Blind Tasting No. 6 Recap
Bundle o’ Bourbon
This weekend the NEAT Whiskey Clubbers challenged their senses with three bourbons, all with different mash bills. As I’m sure we all know, bourbon is a category of American whiskey and is the USA’s distinctive spirit, meaning it can only be made in the US. It also must be from a majority corn mash bill (51+%), distilled to no more than 80% ABV and stored in new charred oak barrels at no more than 62.5% ABV. The main distinguishers that you need to remember are that bourbon is from mostly corn and it’s stored in new, charred oak barrels. If you want to read about how those unique differentiators came to be, head over to the blog.
With bourbon, there’s some wiggle room for what grains make up the other 49% of the mash bill and usually they’re rye, barley and wheat. A traditional bourbon mash bill is about 75% corn with the remaining 25% split between rye and malted barley. But some mash bills trend towards high-corn (85-100% corn) or high-rye (20+% rye). Occasionally you’ll come across wheated bourbons that use wheat (~20%) in place of rye. And then there are some bourbon mash bills that include all four grains. The reason for these differences among bourbon mash bills is flavor. Rye brings spicy notes to the bourbon, like baking spice, pepper and herbs, while wheat brings creamy and fruity notes. Malted barley is mostly used for its enzymes that are necessary for fermentation, however it also provides some rich, malty notes.
Each distillery and brand has their own bourbon mash bills and during this blind tasting we tried three different ones. Since it was blind, no one knew what bourbons we were tasting. It was amazing to see the intricacies of each bourbon that everyone’s palates were able to pick up on. I’ll tell you what we tried.
The first bourbon was a high-proof, high-rye bourbon called Old Grand-Dad 114. It’s a Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey produced by Jim Beam Distillery with a mash bill of 63% corn, 27% rye and 10% malted barley. It’s aged for at least 4 years in new, charred oak barrels and bottled at 57% ABV (hence the 114 in the name). Notes of pumpkin spice, pepper, red hots, honeysuckle, candied apple and vanilla were picked up by the participants. It was immediately apparent that this bourbon had a rye influence in the mash bill.
From there we moved on to a bourbon with no other grains besides corn, Hudson Baby Bourbon. This New York Straight Bourbon Whiskey is made from 100% New York corn by Tuthilltown Distillery. It’s aged for 2-4 years in 15, 25 and 53 gal new, charred American oak barrels and bottled at 46% ABV. This bourbon had notes of fresh floured dough, sour candies, green apples, grape, plum, whipped honey butter and vanilla. This bourbon was completely different from Old Grand-Dad.
Finally, we ended with a wheated bourbon from Heaven Hill Distillery called Larceny. This Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey has about 68% corn, 20% wheat and 12% malted barley in the mash bill. It’s aged for at least 4 years in new, charred American oak barrels and bottled at 46% ABV. This was a crowd favorite and brought forth notes of apples, red fruit, over-ripened strawberries, banana bread, molasses, graham crackers and royal icing.
Picking out the type of mash bill used to produce each bourbon was very challenging. Almost everyone was able to pick out that Old Grand-Dad was a high-rye bourbon, but Baby Bourbon and Larceny were much harder to pinpoint. Most thought Baby Bourbon was a wheated bourbon because of its fruity and baked-goods characteristics. For Larceny, the crowd was divided between traditional, wheated and four-grain mash bills. In the end, we had one couple guess all three mash bills correctly!
