses linger. 

Thoughts: I like it. But I’m a fan of Old Forester so that doesn’t surprise me. But there is something that does surprise me. I used to love the Old Forester Signature (100 proof). I recommended it to everyone. But then about a year and a half ago, after not buying it for a while, I got around to reviewing it and found it immensely bitter. This made me sad. So now, I get to taste something from seven years ago and I didn’t find that bitterness. In fact, it tastes just like I remember. So somewhere along the way something happened to Old Forester’s 100 proof expression and like most things in whiskey these days, it wasn’t for the better. Which is too bad. 

Anyway, this is what I’ll be celebrating Repeal Day with on Saturday, hope you have something just as fun.


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Jack Daniel's Single Barrel Barrel Proof

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey. It's the stereotypical favorite whiskey of motorcycle gang toughs doing shots in a dusty roadside joint and the on-stage bottle for the manliest of the rock & roll set. Still, it’s a gentle whiskey. A gentle whiskey with a pop culture presence that most brands would kill for. It’s the largest selling American Whiskey in the world. And… 

And it’s not very good. Is it terrible? No. I’ve had much worse. But it isn’t good by a long stretch.

One thing it does have going for it, if you are into this sort of thing, is that mixes well with cola. I think that might be one of the reasons it’s in every bar in North America. It’s easier to say a “Jack and Coke” than “whiskey and Coke” or “bourbon and Coke.” When people specify a brand of liquor, bars tend to keep it on hand. Even if it’s just so they can upcharge them for it.

A couple of years ago when I reviewed Jack Daniel’s I found it disappointing. It was gentle and sweet. But that’s all it was. At the time I wondered to myself what it might be like if it were a little less gentle. As it stands, there is more water in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s than there is whiskey. What might it be like if there were less water? Or none at all?

Well Brown-Foreman, producers of Jack Daniel’s, must have read my mind because a few months ago they released a Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof brand extension. I’d had my eye on it for a while and finally decided to pull the trigger.

Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Barrel Proof

Purchase info: $55.99, 750 mL bottle. Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: 65.05% ABV. Rick No: R-32. Barrel No: 15-4923. Bottling Date: 9-9-15.

Nose: Dusty oak, cinnamon and raw almond with a bit of fruitiness underneath.

Mouth: Sweet, hot and spicy. Cinnamon, cloves, maple and brown sugar play nicely with a tasty nuttiness.

Finish: Very long and warm. lingering heat and sweet maple nuttiness.

With water: Not as hot, sweeter and more pronounced fruitiness.

Thoughts: This is really good. Much more so than I would have expected. I think this is well worth the $55 I paid for it. Especially at barrel strength. I’m loving this one.


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James E. Pepper 1776 Straight Bourbon Whiskey

I’m a bit odd when it comes to places. Certain ones just make me a bit uncomfortable. And I’m not talking high crime areas either. As an example, the small town my wife is from happened to be on the route that my father took when he picked me up to spend a weekend with him. I always hated that town, specifically one end of the town. I just always got a creepy-crawly feeling whenever we’d drive through.

I get a similar feeling when I drive through Indianapolis. I often joke to my wife as we drive through that I don’t quite believe that it exists. That maybe it is just a giant hallucination we’ve all bought into. There does’t seem to be any reason why it is in the particular location it’s in other than someone pointed to a map and said “that looks like the middle.” (Exaggerating for effect, but read for yourself.) In any case, I get that same creepy-crawly feeling whenever we drive through Indianapolis. As if my body just doesn’t want to be there. And since it is pretty much the only thing worth noting on a drive through Indiana, by extension, I tend to not like Indiana. At least not to drive through.

Which brings me to my main point. I’m about to say something that to some folks will be controversial. Even though I tend to not like driving through Indiana, I do tend to like whiskey from Indiana. Specifically I tend to like products that come from the MGP distillery in Lawrenceburg, IN. I seldom like the (probably fake or at least borrowed) histories that come along with the whiskeys, but unfortunately few folks are willing to let the whiskey inside the bottle be the draw. Which is too bad, those that do tend to do well with them especially when they have a little age on them. High West and Smooth Ambler come to mind.

So it was with interest that I noticed the “Aged 6 Years” on the front label and the “Distilled in Indiana” on the back label when I picked up a bottle of James E. Pepper 1776 bourbon to review. 

James E. Pepper 1776 Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Purchase Info: $35.99 for a 750 mL bottle. Casanova Liquors, Hudson, WI.

Details: Distilled in Indiana. Stated age: 6 years. 46% ABV.

Nose: Dessert-like with baking spices and brown sugar. 

Mouth: Mouth follows the nose with more baking spices, toffee and brown sugar but with the addition of what can only be described as eucalyptus.

Finish: Sweet with a gentle burn. Lingering baking spices. 

Thoughts: MGP makes very good bourbon. This is no exception. Six years old, 90+ proof, for about $35? Yes all around. I’d recommend this one and will be happy to pick up another if it is similarly priced.


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Head to head: 1792 vs 1792 store pick

When you buy as much whiskey as I do, there will be times when you have multiples of a product. Either because you were afraid it would be out of stock soon, it was on sale with a deal too good to pass up or because you just felt like treating yourself and buying it. 

Yes. I have a bit of a shopping problem.

In any case I recently ended up doing exactly that last thing on the list. I was in the store, looking to grab a six pack of beer to serve with the pizza I was making for Friday night, when I noticed a rack of 1792 bourbon in the corner with a big sign at the top proclaiming it to be $23.99. When I got over there, I also noticed that it had a sticker on it proclaiming it to be a “Single Barrel Select” that had been selected for my local liquor store. (Yes, it says selected for, not by.)

A long time ago, I picked up a store selection of 1792 to compare to the base release and found almost no difference between the two. Frankly, I expected the same this time around, but it was a good price and, dang it, I wanted to treat myself. So I picked it up even knowing I had a bottle in the closet at home that I acquired at the Master Distiller’s Auction in Bardstown. But, trying them side-by-side, I was pleasantly surprised. The difference wasn’t huge, but it was big enough to be discernible. 

This is why I love whiskey. This sort of thing is so much fun!

1792 Bourbon: Regular Release vs Store Single Barrel (MGM Wine & Spirits)

Regular Release:

Purchase Info: ~$20, 750 mL bottle. Master Distiller’s Auction, Kentucky Bourbon Festival.

Details: 46.85% ABV

Nose: Spearmint, pear, cinnamon and oak.

Mouth: Soft mouthfeel with a lot of heat. Black pepper, mint, caramel/vanilla and oak. 

Finish: Hot and on the short side of medium. Lingering mint and black pepper.

MGM Wine and Spirits Single Barrel Select:

Purchase Info: $23.99, 750 mL bottle. MGM Wine and Spirits, Prior Lake, MN

Details: 46.85% ABV

Nose: Wet rock, soap, fruit, vanilla, oak and hints of mint.

Mouth: Not as hot and sweeter than the regular release with brown sugar and a generic fruitiness added to the black pepper, mint and oak of the regular release.

Finish: Warm, but on the short side with a lingering sweet fruitiness.

Thoughts: This is what I want when I grab a store pick and do a head-to-head. This is certainly within the 1792 flavor profile, but there are enough differences for me to notice. Actually, I could wish this was the profile of the regular release. Though it is good, I hesitate to buy 1792 normally because I like my bourbon a little on the sweet side with a little less heat than your normal 1792 brings along with it. This is slightly milder, and I think that for me it is just about perfect for that flavor profile.

I completely recommend that you do this experiment yourself if you get the opportunity. Buy a store pick (doesn’t have to be 1792), but grab the regular one too should you have the opportunity. Compare them. Decide which you like better. Figure out why. Because the list of variables here will be smaller, this experiment will go a long way toward helping you decide the sorts of things you like. And heck, it’s just plain fun.


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Heartbreak and Hope (and then Maker's 46 Cask Strength)

It’s autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere. The time of year, in North America when minds turn to falling leaves, kids in school, the upcoming holidays, whiskey and football. In my case, college football. Specifically Minnesota Golden Gopher football. 

I grew up in Wisconsin. A place where the state of Minnesota is deemed a slightly better neighbor than a garbage dump, Illinois or Michigan. But only just. There is no real reason for the enmity. The two states are much more alike than they are different. The land is mostly farms, trees and lakes. The people are mostly farmers, hunters, fishers. They are both mostly rural with a single large population center. Historically, the politics in both both leaned left but with a hearty dose of wariness about new people and ideas when you got to the Northernmost reaches. There seems to be one of those conservative blips happening in my former home right now, but the point still stands that these two states are much more alike than they are different. They are two siblings always sniping at one another. Each convinced that the other is an idiot. 

This, of course extends to their football teams. In the, increasingly hard for me to care about, NFL you have the Packers and the Vikings in the same division of the NFC. And across both sides of the border, you have both Packers fans and Vikings fans. Many of the fans of both teams are insufferable, spewing venom everywhere. I once watched a Viking fan swear at a little kid for wearing a Packer shirt and I’ve seen Packer fans do equally unspeakable things. 

In college, you have the Wisconsin Badgers and the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the same division of the Big Ten. In these parts, college fans can be less venomous than the fans of the pro teams. Not always, but as a general rule you can see Badger fans hoping the Gophers win certain games and Gopher fans hope that the Badgers win certain games. Still, growing up in my family in Wisconsin, you were expected to love the Packers and the Badgers and never waver. And I didn’t. Until I enrolled in the University of Minnesota after high school. 

When I was choosing colleges, there were exactly two schools in the general vicinity of home that offered the Astrophysics that I thought was going to be my calling. And neither had a Badger for a mascot. One was the University of Minnesota and the other was the University of Michigan. Growing up Badger was hard. At the time they were going through a spate of eight straight losing seasons and before that only occasionally flirted with respectability. Going Gopher wouldn’t be any easier, they’d been floating around the bottom half of the Big Ten for thirty years. Michigan on the other hand, was Michigan. That was a team it would be easy to be a fan of. They hadn’t had a losing season in 26 years. Quite a bit longer than I had been alive at that point. 

But the football team is only a determinant of which school you go to if you are a football recruit. As you might have guessed from my choice of major above, I was not a football player. And so I went with the closer and cheaper option in Minnesota and forever changed my college football allegiance. I’ve always had a special spot in my heart for the Michigan-Minnesota game though, both because they are historic rivals and because of my own history. 

All of which brings me to this past Saturday and the game between a heavily-favored Michigan Wolverines and the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Michigan was ranked as the 15th best team in the country. Unranked Minnesota was not living up to expectations. Michigan’s coach was the new hotness, a former player returning home from coaching his way into the Super Bowl. Minnesota’s coach had just retired a few days before due to complications from epilepsy after bringing the program back to the brink of respectability. 

Going into it, this was a game that I expected my team would lose. But then, a funny thing happened. The Gophers were competitive. More so than they should have been with a extensive injuries and an interim coach. The lead went back and forth before the Gophers finally went ahead on a last second touchdown. But upon review it was determined that the player was down one yard short of the goal line giving them 19 seconds to go the final three feet to win an emotional game. But after two tries, time ran out. They were half a yard short. 

In the span of 4 minutes I went from the highest of highs as my scrappy team looked to win an emotional game for a beloved coach to the lowest of lows when poor mistakes brought heartbreak. I am a fan of Minnesota Golden Gopher football and that means I am always prepared for heartbreak, but it also means that I always have hope that the next time my heart won’t be broken. 

It’s kind of how I feel about bourbon these days. No matter how much I pay, I’m prepared to be heartbroken. You feel like you can’t lose, that no one would put out a bourbon that expensive and have it be disappointing. But it happens more and more often. Fancy packaging hiding a mediocre product. And then there are times when the package gives you nothing and you just have to hope that you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Heartbreak and hope. Two sides of the same coin. If you don’t have hope that something can be good, you’ll never be heartbroken when it isn’t. But if you don’t hope for something to be good, why are you even buying it?

Maker’s 46 Cask Strength

Purchase Info: $39.95 for a 375 mL bottle. Maker’s Mark Distillery gift shop, Loretto, KY. 

Details: Bourbon finished with Oak Staves. 54.45% ABV. Remarkably plain packaging for something with the Maker’s Mark name on it.

Nose: Very sweet with caramel and vanilla. Nicely nutty with hints of cherry, cinnamon clove and nutmeg. 

Mouth: Sweet and warm with the spicy tingle of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg. Chocolate, nuts, cherry and oak follow. 

Finish: Pleasant sweet warmth slowly reveals a bitter nuttiness and lingering baking spices. 

A little heart because I love this!

Thoughts: This is one of the times that, despite the homely package it comes in, you hope that a bourbon will be amazing and it turns out to actually be so. As you might expect from a bourbon put out by Maker’s Mark, this is an amazingly easy bourbon to drink at barrel proof. The warmth is not so hot that you’ll need to add water. It’s very sweet, but that sweetness is balanced by baking spices and other rich flavors. In fact, I’d say this might be one of the nicest desserts one could pour. I love this one. If you are in the area of the Makers Mark Distillery, as I believe this is only available at the gift shop, stop and pick some up.


BourbonGuy.com accepts no advertising. It is solely supported by the sale of the hand-made products I sell at the BourbonGuy Gifts Etsy store. If you'd like to support BourbonGuy.com, visit BourbonGuyGifts.com. Thanks!