Maker: Jim Beam, Claremont, Kentucky, USA (Suntory)
Style: Rye recipe Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
Age: 9ish years old (barreled 4/15, selected 9/24)
Proof: 120 (60% ABV)
Michigan state minimum: $65
Tasted with a splash of water.
Appearance: Medium gold.
Nose: Cut lumber, Beam yeast.
Palate: Sawdust, street corn, green chili.
Finish: Char, brown sugar.
Parting words: Knob Creek Single Barrel is one of my most reviewed bourbons. I reviewed the Georgia Bourbon Society pick I helped select here, and here’s a goofy video review from me and friend of the blog Amy. I review it a lot because I’m a big fan of Knob Creek in general, and barrel selections are a fun way to explore the multitudes that KC contains.
This one was good, but like most Holiday Market selections, it is a good example of itself, but it doesn’t really offer anything new. There’s little difference between this and the median bottle of a non-select KCSB. The Beam funk is maybe a little more prominent, but that might very well be the state of my palate. It’s far from bad, just a little disappointing. Still, it’s better than a dozen other bourbons at that price point. Knob Creek Single Barrel, Holiday Market Selection (9/24) is recommended.
Maker: Jim Beam, Clermont, Kentucky, USA (Suntory)
Style: Rye recipe bourbon.
Age: 12 y/o
Proof: 100 (50% ABV)
Michigan state minimum: $70
Appearance: Dark Copper.
Nose: Charred oak, leather, old wet lumber.
Palate: Brown sugar, acorns, burn. Water brings out a little more complexity, adding eucalyptus and clove.
Finish: Hot and oaky.
Parting words: The standard 9 y/o Knob Creek has been one of my favorite bourbons for many years. I love it because it’s easy to find, high proof, affordable ($37 in Michigan), and mature but not over oaked. To my palate, 6-9 years is peak maturity for most bourbons. Exceptional ones, or ones aged on the ground floor of the rickhouse can go longer, but for most, 6-9 is the sweet spot. Before that, the whiskey can be rough and uncouth. After that, it can become one dimensional and fall into the “beaver bourbon” category, a term I coined to describe bourbons that only a creature accustomed to chewing on trees could enjoy.
Unfortunately, Knob Creek 12 is a product for the beaver market. Oak isn’t the only thing going on here, but it dominates the palate, nose, and finish. I had hoped that a distillery with stocks the size of Beam’s would be able to select a few balanced barrels for this expression, but apparently not. I can’t imagine what the newer 15 and 18 y/o expressions taste like. Even the beavers might object at that point.
If you’re the type who like a woodier bourbon, you might enjoy this, but I did not. The price isn’t too bad, considering what some bourbons at half the age go for the days, but Knob Creek 12 y/o old is still not recommended.
Maker: Jim Beam, Clermont/Boston, Kentucky, USA (Beam Suntory)
Style: Single barrel, standard recipe rye Bourbon.
Serial number: 000228504
Warehouse: CL-J, Floor 4, rack 43
Age: 7 y/o (and 4 mos.)
Proof: 107 (53.5% ABV)
Michigan State Minimum: $60
Appearance: Medium dark copper.
Nose: Caramel, roasted corn, cut oak, cayenne.
Palate: Full bodied. Chocolate caramel brownies.
Finish: Hot, with some caramel and a touch of oak.
Parting words: This is the second time I’ve reviewed Baker’s, but the first time was back in 2014 when it wasn’t a single barrel and it had an irritating wax top.
Back then it was spicy but with an odd smell of rotten vegetables in the nose when water was added. I should have read that review a few weeks ago because in it I recommended that it be consumed neat, or with very little water. I didn’t do that with this bottle, and I was very disappointed with it.
All ready to give a scathing review, I poured some into my favorite Glencairn glass and started taking down notes tonight. When I was done, I looked back over them and thought, “These are the tasting notes of a very good bourbon.” Once again, I played myself.
Baker’s Single Barrel is recommended.
Before we go our separate ways, dear reader, I want to take a moment to applaud Beam for the Single Barrel Journey feature on the Baker’s website. It’s very cool. All you do is enter the serial number for your bottle of Baker’s and the website gives you all sorts of information on the barrel including location in the warehouse and even the high and low temperatures for the barrel’s time in that warehouse. Really neato stuff. Feel free to use the serial number above to try it out!
Maker: Jim Beam, Claremont/Boston, Kentucky, USA (Beam Suntory)
Style: Standard recipe, bonded bourbon.
Age: NAS (at least 4 y/o)
Proof: 100 (50% ABV)
Michigan State Minimum: Not listed but available in the state. $30ish?
Appearance: Medium copper.
Nose: That mixed peanut butter and jelly stuff.
Palate: Alcohol, burnt peanut butter and banana sandwich.
Finish: burnt peanut brittle.
Mixed: Fine mixed, but plenty of better, cheaper, options for mixers.
Parting words: Beam was on a hot streak for a while but that streak seems to have ended here with Old Tub. The name was the original name of what’s now Jim Beam bourbon. It was first produced in 1880 by David Beam’s distillery, and became the flagship bourbon of the new Jim Beam distillery after prohibition. The name was changed to Jim Beam in 1943 to honor Jim, who passed away a few years later.
I think I get what they’re going for here, and I like the idea, but I don’t think it ends up being something worth buying, other than as an objet d’art. I like Bonded Beam, but I don’t like this. Old Tub is not recommended.
Maker: Jim Beam, Boston/Clermont, Kentucky, USA (Beam Suntory)
Style: Kentucky-style Rye (low rye rye)
Age: 9 y/o (? barreled 2009, released 2018)
Proof: 119.6 (59.8% ABV)
Purchased for $70 ( Holiday Market)
Appearance: Medium copper
Nose: Oak, black pepper, cayenne, tumeric. With water, a little more sweetness. Caramel and anise.
Palate: Full-bodied and creamy, then hot. Still creamy, but with toffee, a little citrus and clove.
Finish: Heat and not much else except a little sweetness at the end. With water: Red pepper, oak, brown sugar.
Parting words: I love Knob Creek rye, so I was very excited when I saw this limited edition release. I was less excited when I started drinking it. KCR is already very bourbon-like but this edition is even more so. I like bourbony ryes, but at a certain point you have to ask yourself why you’re not just drinking bourbon (which is usually cheaper).
The strength of this editon of Knob Rye is its lucious mouthfeel. It’s a show-stealer, and it even holds up with a generous does of water. Aside from that, there’s not much here that isn’t in the standard Knob Creek Rye. I think I might like the standard edition better, even without factoring in the much higher price. It’s pleasant, but I really can’t recommended it at $70, even mildly. Hopefully the next edition of cask strength Knob Creek Rye will be better.
Palate: Medium-bodied and hot. Behind the heat there’s toffee and caramel and grape soda.
Finish: hot pepper-infused peanut brittle.
Parting words: Jim Beam has been putting out so many new expressions in recent years, I’ve literally been unable to keep up. If I had, I would have probably purchased and reviewed this bourbon sooner! It’s 100 proof like its stablemates Jim Beam Bonded and Knob Creek. Unlike those, it’s not chill-filtered and is 5 y/o (the label annoyingly calls it 5-6 y/o). This makes it identical on paper to the Urban Stillhouse Select. In the glass, the USS is more rounded and shows more baking spice than peanut brittle. Compared to Beam Bonded, it is older and less funky but the price is identical, at least in this state. If you like the funk, stick with the Bonded. If you want something a little more refined but still firmly Jim Beam, pick up some JB Distiller’s Cut. It is recommended.
The bourbon boom has been good to tourism in Louisville, Kentucky. It’s the largest city in bourbon country and home to its own cluster of distilleries. Louisville’s bourbon pedigree is second to none (except maybe Bardstown) so it’s in a great position to cash in. It started in 2013 with the opening the Evan Williams Experience downtown and continued in 2014 with the opening of Diageo’s historic Stitzel-Weller distillery in Shively Kentucky to the public as a home for the Bulleit brand. 2018 will see the long-awaited debut of Old Forester Main Street Distillery.
Unlike the above distilleries, Jim Beam doesn’t have any historical connections to Louisville. That hasn’t stopped them from joining their competitors, though. In 2014 the Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse opened in Louisville’s Fourth Street Live! (sic) development, three blocks south of Main.
I have been to The Evan Williams Experience a couple times and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s Disneyesque, but it does a good job of balancing marketing, education and entertainment. I went into the Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse expecting that sort of experience. I should have taken a hint from the name, though. Jim Beam’s Clermont gift shop and visitor’s center is called the Jim Beam American Stillhouse. That is the Urban Stillhouse’s closest parallel, not the other Louisville bourbon attractions.
The bourbon tree with barrel stave bark, label leaves and bottle lanterns.
The Urban Stillhouse is essentially a gift shop with a tasting bar and event space. There’s virtually no educational component and certainly nothing Disneyesque about it. That’s not to say it’s bad, not at all. It’s just not the Evan Williams Experience. This makes a lot of sense give its location in what’s essentially an outdoor mall. A long, intensive tourist attraction wouldn’t fit well with the chain restaurants and touristy nightclubs of Fourth Street Live! (sic).
Our crew (minus Liz who had a couple church things) stopped in on our way to Bardstown from Detroit. Parking was a little hard to find given the gridlock and our unfamiliarity with downtown Louisville, but we managed to find a garage. The interior is nicely decorated in a similar style to the American Stillhouse. The front part of the space is the gift shop and the back is taken up by a long tasting bar with a cocktail bar on the side. Tastings are $8 per person and include a succinct but largely accurate talk.
The tasting bar.
We received three samples at first. Ours were Jim Beam Black (now “extra aged”), JB Urban Stillhouse Select (essentially an exclusive version of Distiller’s Cut) , and JB Apple (which our guide correctly described as a liqueur). Our guide walked us through a tasting of the first two, which he said were about the same age. Telling us to hold off the Apple, he then poured us a sample of whatever we wanted from the back of the bar. That included the entire Jim Beam, Jim Beam flavored and Knob Creek lines plus Basil Hayden. I ordered JB Double Wood, which I liked. This extra sample was poured into a souvenir shot glass with Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse, Louisville and the Louisville skyline etched into it. After that, we were instructed to try the Apple. I’m not much of a flavored whiskey guy, but it was fine. Would make a decent shot, substitute for apple pucker or addition to mulled cider.
Our samples from L to R: JBB, JBUSS, JB Apple (!)
In the gift shop portion of the space there is also a small still and bottling room where visitors can assemble their own custom version of Urban Stillhouse Select from bourbon at a variety of ages. We didn’t do that, so I’m a little fuzzy on the details of that process. I did purchase a full-sized bottle for myself and a 375 ml as a thank-you gift for our neighbors for babysitting our youngest one so we could get an early start on our trip. For the small one, I took advantage of the custom laser etching service available for $10 per bottle. I chose a short, simple message in a single font but in seemed like the folks ahead of me in line were getting the full text of Moby Dick inscribed into theirs in four different fonts. The etching looked nice but it did take a couple times through the machine to get that way.
The etching service is not just for visitors, though. When we were there, there were boxes of bottles inscribed for the Kentucky Derby Marathon, to be held the next day, sitting near the etching machine. There were also inscribed bottles for a political even being held upstairs later that day.
[barf emoji] [turtle emoji]Here’s a review of Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse Select:
JBUSS & the souvenir glass.
Maker: Jim Beam, Clermont/Boston, Kentucky, USA (Beam Suntory)
Age: NAS
Bottled: April 25, 2018.
Proof: 100 (50% ABV)
Note: Not chill-filtered.
Price: $46 (only available at the Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse)
Appearance: Medium dark copper.
Nose: Alcohol, yeast, leather.
Palate: Full-bodied and medium dry. Tabasco, burnt marshmallows, caramel sauce on vanilla ice cream.
Finish: oak, grape soda.
Parting words: The price is high on JBUSS (vs Distiller’s Cut at $25, Knob Creek at $35, McKenna SB at $34), but one buys a bottle like this as a souvenir, not a value sipper. Both the Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse and Jim Beam Urban Stillhouse Select are recommended.
Parting words: Long time readers will know that I never buy whiskey this expensive and that I whine about value even for bourbons as cheap as $20. So why did I buy this one? I don’t know. It was available for one, and I love Knob Creek for another. It had also been a couple months since I had purchased any spirits so I figured it was in the budget.
Let me start off by saying that Knob Creek 2001 is a good bourbon. It’s certainly the best Knob Creek I’ve every had. It has the big velvety tannins one would expect from a bourbon of this age. It’s firmly within the standard KC profile with pleasant spicy and herbal aromas and flavors. If this were a bottle of the old 9 y/o or of the single barrel KC, I would be very impressed. As a $130 limited edition, I’m underwhelmed. For that kind of cash, there needs to be more going on. More candy, more fruit, more of something. It certainly needs more proof. I’m not sure why this wasn’t released at barrel proof (to enable a broader release, maybe?) but one hundred proof isn’t good enough for a $130 limited edition when the same line has a single barrel at 120 proof at $50. If you have the room in your budget to blow $130 on a good bourbon that isn’t great, then you might like this. If you’re a normal human being and not a tater like me, then you might want to skip this. Reports are that batches 2 & 3 may be better, but this batch isn’t close enough to a fair price for even a mild recommendation. Knob Creek Limited Edition, 2001 (batch 1) is not recommended.
Parting words: Bonded Beam was a staple of the Jim Beam line for decades, but was discontinued in the 1980s. Jim Beam Bonded was (re)released in 2015 at the demand of bartenders, according to Fred Noe. It has a touch of the grassy Beam Funk, but it doesn’t overwhelm. JB Bonded mixes well in everything from Coke to eggnog to Manhattans. It’s not particularly complex but it’s what one expects from a bond at this price. Speaking of price, now that Knob Creek has dropped its age statement, it might be worth looking at JB Bonded for your sipping needs if KC’s price (currently at $37 in Michigan) goes up any more. Jim Beam bonded is a good choice to work into your middle shelf mixer rotation. It is recommended.
Maker: Jim Beam, Clermont/Boston, Kentucky, USA (Beam Suntory)
Sipology 