Woodford Reserve Cocktail Bitters and Bourbon Cherries by Bourbon Barrel Foods

January 23, 2018 Eric Burke

Woodford Reserve Cocktail Bitters by Bourbon Barrel Foods

As you might have noticed, I have been on a bit of a rum kick lately. Rereading Fred Minnick's wonderful book on the subject while on a cruise ship in the Carribean surrounded by tasty rum (and even some tasty rum drinks) will do that to you.

My favorite rum drink that I had on the trip was a Rum Old Fashioned. They used a spice-infused rum and house-made bitters in the drink (no I'm not trying to be fancy, it was Bacardi 8-year-old rum which the bartenders had infused with spices, not Capt. Morgan or its ilk). When I got home, I knew that I needed to try to reproduce this drink at home. What I landed on was a lot easier than infusing rum with spices. All I did was use a bitters that replicated the experience.

In this case, that bitters was Woodford Reserve Sassafras and Sorghum Bitters. I'd had this particular bottle on hand for quite a while. In fact, it was long enough that I had forgotten I had it. And so I did what any geek would do when I realized that something I had on hand forever was something I really enjoyed. I went looking to find more.

When I got to the website, I found they had a few varieties. I wasn't going to buy five more bottles of bitters without trying them, but luckily they had a five pack of small bottles that would allow me to figure out if the rest of their varieties were any good. Here are my impressions. I used each of them in an Old Fashioned.

Woodford Reserve Barrel Aged Bitters by Bourbon Barrel Foods

Purchase Info: $25 from BourbonBarrelFoods.com

General Thoughts: These are all highly aromatic. The tiny bottles are kind of hard to use without making a mess (as seen in the photo above) but if you progress to a large bottle, they have a dropper in the cap to minimize the mess.

Aromatic Bitters: Pretty basic aromatic bitters flavor profile. Nicely spicy and works very well with bourbon. It's a nice replacement for other Aromatic bitters if you want to move away from Angostura or support a small business.

Sassafras and Sorghum Bitters: This one has a lot of baking spice flavors. It feels sweeter and richer than the aromatic and works very well with both bourbon and rum.

Orange Bitters: Very potent. There is a lot of orange flavor, but not a lot of spiciness. This isn't my favorite Orange Bitters. It works fine, but I'd want to use it mixed with the Aromatic to give it more bitter and spice notes.

Chocolate Bitters: Chocolate and nutty. Overpowers the Old Fashioned but has a nice spiciness on the back end. I'd use this sparingly. I'm not sure that an Old Fashioned is the right drink for this.

Spiced Cherry Bitters: This is named very accurately. Very spicy upfront with perfumed cherry flavors appearing on the back end. This is tasty, but if perfume notes bother you, think about passing on it. I thought it actually worked nicely alongside the chocolate bitters to make a chocolate covered cherry Old Fashioned.

Woodford Reserve Bourbon Cherries by Bourbon Barrel Foods

I just happened to notice these this past weekend while wandering the aisles at Total Wine and thought I might as well grab them to toss into here as well.

Purchase Info: $14.99 at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN. They are also available from BourbonBarrelFoods.com for $16.

Thoughts: The syrup is richly cherry flavored and very sweet. Not a lot of spice here. The cherries themselves are sweet but are a bit tough without the crisp snap of ones I made at home. They work well if, like me, you've run out of the homemade ones and they are a huge step up from the glowing red ones you find in most supermarkets.

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!

My Wandering Eye: Don Q Gran Añejo

January 4, 2018 Eric Burke

My wandering eye is a series reacting to the crazy rising prices in the bourbon world. We’ve reached a place where even average products have hit the range where they compete price-wise with other types of aged spirits. If I’m going be asked to drop $40 to $70 on a mid-range bourbon, I might as well see what else I can get for that money. See if another spirits category offers something that is downright tasty in that price range. The goal isn’t to find cheap spirits, but to maximize the quality, I’m getting at a particular price point.

Last week I was on my first Carribean cruise. One of the stops was Puerto Rico. Having realized through this series that I enjoy rum, even if I don't know much about it yet, I made sure that a couple of bottles of the spirit came home with me. When in Rome and all that.

I don't know a lot about what to look for in a Rum. I haven't spent enough time to learn more than the basics. But I planned ahead and loaded my friend Fred Minnick's book Rum Curious on my Kindle before I left. I may not have tasted a lot of Rum, but I know he did, and he recorded what he learned in that book, so it made an excellent place to start.

I spent most of my short visit in San Juan visiting the old Forts, but on my way back to the ship I made sure to stop off at the duty-free store so that I could see what they had. My mother-in-law had given me an ultimatum that she wanted to buy me a bottle of Rum for Christmas while we were on the cruise and had given me a $50 limit. Luckily, for Rum that seemed to be a pretty generous limit. I ended up settling on the Don Q Gran Añejo, mostly because Fred said it was good, the bottle said it was 9-12 years old, and it was exactly $50.

Now I knew nothing about the Don Q brand when I picked it off the shelf. But after visiting their website for a little bit, I realized that they seem to be fairly forthcoming with their information. The company that produces the brand (Destilería Serrallés, Inc.) dates back to the early to mid-1800s and the sugar plantations that were on the island. They started producing Rum in the 1860s. They use water from the Río Inabón as their exclusive water source and their distillery is located outside of Ponce, Puerto Rico. They do their best to be environmentally friendly in their processes. The Don Q brand itself was launched after the end of Prohibition and was named after Don Quixote. Though they don't get into a lot of the data points of production (for instance, Fred Minnick reports that the off the still proof of their Rums are 94.5% ABV which is not on their website), I did enjoy making my way through all the information that they do provide.

Don Q Gran Añejo

Purchase Info: $50 for a 750 mL bottle at the Duty-Free Store in the San Juan Cruise Port, San Juan, Puerto Rico. (Available locally for $59.99 at Total Wine, Burnsville, MN.)

Details: 40% ABV. Blended from rums between 9 and 12 years old.

Nose: Brown Sugar, vanilla bean ice cream, cola.

Mouth: Soft mouthfeel with vanilla bean ice cream, caramel and a hint of spice.

Finish: Gentle burn with lingering caramel, baking spice, root beer and a hint of menthol after it is all done.

Thoughts: This is a tasty drink whether you are having it in a glass with a little ice or in an Old Fashioned. It is sweet with just enough spice and menthol to keep it interesting. It's certainly one I hope to pick up again.

Barrel Aged in a Bottle Oak Infusion Spiral

July 20, 2017 Eric Burke

It really is amazing what you find when you clean your office. A little over a week ago, I got fed up with the disorganized mess that used to be my office. When I realized that I had started to record my monthly (ish) Patreon video in another room, I decided that the time had come to bring it back to a less stressful level of disorder.

As I was cleaning, I found something that I received on a visit to a local craft distiller that I took with a couple of friends. It's an Oak Infusion Spiral created by The Barrel Mill here in Minnesota. He was talking about some failed experiments that he had tried and held one up. Since he wasn't using it, he asked if we wanted them. There were three of them and three of us, so we all said yes. Upon returning home, I promptly set mine on one of my desks and proceeded to let the sediment of time cover it in a pile of papers, notebooks, and folders.

So when I found it last week, I was anxious to do something with it. While I have almost no desire to add it directly to a bottle of spirits, I did have a couple of ideas of what to do with it. I was in the process of making a batch of orange bitters and tossed half of it in there while the liquid rested. To be honest, I never thought to do a control batch on that, so I have no idea if it helped, hurt or did nothing.

With the other half of the spiral though, I decided to get a little more ambitious. I made 750 mL of Manhattan (minus the water/ice) and poured half of it into each of two 375 mL bottles. With one, I put the spiral into and with the other, I left it out. I figured I would let them both sit for seven to ten days and then try each along with a freshly made Manhattan using the same ingredients. (I'll be setting the no spiral one aside to allow it to bottle age for three to six months. Look for that post in the future.)

The main question I wanted to answer was: does this thing do anything? The answer to that is yes. The Manhattan with the oak spiral is noticeably silkier and is better integrated than the freshly made one that I am having next to it. So that's it. The stick does the trick.

Or does it? Oaked versus fresh doesn't really tell you if it was the time it sat or the spiral doing the work. To answer that, I tried the 10-day-old oaked one next to the 10-day-old non-oaked one. To be honest, I expected that there would be little difference between the two since there wasn't a noticeable "oakier" flavor in the bottle with the stick versus the freshly made drink. But there was a huge difference. The non-oaked version might be the worst Manhattan I've ever had. It basically tastes like I used old ingredients.

To sum up, I can't say if this will help your whiskey should you stick it in the bottle. But it might help your cocktails. Just don't try to use it with ones that use non-spirit ingredients to minimize spoilage.

Announcing: BourbonGuyGifts.com

November 17, 2016 Eric Burke

A little over a month ago, I got it into my head to buy 1000 whiskey barrel bungs. It took a little fast talking to convince the wife that it was a good idea. Especially since we had recently learned that my biggest client was going to be drastically reducing their need for me. But I had an idea that I wanted to try.

A used bourbon barrel ready to be dismantled.

About six months ago, my wife filled her tasting journal. She asked me to come up with a new one for her. I tried a few things, but I finally came up with a workable design and format a couple weeks ago. Now she can stop using the spiral bound notebook she picked up in the school supply aisle at Target.

Two weeks ago, I noticed someone from South Dakota selling used wine and whiskey barrels on craigslist. At this point, it was a foregone conclusion that I'd be getting at least one. Even though I had other things to do, the barrel had to come apart first.

What do any of these things have to do with one another? Well, it is no secret that I love whiskey. Bourbon especially. I love bourbon in a glass, but I also love everything else about it. I like seeing barrels and bottles. And every time I go to Kentucky, I have to convince myself to not buy the things created from barrels and bottles.

I love building things. I like creating real things with my own two hands. It's exciting and real in a way that creating a digital file never will be. And since I had the time and opportunity to do so, I decided to start creating things. Some big, some small. And as of today, I am offering them for sale. I've created an Etsy store, but you can get there by going to BourbonGuyGifts.com.

I've created a lot of things so far. Art prints, holiday ornaments made from whiskey bungs, coat racks and candle holders made from staves, Bourbon Tasting journals, a bourbon tasting kit complete with glasses and more. And with more to come. I have a lot of ideas and to this point, I've only made enough to get the store up. so check back often and if you have an idea you'd like to see created that I don't have up yet, drop me a note in the comments.

My Wandering Eye: Chateau de Laubade Armagnac, 1976

November 15, 2016 Eric Burke

In case you’re new to the "My Wandering Eye..." series, let me recap. Bourbon prices are creeping up. So much so that even mediocre products have hit the range where they compete price-wise with other types of aged spirits. A $50 750 ml bottle of Cognac or Armagnac doesn’t sound outrageous next to a $50 Old Forester 1870 or a $50 375 mL of the Jim Beam Harvest collection. As a response to this, my eye has started wandering down other aisles of the liquor store. Sometimes I save money. Sometimes I spend the same amount. And other times...

I recently turned 40. Forty is a pretty big birthday. One of the milestones where you take stock of your life and make sure it is where you want it to be. I remember a couple quotes from a terminally ill Steve Jobs.

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?"

and

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”

After taking stock of my life, I realized that though my life is pretty good right now, there were a few things I wanted to accomplish yet. If my life ended today, I wouldn't be doing all of the things I want to do.

I recently lost one of my biggest clients. On my birthday, they were found guilty of fraud and are no longer allowed to do business in the state of Minnesota. It's kind of a big deal for my bottom line, but it has allowed me to take stock of where I'm at and realize that though I love being creative, design is only one facet of it. There is so much more that I want to do.

To that end, in addition to my design business, I'm starting a new business venture (details to come soon). I've taken on a freelance writing gig. Basically, I'm in the process of making my freelance design business just one of many ways I make money and express my creativity.

It's a scary and yet satisfying time. It's scary because I've been doing one thing professionally for the last decade and doing anything else is a little uncomfortable. It's scary because I am flexing different parts of my mental muscles so that I might do and create new things. And yet that last one is also the most satisfying part of it all. In the end, I may have to go back to design full time. I may have to pound the pavement and hustle up new clients. Who knows? The future has yet to be written, and I'm just going to do what I love so that I make sure that I am living my life doing what it is that I'd want to do should any particular day end up being my last. At forty, I figure that my story is only half written. It's time to start making sure the second half is the more satisfying one.

In the spirit of the milestone that a round number birthday is, I decided that I wanted to buy myself something special. Due to the previous examples of the "My Wandering Eye..." series, I knew that I was really starting to enjoy brandy. So when I saw an Armagnac on the shelf at one of my local liquor stores distilled the year I was born? Well, I had to get it.

Chateau de Laubade Armagnac, 1976

Purchase info: $159.99 for a 750 mL bottle, Total Wine, Burnsville, MN

Details: Distilled in 1976, blended and bottled November 2015. Bas Armagnac.

Nose: Caramel and brown sugar, ripe fruit, herbal notes and rich leather.

Mouth: Caramel, brown sugar, mint, dried fruit, leather, and oak.

Finish: Sweet caramel coats your throat before making room for a very slight warmth and some lingering oak and herbal notes.

Thoughts: This is a fantastic drink. Worthy of celebrating a milestone. Sweet, fruity and a real treat for the bourbon lover.

Not Whiskey, But Tangential: A Selection From BourbonBarrel Foods.

November 1, 2016 Eric Burke

I’ve lived most of my life in Minnesconsin. It’s my name for a region that encompasses a good sized portion of both Minnesota and Wisconsin. Having lived on both sides of the imaginary line that runs down the center of the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers, I know from experience that the culture of both is essentially the same. They both celebrate deer hunting in the Fall and fishing pretty much any time of year. They both call a casserole a “hotdish.” They both have a weird fondness for Jello with other foodstuffs inserted into it. And farming, both dairy and corn, is a major industry. I guess the major point of difference is whether the football teams you root for wear green and yellow and red and white or purple and yellow and maroon and gold.

Historically, in both places, the food has been bland and tended to be either white or transparent. I don’t think it was until I started to travel to St. Paul as a teenager that I realized that food should have spices. The fanciest we got was to sprinkle a little garlic salt on the venison when Mom wasn’t looking.

I think this might be why I like to cook so much. I love flavor. I love to see how various ingredients play and meld and sometimes create something new. It’s the reason I love bourbon too. It is seldom that you will describe a bourbon's flavor as delicate.

It was with all this in mind that, while at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, I stopped by the Bourbon Barrel Foods booth. I like bourbon, good things tend to come from barrels, and I like foods. I was curious to see what sort of concoctions came from a combination of the three.

Initially, I grabbed a container of Bourbon Smoked Pepper and the Woodford Reserve Bourbon Smoked Chef’s Spice Blend. Both were wonderfully rich and smokey. I use the black pepper to season eggs for breakfast, and I love the Chef’s Spice Blend on every meat I cook on the grill. Hamburgers, chicken, steak, you name it, it works on all of them. It even tastes good on potatoes. Really some killer stuff.

I liked that Bourbon Smoked Chef’s Spice Blend so much that I soon used it up. Luckily they also sell on their website. So I popped another container of the spice blend in my cart and went looking at the rest of the items they offered.

Woodford Reserve Bourbon Smoked Lemon Pepper
This uses the Bourbon Smoked Pepper, lemon peel, onion, garlic and various other spices. It’s tasty enough. I tried it on chicken and fish, but I suppose it would work on anything you might want lemon pepper flavored.

Bourbon Smoked Sugar
Beautifully smoky on the nose and mouth. Once I purchased this, I had a hard time deciding how I was going to use this. I wouldn’t want that kind of smoke flavor on my morning oatmeal. And though it might taste good in a cookie, I didn’t buy it in a package big enough to use that way. Eventually, I came up with the perfect use for it, though. Simple syrup for an Old Fashioned. It adds just a hint of smoke and complexity to the drink.

Bourbon Smoked Garlic Salt
I can see the salt crystals. I can see the dried garlic. I can certainly smell the garlic, but I don’t get any overt smoke on this one. That said it is still one of the better garlic salts I’ve used. Unfortunately, I use only a bare minimum of salt in my cooking, and I use garlic salt even less. Good thing I only sprung for the .75 ounce container. I have a feeling this one will stick around for a while.

These folks are creating some excellent stuff. I’m enjoying almost all of them and will certainly be looking for more. Thankfully it looks like some of their products are available in Minnesota. Apparently, I’m not the only Minnesconsin resident that has woken up to the fact that it is ok to have flavorful food.

Limited Release Premixed Cocktail: Orange Label Hochstadter’s Slow & Low Rock and Rye, 100 proof

September 6, 2016 Eric Burke

Limited Release Orange Label, 100 proof Hochstadter’s Slow & Low Rock and Rye

It is my wife's birthday tonight. The one night per year where if I am going to be lazy about serving her a cocktail, I had better be serving something good. Something with a good whiskey presence. My wife knows her whiskey and I can't slip something subpar past her—not that I'd try mind you.

Luckily, I saw an email a few weeks ago from Ace Spirits that said they had this in stock. I ran up to Hopkins the next day and picked up a bottle. Immediately upon trying my first sip, I tweeted :

Picked up a bottle of limited edition 100 proof Low & Slow Rock n Rye @AceSpirits. Wow! Look for the orange label on this one. Very good!
— Eric Burke (@arok) August 26, 2016

Hochstadter's Slow & Low Rock and Rye, Limited Orange Label, 100 proof

Purchase info: $36.99 for a 750 mL bottle at Ace Spirits, Hopkins, MN

Details: Made with 8 year old whiskey, 50% ABV.

Nose: Orange zest with floral notes backing it. You can tell there is whiskey in here.

Mouth: Warm in the mouth with orange zest, honey and light floral notes. Once again, you can tell there is whiskey in there though it isn't the main flavor component.

Finish: Lingering orange floral notes

Thoughts: Wow! This is amazing. The regular Slow & Low made me want to try making my own. This makes me realize that I don't need to, not while I have this bottle at least. The orange label is much less sweet than the black label and has much more whiskey presence. It holds up to ice well, but is tasty enough right out of the bottle as well.

If you find this and like orange with your whiskey, pick it up. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Updated Statement of Ethics

August 20, 2016 Eric Burke

As discussed last week, the time has come to figure out a solution to the fact that whiskey has gotten expensive enough that I can't keep going the way I have been. I received a lot of lovely notes both in the comments and via other means. The gist of most of them was that a big majority of you do not have an objection to reviewers accepting review samples if the trust is there and that I have sufficiently built up that trust already.

Other comments said they would be ok with ads, the issue for me is that ads are ugly and more importantly, they don't pay very well. I think I am already making more from my patrons than I would via ads. I love my patrons. I hope more of you will consider signing up!* The more of you there are, the more I often I will create the "bonus content" that they get.

To that end I've made a couple changes to the Statement of Ethics for the site. The changes are in bold-italic type below. I still plan to buy most of what I review, but will no longer feel that I shouldn't take samples if offered. I will still disclose that acceptance. Both because it is the right thing to do and because I don't want to get fined by the FTC. I love going on distillery tours and will pay for those that I go on. If however I see a good article coming out of it, I have no qualms setting up a private visit.

That's it. I still believe in transparency. I will still end up buying most of what I review, but since the policy has changed, I thought it would be a good idea to call out the changes.

This is document will be kept up to date. Things will be added to as things come up. Edits will be made if circumstances change.

I do not accept advertising.
I will not allow a comment that disparages women, men, minority groups, or homosexuals (or anyone else for that matter). I will not allow xenophobic or racist comments on the site.
I try to buy a lot of what I review, but will accept review samples.
If I do accept a review sample, I will disclose it at the beginning of the article.
When I visit a distillery or whiskey event, I pay for my ticket and take the same tours everyone else can. If this is ever not the case, such as a Media Event or a “Sneak Peak,” I will disclose that fact at the beginning of the article. This does not mean I won't set up a private tour/visit if the distillery agrees and it will make a good article.
There are spirits industry people who I consider friends. If I ever review one of their products, I will disclose that fact at the beginning of the article.
Beyond the sample policy above, I do not accept trips, gifts, or other compensation in return for posts or reviews.
Though I try very hard to get my facts straight, errors happen. If I make a factual error in an article, I will happily update it if notified and will make note of the change at the end of the article.
In return for the above, I ask that you respect the license that the reviews/posts/images were released under. I release all works on this site under a creative commons license unless otherwise noted. This means you are basically free to do whatever you want with them provided you do two things: use it for non-commercial purposes and give credit back to the site/leave on the watermark. Commercial uses are anything that make money such as a blog that accepts advertising or a presentation that people pay to attend, etc. If you want to use it for purposes outside the license, just send me an email and we'll work something out. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

If you have any questions, click the contact icons in the main navigation to get a hold of me via email or your favorite social medium.

*At the time of this post I was running a campaign on Patreon.com, that campaign has since been disabled. 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!

Blog

Woodford Reserve Barrel Aged Bitters by Bourbon Barrel Foods

Woodford Reserve Bourbon Cherries by Bourbon Barrel Foods

Don Q Gran Añejo

Chateau de Laubade Armagnac, 1976

Hochstadter's Slow & Low Rock and Rye, Limited Orange Label, 100 proof