The Bottle That Does Not Exist - Balcones Texas Single Barrel

March 21, 2016

The Bottle That Does Not Exist - Balcones Texas Single Barrel

"This bottle does not exist," Winston said. 

He looked very serious. We stared each other down for a few seconds. Smoke and ice.

"Well then I definitely have to taste it!" I finally responded.

Balcones had just announced yet another round of awards for their craft distillery in Waco, Texas. This time they had taken home four titles in the 2016 World Whiskies Awards including Best American Single Malt for their Texas 1 Single Malt Whisky and World's Best Corn Whisky for their True Blue Cask Strength.  Add these to the ridiculous trophy room the Balcones has been putting together and you get a sense of the magic going on down there.

As all the good things in life tend to be, this mystery bottle was not on the menu. In fact it was hiding behind the Balcones booth at WhiskyLive a few weeks ago at Manhattan's Chelsea Piers. I got my coveted taste and eagerly took a sniff.

Balcones Texas Single Barrel Whisky 63.5%

It's no secret that Balcones is SmokyBeast's clear choice for the best American craft distillery.  Our favorite of their whiskies will always be the Brimstone with its massive smoked corn flavor. but the Single Malt and True Blue are real standouts in the realm of hand-crafted American spirits.

Balcones is also known for their special, one-off cask experiments. Brimstone Resurrection was a mind-blowing example that we got to review a few years ago. We also got to taste their single malt aged in Resurrection casks, which was awesome as well. Needless to say that I was very excited to taste this new expression.

What Is It?

The Texas Single Barrel is a blend of 51%+ corn, with the remainder being aged single malt. The mixture was blended into a 60 gallon cask and then aged for another 3 years. It's a very interesting combination. A typical bourbon would combine a majority of corn with a second ingredient of rye or wheat and only a very small proportion of malted barley. Single malt is 100% barley.  So a combination of almost equal parts corn and barley is unusual. I didn't know what to expect.

Tasting Notes

Nose: Big big big! Just as big as George T. Stagg, but with some other mystery notes. Sassafras? It starts with huge ripe corn, super char flavor, and rain water (? not sure about that last note, it might just be that it was raining during WhiskyLive, but there's a distinct mineral water scent to it).

Palate: Uber-sweet but not cloying. It's got a lot of spice - traditional spices like chili peppers, BBQ sauce, and molasses - but then also some exotic notes like cumin.

Finish: Wow!  It's like a monster corn-heavy George T. Stagg. I've definitely never had this full-flavored a whiskey from an American craft distiller before. This is a new class. The finish is flat-out ballsy, with everything you look for in a monster bourbon, but obviously a completely different animal that's very corn-forward and has none of the rye influence of Stagg.  Honestly corn whiskey has just never tasted this good. Maybe it's the profile of the corn with the backdrop and smoothness of the malt that's the secret. I don't know, but this may well be the best craft spirit I've ever tasted.

Cheers/SB

Review and Distillery Tour - Garrison Brothers Distillery - & Our First Guest Post!

January 27, 2015

Review and Distillery Tour - Garrison Brothers Distillery - & Our First Guest Post!

Hi all, this is sort of a special occasion - our first guest post!  Welcome Dave Robertson hailing from Lexington, KY, a 20+ year bourbon enthusiast, avid writer / traveler, and all around good guy!  Say hi to Dave.

I admit it. 

I was proud to be a “Bourbon snob”. In fact, it would have been hard for me to not have been. As an alumnus of the University of Kentucky, I live about 25 miles from Woodford Reserve. I’ve been to most of the stops along the Bourbon Trail, I have a fairly well stocked cabinet (with the required 23 year old Pappy and multiple bottles of George T. Stagg of course) and most importantly, I like bourbon. No, I mean I really like bourbon. OK, I really REALLY like bourbon and rarely drink anything else. And finally, though it may be called bourbon, if it didn’t come from inside those white horse farm fences in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, it was just a pretender.

But that all ended this past Saturday during the most bizarre distillery or brewery tour I have ever been on, and for the record that’s a couple of dozen from Seattle to Scotland. It ended in the booming metropolis of Hye, TX (population 105) at the Garrison Brothers Distillery.

Hye, Texas is not the end of the world – but you can see it from there. 

I freely admit that I went there prepared to not like the place or their so called “straight Texas bourbon whiskey”. And first impressions kept me right on track. Hye, Texas is not the end of the world – but you can see it from there. And then there’s the brand new multi-million dollar high technology welcome center. Well, the welcome center is indeed new, but I don’t believe anyone would ever mistake it for “high tech”.

“We only had enough money for technology or liquor. We bought more liquor.”

S'mores!!

No one was even there to welcome us for that matter. But there was a nice fire going in one of the several pits, which was much appreciated on a chilly day, and there was complimentary beer, wine and S’mores. No, that wasn’t a typo. Free beer, wine and S’mores – so pull up a chair and start toasting marshmallows!

Don't Let The Snakes Out

And if no chairs are available, there are benches that double as storage boxes. The kind where the seat is also the lid for the box. Nothing particularly notable about them, except the lids on these all say “PLEASE DON’T LET THE SNAKES OUT”. So, it was at this point that I came to the very reasonable conclusion that there was no tour, there was no distillery, and this was a well executed practical joke. But at that moment the “limo” arrived to take us to the distillery itself.

Fat Man & Little Boy

From this point things got as normal as they were going to be for the day and we got the usual “this is bourbon” lecture. But when the tour moved on and we found ourselves in the distilling room, the inmates had clearly taken over the asylum once more. They now have three stills, but for quite a while they only had two. And being that the two don’t resemble each other at all, they have named them “Fat Man and Little Boy”. And that confirmed it for me. These people are either disturbed, deranged, or as they say down here just plain “bat shit crazy”.

“Yep, that’s what we named them. And anyone that is even remotely offended by that probably needs to go somewhere else. This is Texas, we don’t give a damn.”

When we (finally!) got to the tasting room, I was more than prepared to run like hell if we were offered blue Kool-Aid, but instead what I got was a sample of some of the best bourbon I’ve had in a long time. So let’s skip the customary “nutty with hints of oak and honey” and let me say straight up – this is damned good whiskey! Damned good! And these people are having a damned good time making it. It has a distinct sweetness that some people may not care for (I loved it!) but my party unanimously gave it a big thumbs up.

Excellent bourbon made by genuinely nice people apparently having the time of their lives. So what’s not to like? Well, if there is anything to find fault with, it’s the price point. Their 2014 release is $89.00 and their single barrel is $109.00 and to me, that presents a problem. I’ll say it again, I absolutely loved the stuff….but there are a hell of a lot of excellent bourbons to be bought in that price range.

But the bottom line is still that great bourbon, made by great people makes for a great time. So, if you’re ever in the area (no, you go Google it yourself), do yourself a favor and go. Reservations are required, but the S’mores are still free. Enjoy!


Reviews from the Beasts

We happened to get a bottle of Garrison Brothers from some friends (thanks Ali!) right around the time that Dave was at the distillery, so here's our take.

Mrs. Beast:  A lot of apple in the nose.  A very light bourbon.  I like it a lot.  Still has a lot of sweetness but not very rich, kind of a crisp nose.  The taste has a little pumpkin, like toasted pumpkin seeds, also some salty brine.  A good balance of salt and sweet.  It opened up very well after having the bottle open for a while.  

Mr. Beast:  I get the apples, and also some butterscotch and vanilla, some char, and some rye spice on the nose.  There's also some harshness, like rubber cement and tin foil.  Lots of stuff banging around in the nose...  The taste is kind of nice.  It's well balanced and pretty rich.  There's not much of a finish to speak of, but there's also a noticeable lack of alcohol burn for this young a whiskey.  But overall this one is not for me, certainly not at $90.  It's a good product from a craft distillery but would have to come in around half the price to get a solid recommendation.

Thanks Dave for our first guest post!  Hope to have you back on the beast soon.  Cheers!

Review: Balcones Brimstone - The Lone Star Beast

May 31, 2013

Review: Balcones Brimstone - The Lone Star Beast

Spoiler Alert:  Balcones Brimstone got a SmokyBeast "A".  Check out the full review below, pick up a bottle from our friends at Caskers (on sale for the next two weeks), and tune in next week when we'll be featuring an exclusive interview with Balcones founder and head distiller Chip Tate.  (If you're afraid you're going to forget, like us on Facebook and you'll get a link to the interview).  /sb

The Hunt

Ok we've been searching long and hard for a hand-crafted whiskey that we can get behind.  We love the idea of scrappy intrepid pioneers taking on the mighty corporate distilleries.  Imagine die-hard whiskey nerds obsessing for years over the perfect combination of corn and wheat, the exact angle of that hand-hammered still, the perfect cut, and the most secret alchemist-like art of producing a warm and mature product without sitting on their barrels for a decade.  Alas our search to date has been uphill.  There are some that taste too weak.  There are some that taste too young and harsh.  There are some that are so expensive that they put themselves into impossible contests with sixteen or twenty-year aged glories from the old country.  There are some that flat-out lie and just buy Kentucky bourbon claiming to have distilled it themselves.  (links have been left out to protect the not-so-innocent)

Blue Ribbon

We're pretty thrilled to announce that we have found not only a hand-crafted original, but a genuine smoky beast of the highest calibre.  It comes at very fair price, with more than its share of beauty, grace, and balls.  In our humble opinion, it's surely destined to become a long-term whiskey powerhouse.  Enter Balcones Distilling, lead by Chip Tate, and the smokiest of Chip's creations: Balcones Brimstone.

Tasting Notes

Nose:  Layers of sweet sugar and caramel.  And that unique smoke.  It's like taking the wood out of the body of a heavily oaked malt and adding it to the nose of a bourbon.  Campfire embers.  Sweet buttered corn, watermelon (sounds crazy, but see if you can smell it), slight oiled leather, and then the spice - habanero chilli peppers, bay leaves, slow-cooked meaty chili.  Awesome balanced nose of smoke, sweet, and rich spice.

Body:  Ok this is going to sound weird, but it tastes like really well-made french toast.  Like the kind made with fresh country eggs, thick-cut bread, lots of sweet butter, and real maple syrup.  The outside of the bread is brown and crunchy from the butter and eggs and the center soaks up the sweet molasses of the syrup.

Finish:  Long and lovely finish of pipe smoke, more oak and leather, some smoldering wet grass.  The smoke is dominant, but as we've said before: it's not just the smoke, it's the balance of smoke, richness, and smoothness.  What Brimstone does so well is that it balances the smoke with the sweetness and the full-bodied corn and spice so that you can fully taste the spirit, you get that awesome warm feeling across your chest, but there's no medicinal alcohol burn.  This finish goes well with being outside under the stars.  At 53%, we prefer to drink Brimstone with only tiny dribble of water - four or five drops from the tips of the fingers or an eye dropper into a full pour of whiskey.  The high proof makes the finish last a lifetime and we relish savoring the smoky sweet remnants.

Review

Brimstone is just what we were looking for.  It's delicious, it's unique, and it's just the kind of new experience that we look for in a hand-crafted whiskey.  At near cask strength it's incredibly drinkable with only a tiny bit of water, which is nothing short of a miracle for a young whiskey.  It's honestly the first smoky American whiskey that we've fallen for the way we do for Islay malts.  We love bourbon, but to find an American whiskey that embraces smoke like this is tremendous.  If this is what Texas whiskey is all about, sign us up!  Make no mistake, this is a beast of the smokiest variety.  It's not for the faint of heart.  But if you are a smoke lover, you simply must try it.  $55 for a handmade product of this quality?  It's a straight "A".  Bravo Chip, you've got a hell of a beautiful beast on your hands here.

Click here to continue reading Balcones - The Birth of a Beast Part 2...


/SmokyBeast