Friday, May 2, 2014
The Week in COLAs - Beam Plays with Mashbills
Jim Beam recently cleared a series of new labels for 11 year old bourbons in their Signature Craft series. Each bottle represents a different, new mashbill, including high rye, (presumably using the Old Grandad/Basil Hayden recipe), triticale (a rye-wheat hybrid), brown rice, six row barley, soft red wheat and rolled oats.
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6 comments:
Interesting to see an 11-year wheat whiskey in this day and age. Especially from JB, a distillery that doesn't have any wheated bourbons. Wonder if this is a special one-off product, given both the age and bottle size.
Carl, just to clarify, it is a wheated bourbon, as opposed to a wheat whiskey. And keep in mind, Beam does have Maker's Mark. I don't know if this is just going to use the Maker's mashbill or be something different, but obviously, for all of these, they've had them around for a while if they are planning on bottling them anytime soon at 11 years old.
At least a few of these (triticale for sure) went into the Six Grain Signature that was in duty-free a couple years ago -- I'm guessing these are what's left after that didn't take off?
Excellent point Anon and certainly the most likely source for a number of those. For those who aren't familiar with that bottling, The Jim Beam Six Grain Signature was a travel retail exclusive released in 2010 that contained corn, rye, barley, wheat, triticale and brown rice and was made by vatting different bourbons that contained those grains. It doesn't account for the rolled oats though.
Rarely do I get excited by Beam but this is definately in theory headed in the right area. Hopefully to not be ruined by that nutty beam yeast though.
Well, Brett may be (as I sometimes am, to tell the truth) somewhat put off by the definitive Jim Beam yeast flavor profile, but I'm really excited about these new expressions. Up until now, it was only Buffalo Trace making a big deal about experiments that took place years ago without anyone knowing about it; now Beam is doing something similar. It reminds me of when Elmer Lee began the Single Barrel idea, and Beam soon followed suit with the Small Batch collection. Good for them! Thank you, Suntory, for making Jim Beam a brand to respect again!
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