Welcome back to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, I do communications at Binny's. In the room with me, Pat Brophy, specialty spirits buyer. Hillary, communications coordinator. Shannon, assistant manager, Binny Skokie. This is your first time on the podcast. It is my first time on the podcast. Pretty excited. Thanks for coming. We're pretty stoked to have you. Thanks. In the room with us, a very special guest, Jackie Zykan, Old Forester, master taster. Hello. What? Jackie, we're so excited to have you here. I am excited to be here. Jackie, we're just going to jump right in. We want to know your background and I think this question sets it up. The last time Shannon and I were with you, we were in the brand new Old Forester Barrel Warehouse in downtown Louisville, and we were tasting single barrels. You told us, you immediately could tell which barrel had a very similar profile to Old Forester. How long did it take you to get to that point, and when did you know that you had it? That's very interesting. There's two sides of that. Obviously, I work for Old Forester and Old Forester only. Granted, I am a Brown Foreman employee, but Old Forester is the only brand that I really have anything to do with. It's interesting. When I first started this role, that was one of my questions that I asked. I mean, oh gosh, this was four years ago. I asked Chris Morris, so what do you answer when people say, what do you drink that's not Woodford or fill in the blank, whatever product of our own? And he said, nothing. I don't drink anything else. And I'm like, no, no, no, but no, really. Like, come on, tell me what you drink. What a Chris Morris answer. Right, exactly. Oh my God. It's very much so, but, and that's what I thought then, and now I understand it because now, like if there is any deviation from it, because your palate becomes so trained, it's not just this. It's not just going out and doing staff trainings and tastings and dinners and such. As far as quality control goes, you are so trained to notice any fine-tuned difference off of base brand, what it is, so anything else just seems, although it may have been subtle four years ago to me, indifference, now it's just, can't drink it, can't do it. There's no way. And so it has absolutely nothing to do with like, oh, I'm only paid to drink Old Forester. I enjoy a lot of other brands out there, but as far as that single barrel sit down 100 percent, I mean, every now and then you find that unicorn barrel that tastes just like flagship Old Forester. It just screams sweet on the front, spicy on the back, and it's nice and dry, and there's some nice mint and fruit sprinkled in or out. But it's interesting though, because every single barrel is different, right? But every now and then you do come across one where you're like, oh, that's just straight up old fo. It's great. Straight up old fo. Sweet on the front, spicy on the back. I like that. It's kind of the mullet of bourbon whiskey, right? It kind of is, you know? Classic, timeless mullet. Got it. Classic and timeless, yeah. That's just what I think of when I think mullet. Yeah, sure. So we're starting with that pick. We've got Embrace here. This was picked by Shannon, myself, Jackie, and what, four or five other women from Binny's? Yeah, it was pretty awesome. Yeah, we had our top-notch spirits crew going down. Yeah, it's fantastic. I'm really excited to be able to try the final product because I only get to try them and the tastings with you guys. I kind of have to journey around the country to taste everybody's finished single barrels, but this is excellent. Fantastic. Yeah, you ladies did a wonderful job with these barrels. These are some of the best barrels I think we've had in the past year. It was the very first Binny's Women's Hand Pick ever. Sold out within a couple of weeks. All right, so Lincoln Park is your best option. I love it when we dangle something that people can't have on the podcast. This is really great. You should have had it. We're tasting it so you don't have to. This smells amazing. It's like butterscotch candy and a little bit of spice. It still has that Old Forester fruit though. It definitely does. It's great. Texturally, this is fantastic. We don't chill filter or whiskey, and so any time that we come across that nice oily texture in the barrel, you're going to get it all the way through the process, and this is definitely a really great example of that. Non-chill filtered on this, is the entire Old Forester line non-chill filtered? Yes, correct. The entire Old Forester line is a non-chill filtered product. We do not even have chill filtration system set up, so the 86 and 100 Proof have never been chill filtered. That needs to be more prominently stated on the label. Does it? I think so, yes. Is this a topic? I'm asking you fine folks here, because I'm in my world and you're on your side of the bridge here. People specifically ask us for that every single day. See, where did that conversation start though? What brand started that combo? We, I want to say, maybe we should take pride in this or not. It's got to be Scotch, right? We fostered this conversation with Scotch for a long time. Okay. We always champion, we do a lot of single barrels and have for a couple of decades now, but we always champion that any Binny's hand pick is bottled at natural strength and without chill filtration whenever possible. Obviously, some brands, they want it. Old Forester, for example, the Old Forester, single barrels have a set proof they're at bottle that. Weller 107, for example, I mean, it's not going to be bottled anything but 107. But whenever possible, we like things to be non-chill filtered. And I had, and look, and you're coming from my sort of my perspective, and I wasn't even aware that the entire line was non-chill filtered. Yeah, I think it was something we started talking about when we first introduced the Whiskey Row series because it was something that set it apart from the other sort of premium category, whiskeys out there. But honestly, though, like we're Old Forester is a brand of transparency. I mean, nothing's just old foe. We just never talked about it. But now that people are starting to care and notice that there's a difference. I mean, we do a couple hundred single barrels of bourbon a year. And whenever a new one comes in, almost always a customer will email spiritsofbinnys.com and asking if it's non-show filtered. And any other information we have on the barrel, like warehouse, location, anything like that. I mean, we have a pretty serious nerd following for our single barrels. And those are the people. I mean, again, every new bourbon that comes out, that's a question people are asking. So is that like if you go through those checks of like, what are the top questions people are asking to define whether they're going to connect with that product or not? Chilt filtration is definitely one. Chilt filtration is one. But again, that's a loud minority. It's not like everybody walks into the store asking for bourbon is the follow-up question. Is it chilt filtered? But it's definitely something that a vocal, passionate customer base cares about. What else? Mashbill? Yeah. Mashbill, warehouse, location, all that, anything they can. They always ask for age. And we try to downplay that. Thank you for that. You know, I mean, we let the flavor of the whiskey be the first thing you ask, not how old it is. And we try to taste stuff blind without that information whenever we can too. So that's something we always do with a lot of other bourbon brands. We get samples just with a sample ID and we'll choose our samples. And after the fact, we'll find out actually how old they are, what warehouse they were in, all that stuff. Absolutely. I mean, and it's great that the consumer is so much more educated on the category now and appreciates that it's not just all bourbon. There are differences in all of the brands. But don't be an ageist. Don't be a florist either, not one who dabbles in flowers, but don't be one who only wants high floor whiskey. The stuff we're drinking right now, this single barrel is from the first floor of the O warehouse. And O is a weird warehouse for Old Forester. Let me explain this. All Old Forester is heat cycled except for barrels out of O warehouse. O is this random building that we just kind of have as leftover storage space. It is just a sheet metal building. We store a lot of random stuff in there. It is not heat cycled. So this is very rare to find non-heat cycled Old Forester, even more so reason to go out and try to grab a bottle of this because it is very, very hard to find that as an example of Old Fo's flavor profile. Hashtag whales, bro. You're going to cause a bum's rush. All of a sudden. I know. I wish this was live and all of a sudden we're just watching to see if people come in the store. I want the non-show filtered O warehouse Old Forester. Yeah. It's good though. It's delicious. I love the way that it turned out. That's this creamy banana cream filling quality and then it's clove finish. That old full banana, man. How do you know exactly when the barrel is at that sweet spot, how to, when it's ready to be pulled? Well, it's a little bit different per expression. For single barrel, for me, when I'm going pulling those barrels that are going to be in the program, it's more so bare minimum, it's always got to hit four years because we don't age statements. We've always got to hit the four years. After that, it's more so clearing all the barrels to make sure they haven't picked up or accentuated any defects throughout their maturation process. It's not so much, we want to make sure they all taste like cherry pie, we want to make sure they all taste like spiced bombs. You want diversity in the program because everyone's palate is different, and you want this to be very unique and individualistic pick. But for me, it's 100 percent, I like to get a good sampling of all over the place on campus so that we can have that to choose from, and it's just clearing it for defects. What I personally prefer to go home and sip on is not going to be what you guys maybe prefer to go home and sip on, so you got to kind of cover all of your bases. And some of them are very dry. I like to joke, bourbons that quote unquote pair well with cheese. They're so tannic and they suck all the moisture out of your mouth. Some people are into that. We get a lot of people that come through, actually, that have bars and restaurants that are specifically looking for a flavor profile to go in a mixed drink. So they have a very fine tune idea of what they want. But yeah, it's more so backing up to the original question, it's more so going through and clearing and making sure that, number one, you're getting a good little diverse mix, and number two, that you're making sure that all of the barrels will stand up on their own as not being defect whiskey. And by that I mean there's no, and this should come out in the first step of quality rating anyway, so I've actually never had to turn a barrel down in the program that didn't meet the qualifications for a single barrel. It's just another one of the checks and balances. Like if there's going to be a scorched grain note, you're going to know that off the still. If there's going to be any sort of weird imbalance of any of the aromatics, you're going to know that before it even goes into the barrel. We've never had, never once in the history of Old Forester, Sensory Lab, an example of a barrel that has gone musty in warehousing. We have had grain deliveries that were musty on that first checkpoint, and we turned those delivers away. We have a no tolerance policy for must notes. And by must, I mean for corn must. So there's two different types of notes here, right? So for corn must, it's coming from the actual grain. It smells kind of like a wet hay bale at a pumpkin patch. That's sort of like farmy. I always love when we talk about flaws. I'm not even joking. It's great. It's a great conversation because everybody has like their favorite flaw. Like Roger really literally asked, like, what's your favorite flaw? Favorite flaw? This is my worst. Like, no, this is not a favorite, but this is definitely to me, some people are actually blind to the note. And some people cover it up with marketing. A lot of brands out there do. But okay, so keep in mind two different. One, it's coming from a grain. It's coming from rotten corn, musty corn in transporter and storage. And that is that wet hay bale kind of like farming note. Other than that, there is musty note that can come from your warehousing and maturation environment. And that is more of that mineral-esque wet basement musty note. And I know there's a lot of products out there that like to call it earthy or porcini mushroom. That is not what that is. Absolutely not whatsoever. And it can come from a lot of different places. We have zero tolerance. We could literally set a sample of Old Forester on a panel of 100 people at Brown Foreman. If one person is like, I think I might maybe have maybe for a brief second thought it was musty, they'll reassess it. They will throw the entire lot out. There is zero tolerance for must in any of our products. Now, besides the sensory panel, are you using, I assume you're using all this high-end equipment like a GCMS and all that looking for this too? Yeah. Well, I mean, it kind of depends. So I thought about that one. That was like day one on the job. I was like, why don't we write our tasting notes based on where these aromatics come in? Gas chromatography. That'll be great. No. They're like, you're crazy. What's wrong with you? No, just taste it. Like whatever. Move on with your life. But for us, the main defects we're talking about are overpowering vitamin note that's coming off of a fermentation process. Scorched grain is definitely one of those notes that you don't want in there at all. Musty notes, zero tolerance policy on that whatsoever. And also, I mean, keep in mind a lot of notes that are there as part and parcel with a normal flavor profile, diacetyl being one of the main ones, that nice artificial buttered popcorn note. If it's there within a certain range of perception, it's normal. Outside of that, it's a defect. So there's a lot of stuff that if you just have it in certain small doses, its flavor profile outside of that, it's wonky and you hope it ages off and you can blend it. And if you can't, then you can't and it is what it is. But Jackie, I feel like you should set the scene for people. So when we visited you, it was this tiny room and you were like, bad corn, good corn, bad corn, good corn. Like, can you talk us through that process of the little train coming through and like, definitely. Beep, beep. Yeah. So I mean, like everything we're sipping right here once started as a kernel, right? Which is crazy to think about, but thank you, all those plants out there for giving us such amazing sugar sources. There is a checks and balance system at BF for all of our products and it all does start with that grain delivery. So either by truck or train, you come through, I'm going to speak in terms of Brown Forman Distillery exclusively because as of right now, every drop of what we're sipping has been produced at BFD, not OFD, OFD being the new distillery downtown, obviously is too new to have any final product come out of it yet. But you get your delivery in and we're going to section off and probe through different points in that delivery. There's a lot of people, oh, we'll just hide the crappy grain on the bottom, right? And put the good grain on top because we're going to look at the top and spell it, no, we sourced from all the different parts of that load. And if any of it comes up not meeting our requirements, whether the grain is too broken or it's too cracked, there's rodent damage, there's insect infestation, there's mold, there's any of that stuff. And a lot of that you get more so at certain peak times of the year. Closer to harvest, you end up getting sort of like the remnants of what's left of the silos at the bottom. You end up with like a lot of defects then. We reject the entire order. Now, keep in mind, like no one's taking that load back to a farm and go and put it back in the silo. They're not doing that. They're taking it to a distillery at the road and they're going, we'll take it. It's great. So you have to have high standards. If it doesn't taste good and smell good from that point, like if it smells like the highway, it smells like motor oil, you're going to smell it in the whiskey. It's going to show up. It's all part of the process. So you accept your grain, you cook it, you distill it, you do the whole thing. At that point, we've got check marks at actual distillation run. It has to meet all of our standards. And then we actually do run it through the sensory lab at six months, three and a half years. Three and a half years is when you find out where you're going to college. When did you start at Old Forester? Four years ago. So it's fair to say in the last, well, no. Oh gosh. Furben just coming out now. Oh no. Right? Yeah, I guess I'm like, oh, you're right. You have to start putting up now. Furben that's now just coming out. It's all, it's a cross to your path. I'm just going to answer that question. Three and a half years. Every time anyone asks me, you say, never be fully responsible for anything that goes wrong. No, I'm just joking. We have a, you see me as a face of a brand, but there's a massive team behind all of our brands and a giant collective of people that are making sure that it is absolutely on point with our quality standards the whole step of the way. It is never one sole person's job to make what's from green to bottle ever. There's a massive team of really talented people that really, really make it all come together. You want to taste number two? Yes. Pat, did you help pick out this one? Sure. I believe so. This was a while ago. Yeah, I picked this one. I'm not sure which one is this. Is this barrel number two? He's going to taste it and then tell you if he did or not. He's pulling a Jackie. It's only three and a half years. It's fine. This seems more serious and austere compared to the other. Serious and austere. This is definitely more of the Brett Pontani line of things or the Joe Maloney. They tend to look for a little more, like you said, austere, just straightforward, more wood driven, I think, Bermons. I tend to be more on the sweeter, rounder, inviting side, crowd pleasers as I would call them. But between the three of us, we generally get a pretty good balance of different types of barrels that we pick. This is great. It's got a really great peripheral spice going on. It's a little bit drier than the one that we just tasted, but it's a really different flavor profile. Maybe more lemon peel if there's fruit. Compared to the last one, that was really fluffy and full, and this is streamlined. If you were making a cocktail, depending on how you like your cocktail, you add in a sweet component to go with the structure on this. It balances it out. Don't get me wrong, it's not rye. No, it's not. This is coming out of the H warehouse. That's a heat-cycled warehouse in the sixth floor, even though I guess I don't be a floor-ist with two O's in it, I guess. I don't know. I got a subset of floors. People are going to be like, what is she talking about? What power is for? We'll put that word in the episode description so people can get the pun. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. This is heat-cycling. You're going to add on a little extra maturation for the actual age of it. Age right now is completely unknown to us. I'd have to look up the spreadsheet to see how old these were, but sixth floor of H is usually a pretty nice spot. Fifth floor of H is one of my favorite spots. It's the honey hole, the fifth floor of H house. Now I know what to look for next time. I shouldn't have said that. Now you're going to come down and be like, Jackie said she was going to have barrels. Only fifth floor of H samples. Give me some of that H. And O. And O house. Jackie, one of my favorite things to do is before a Cubs game, I go to Big Star and there was a $4 shot and I get super pumped up when it's Old Forester. Also super trashed. Responsibly. You've been everywhere. What bar, hotel, restaurant? When did you see Old Forester and you were like, holy shit. Holy shit, as in like... Oh my God, they're carrying Old Forester. That's interesting. Okay, no one has ever asked me this before. Oh, I'm gonna have to think on this one for a second. That's because it's a bad question. It's a great question because like Old Forester for a long time, and I mean, even still, we're just now seeing the tipping point for the brand. And I think a lot of that came with this release of Rye and the massive positive feedback we've gotten from that one. That has been a huge, huge leap for the brand. But prior to that, it is sort of this cult following whiskey, you know, and it's been around forever. It's not new by any means, but it's one of those, if you know, you know, old fo kind of situation. So for me, when I start to see it in more mainstream applications, if I ever saw it in a chain, I would be like, oh my God, like- Hold on a second. You're saying- Not that that's like a goal. Applebee's is your we made it moment? No, not being made it, but you know what I mean? Like for the most part, those placements are reserved for people that have the- Okay, you want to be really honest. Those placements are reserved for people that have the budget to buy those placements. Or they're being reserved for products that the consumer can actually recognize. They've reached that awareness level. Get the violins out. Brown Foreman's broke now. No. Let's go on a beep, beep, beep, back it up for a second here. Everyone's like, oh, Brown Foreman, it's fine. Jack Daniels, Swiffer, all these great brands, right? They've got money. You're the redhead stepchild? I got to be careful about that because I made that joke a couple of days ago, and someone in the room was like, I'm a redhead stepchild. I'm the only redhead in here and I'm not a stepchild, so it's okay. Well, all right. So Old Forester has its own Old Forester budget. Jack Daniels has its own budget. Woodford has its own budget. So even though it's all the same company, no, it's not that we're broke, we're just small in the grand scheme of things. We're still pretty small brand. So if I see it in an application like that, of course, I have places that I like to go in a bunch of different cities, and they're usually either pretty divey or weird under the radar spots. Yeah, industry spots. Nobody in our industry goes to nice places. Right. So I see Old Forester at all those, and it's like, yeah, of course, it should be there, right? Right along with wood paneling and things. It's Old Forester. But I don't know, if I see it somewhere else, the day that I see Old Forester on a plane will be the day that I'm like, okay, it's crossed over completely, right? Because that's the moment where you know, okay, that's- That's a good bar that I don't think we think about too often. If you've got a placement on a plane, like you really, you're everywhere. All right, this is actually our next whisky here. Actually. Actually. This is my first time trying this. This came in a couple weeks ago. No, it's not. I got a big marketing email out of it and everything, and we're selling the hell out of it, and somehow I haven't tried it yet. Old Forester, 100 Proof, TryRye. We wanted to release a product that was purposeful. So Old Forester, up until this point, had been nothing but Kentucky Street bourbon whisky. In all of our different expressions, we pull a bunch of different levers. Things are different ages, they're different proofs, they're different warehouse locations, they're different filtration techniques. And by that, none of it's show filter, but we do do different carbon loads per expression, and that definitely affects the flavor profile and end result for sure. So this is the first time we ever changed that mash bill lever. So this is a 65% rye, 20% malted barley, and 15% corn. That's massive. This is a totally weird mash bill for rye. By that, I just mean we're able to do the entire fermentation process naturally without artificial enzymes because of all that malt. That was my next question. Okay, cool. Yeah, exactly. There's nothing wrong with it. You know what I mean? It's industry standard practice to add artificial enzymes to help you scoot along and get a little bit more booze for your buck. But you don't add any flavor that way. I think that that's where we went right with this particular recipe, was that you're not only able to use the enzymes from malted barley, you're actually getting that dimension and diversity of flavor profile that's coming from the additional grain in there. Dude, it's so good. This is 25 bucks. I know. This is 25 bucks. I think we're bringing this to New Orleans. We are. It's coming down. So it's very spicy linear rye, a lot of clove, a lot of baking spice. Still has the fruit though. It's still definitely held by the malt, right? Yeah, 100 percent. This is Old Forester yeast strain still that's going into the same production method across the board. Old Forester comes off the salt 140, this comes off the salt 140, we go in the barrel at 125. Old Forester yeast, Old Forester barrel that Brown Forma Cooperage makes. We're owning that whole thing. The only difference between this and the everyday 100 proof signature, if you will, that orange label, is the difference in mash bill, and that's it. Fermentation is the same length too? Three to five day, yeah. Okay. Did you call this a bourbon drinkers' rye? I definitely would, sure, because I think you start thinking stylistically, like there's Indiana style rye, right? You can definitely pick those out. This is more of a Kentucky style rye, in that it is a bourbon drinkers' rye. It's very barrel-forward. It's gone through heat cycling, right? So you're getting a lot more extraction out of it. It's still nice and oily. There's a good texture to it from that corn in there, non-chill filtered as well. So I love it. I think it turned up and I hate rye whiskey. Jackie, can you talk about the size of the fermenters? Sure. I suppose so, if you really want to. The size of fermenters a little bit different at OFD than they are at BFD. So at BFD, you're dealing with about 44,000 gallon. BFD is a big, big, big distillery. No, Brown Foreman distillery. So they're roughly a tenth the size, a fourth the size. No. I mean, they're huge. I mean, they're big. They're huge. So you get your grain, you grind it up, you add some water, you need to cook four mashing cookers that we have at BFD, and we only have three, so it's constantly cycling through. We never stop running, right? You have to constantly keep going. Four of those plus a yeast tank, because we do propagate our own yeast, our proprietary strands in-house, add those and then do your thing. Obviously, it's definitely scaled down quite a bit for the OFD production, but it's still nothing to laugh at. I mean, we can still make half of our yearly production out of OFD, you're not bad an eye about it. Oh yeah. We can do 100,000 cases a year out of OFD. No problem. It's crazy that the Old Forester brand is only a couple of 100,000 cases. Isn't that crazy? It really is. We're small. You think of it as such an established, it's always been around type of brand. You think of it that way because you're a bourbon nerd, right? You get it. You're in the old fo cult. I do love me some old fo. Oh, fo, fo sho. Can we use this as proof too that there is no bourbon shortage coming up? You don't have a bourbon shortage. That's a bunch of horse sh**. What bourbon? Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's a perennial write-in question that people keep asking. Yeah. Yeah. What? The shortage? Is it because they see things getting younger and younger and they're like, oh no, what's happening? Well, they see age statements going away and they see a lot of sensationalist, disguise-falling articles because somebody who's been drinking and writing about bourbon for a couple of decades, all of a sudden, this doesn't taste like old granddad Well, yeah. It's because in 1981, it was 20 years old. Guess what? You've lost half your taste buds since then, so thank you. I'm sorry. Guess what, everybody? Here's a little disclaimer for you. You will lose taste buds as you age. It happens. This is life. Yeah. Sorry. It's going to take- But we're running out of trees. It's even worse for people like me and Greg because we have less to start with than you lucky women do. For the most part. Not guaranteed, but usually. You usually make better tasters, too. This one's hot. Can I ask about that? One of the things I've wondered is I'm not a super taster by far, but people say I'm okay on my palate. Maybe that's because I read books, but maybe it's because I drink a lot of coffee, I eat a lot of hot sauce, hot foods, and I've blown out the parts of my palate to get turned off by austerity. No, don't think of it that way. So I can taste the stuff that was behind it. Well, maybe that's why I'm attracted to that food at first place. Here's the thing, it's a simple exercise to do. If you've got, just picture some random cartoon tongue. It's got one tastebud on it and one tastebud alone, right? And that one tastebud picks up on sour. It's just gonna be like, sour! Like, I can't believe I'm doing this cartoon tastebud impression on a podcast, but I'm doing it. If you've got a million taste buds on your tongue and they'll pick up sour, it's gonna just roar sour, right? So you need more to reach a threshold, the less taste buds you have. This is why you see people that have less taste buds require more substantive things, more tannic things, bigger, bolder, giant cabs and big bomb taste profiles. Whereas if you have a ton of taste buds on your tongue, something lighter is actually going to trigger that threshold at a much lower place. So it has nothing to do with things being feminine or masculine or better or worse. It has everything to do with whether or not your particular amount of taste buds see it as overload or not. So when people say, oh, women are better tasters. Okay, well, let's back that up. And why? Because they have more taste buds? Why do they have more taste buds? Does anyone want to think about that? Because they're the ones that are actually carrying a child to pass on their genes to the next generation. If you can taste something that's going to poison your offspring, obviously it benefits you to have more taste buds and you're going to pass that on and on and on and on. You did start this thing by talking about the flaws that you can pick up and you probably could pick up flaws. Like Pat has said before, he's not very good at detecting diacetyl. Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah. That's one of those. And I was, you know, I was our beer buyer for years too. And that's a very common flaw in beer. Yeah, that's true. Like I'm not totally blind to it, but it's very tough for me. But I'm ultra sensitive to sulfur, for example. Yeah, no. I'm like ultra sensitive. This is very common. And so anything like that, like pops up, even a sniff, somebody else may be like, oh, this is fine. I'll be like, this is the worst thing I've ever tasted. Right, exactly. No, that's, and that's another case and point about it, is that it's not even just about the numbers. You want to expand on it. Like there are blind spots. We have people with blind spots at work all the time. That's why it takes a village. It really does. It can never just be one person that's making and deciding anything on any of these products. So, but yeah, back to that. It's like I was saying, it's not that you've blown out your palate. It's quite possible that you just required more oomph in the first place because you have less taste buds. And that's totally fine. It's not better or worse. Well, then I'm being less susceptible to getting overblown by austerity that I can get past it and taste some of the other intricacies that are hidden. A giant, massive tannin bomb to you is just normal. Let's talk about this 100 Proof, Bottle and Bin, Old Forester. So this is from the Big F**k distillery, right? Ground foreman's? Now, I assume with something that's on this large of a scale, this is getting pulled from all different warehouses, all different floors? We pull it across the board, but this is part of the Whiskey Row collection. We're sipping on the 1897 right now. That's less than 100 barrels dumped together. That to us is defined a small batch in our terms. Now, nerds like me tend to get a little hung up on the 1920 in the Whiskey Row collection for like high proof. Of course you do. But holy shit, this is good. This is great. This is just easily stand shoulder to shoulder. And I'm guessing, I think this tastes notably a little older than the previous bottles we've had here today. Is that true-ish? No? False. I'm a real dummy. The oldest bottle. No, you're not. You're absolutely not. This has gone through a lot less filtration, so you're holding on to a lot more flavor that you've pulled out of that barrel. This is a smaller lot, and we do blend the Whiskey Row series for flavor consistency across the board. Everyday Old Fo, the 86 Proof, the 100 Proof, even the TryRye, that's going to be 200 to 2,000 barrels batched together at a time for consistency's sake. These are always less than 100. The 1870s, 21 barrels at a time, which is insanely small for us. It's very hard to make consistent flavor profile on that few barrels. Yeah, that seems like a real pain in the ass. Yeah, you guys tasted single barrels. They're all different. For this one, yeah, there's a lot of flavor. This is the one I used to tell people, if you're a rye whiskey drinker, you've got to drink the 1897. It's bourbon, but it's very black pepper spicy. It's very, very robust. Now we have rye, so I need a different. You guys got to help me come up with a different thing to say about this one. I would say it's good. Yeah, but it's definitely more unlike that baking spice, brown spice, black spice, anise type of end of the spectrum. Sure. Yeah, it gives a nice little hug in the throat for sure. You can also say that it's terrific and collectible quality, and it's only 50 bucks at Binny's. It's terrific and it is collectible quality, and guess what? It's only 50 bucks at Binny's. All locations, all across the board. Jokes on you, Brown Foreman lawyers, who are kind of that much commercial. If you can't find it at Binny's, it's probably not worth drinking. Yeah, the suit you brought with you is sweating over there in the corner right now. The suit in the corner. No offense, you're not wearing the suit. They're used to it by now with me. It's like, Jackie, Lord, here we go. I don't know. Brown Foreman is a fantastic company. I know, we've talked about this earlier, that it's Brown Foreman and it's a large company, and so of course with that, you have a lot to lose. Of course, we tend to be a little bit more tight and conservative about some of the stuff that we talk about. But honestly, from my background and where I came from, the bar industry and that side of things, I would have never jumped ship to work for a brand unless I could talk about it honestly and transparently and not have to do the used car salesman pitch. That's why I only said yes to Old Forester. I had other opportunities, I still do on occasion. I'm not going to lie, but I would never say yes to anything but Old Fo, because what's the point, right? What's the most challenging thing for you as a taster as far as Old Forester products? Do you maybe struggle more with picking up different flaws or nuances in rye versus a bourbon, or is there, once something gets a little older, does that become tougher for you, or are you just super taste or whatever? Bring it. So as far as challenges that my personal palate goes through, it's got nothing to do with whiskey itself. I actually, I have a blind spot. That is a note that we find sometimes in Canadian whiskeys, which is a rubber note. It's this weird rubber eraser, rubber tire kind of interesting industrial note. Sometimes that one is a challenge for me. We don't find it in bourbon though, so I think I'm in a good spot, but it's interesting. I'm actually better at picking up differences in vodkas than I am in whiskeys. I know that sounds backwards. It is what it is. I figured that out many, many years ago. I did a blind vodka testing with Tony Abogadam, and it was 12 different brands, just like back to back to back. I'm like, it's this, it's this, and I don't drink vodka. Vodka makes me mean. Mark my words. I do not drink vodka. I do not, but it's easy. So when you sit on panels at Brown Foreman, granted, I only work for Old Forester, but I still have to be on panels for our tequilas, for our vodkas, for our liqueurs, all of our different RTD products, all of that's all encompassed in all of it. And so whenever there's a panel set up, it ruins and makes my day at the same time where I'm like, I got the Old Forester wrong, I'm the master taster of Old Forester and I got the Old Forester wrong. And I'm like, but man, I really killed it on that Finlandia panel. Got it going. So there's that. The rubber note is a blind spot for me on occasion and carbonation really screws with me. Like when it comes to, I'm great with beer, I really, really am. But when it comes to fine tune differences for things that actually have the carbonation, for some reason, that just really messes with me. Jerry, like a bag of like sour gummies and you're like, sorry guys, can't go to work today. Oh, the day I had to pass my blind master taster exam to even have this title, I had the worst sinus infection in my life. And I was like, they're never going to take me seriously. They're going to make the little blonde girl from the Old Forester team is just never going to win. Like, no, but it was fine. I did it. It's surprising, like even when you're stuffed up, if you've trained yourself, like you really, you really focus and fine tune into certain things. It's not this like go into a glass blind and wax poetic about a thousand different notes that are in it. It's very much quality control driven at the first and foremost point of it. So I've done it. I've done it many times. Tea and coffee will really, really screw me up though. Like on days that I have single barrel selections, sometimes I have a really, really bad problem drinking sweet tea. It is like, it is my favorite thing in the entire world. Like Texas sweet, like thick sweet, like syrup sweet. It's got to be so sweet. Like 60% syrup and 40% tea. 100%. I'm like, just keep adding more sugar. And then when you think you're done, just keep adding more to it, please. So, but on days that I have single barrel selections, if I drink black coffee in the morning, which is weird, I'll drink black coffee, but I need like Texas sweet, sweet tea. I will completely ruin my palate if I drink that stuff. It's weird. I know. It's the tea and it just like, it ruins everything. But for the most part though, I mean, yeah, I don't know. What else? You got to eat, you got to drink water, anything else. You just get used to it after a while. I know everyone likes to think it's just like romanticized, like completely neutral environment, which in the lab it is completely. But when you're in the warehouse and you're going through barrel selections, you really have to get used to having the impact of aromatically being a little bit handicapped from the vapors in there and all that stuff. Yeah. So you learn to play within the space that you're allowed to. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Did I answer your question? I just ramble on a tangent forever. That's what I struggle with, palette-wise. That's what I struggle with. If we do Q&A, that'll give her enough time. You have time to stick around for the customer Q&A portion? Yeah. I love Q&As. Did we wrap this up enough? I don't know. Okay. Well, just keep going. You have plenty of time. Let's just keep going. The day-long podcast about Old Forester. Thanks as to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Write your question to us, and if we answer it on the podcast, we'll give you a $20 Binny's gift card. Email us at comments at binnys.com, or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Bev, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. All right, so today, Jackie, you were very popular, we got three questions. We put, you put it out there, Jackie's coming in. What questions do you have for Jackie? Oh. No, that's what you said on Twitter? It's a question. That was a question, I said it like a statement, I have that problem. So you put it out there. All right, so F4Tray asks, what upcoming product launches are you most excited about? Yeah, spill it. I am very excited about some of the esoteric stuff we're going to have coming out of the distillery. Keep in mind, so we've just started production within the last year at OFD. That in and of itself is a science experiment. It's a different warehousing situation, it's a different still. The distillate is coming out crystal clear and clean and perfect and on par with Old Fo, of course, but what happens post-maturation is a different story. So there's going to be a lot of diversity there to really innovate with, but it's not a stuffy brand. We like to say approachable and fun, definitely not formal. But I think that for the brown foreman template anyways, we have a little bit more space. So I'm not going to tell you what they are, of course, I'm not going to give anything away because I'll get my hands slapped. No $20 Binny's gift card. But you're excited for it all, it sounds like. I'm excited for it all. You're going to see a lot of fun stuff coming from Old Forester. I mean, there's literally an Old Forester for everybody right now. We've got so many expressions out there and they're all very different. That for us, innovation wise, it's going to have to push the limits a little bit to make it really different and stand out from the core lineup. That was a tease followed by a dodge. Yeah, I think it seems like you're more inclined to please the suits than the customer here, which is a kind of bad for you. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, the point. I mean, we are always thinking of what's going to be best in that bottle at the end of the day. So customer is definitely the most important part of it. But we do have a really big year coming up. Let me put that out there. The Brown Forman 150th anniversary is 2020. So you will definitely be seeing as Old Forester is the founding brand of the company. You will be seeing a never before seen Old Forester and a never before seen package come out in 2020 that you will sleep outside on the sidewalk, outside of every Binny's location to try to get your hands on. Bourbon has just got goose bumps there. They just got goose bumps. They got something. I'm not going to tell you anything else about it, right? So yeah, you'll see that for sure. I'll combine these next two questions because they're pretty similar. One comes from Jamie Says and one comes from Courtney Remy. And they're basically asking you, what's the best way to get into bourbon, whiskey, scotch? It's usually too strong for me. Where do I start? Long live the cocktail. I mean, seriously, that is definitely the best way to get into it. Keep in mind, by cocktail, I don't mean go out and get yourself a bourbon and coke. I mean, go out and honestly, there's plenty of people out there doing amazing things with a bunch of different ingredients in every city across this country, trust me. We have some fantastic recipes on oldforester.com that will definitely lead you to. We also have an entire line of cocktail provisions to help you craft craft cocktails at home with no flaw parameters. So my entry point was definitely the OldFashion and I'm still there. I am a diehard OldFashion drinker, OldFashions for life. When I start drinking it straight, I just feel like I'm at work. What's your bitters? My bitters in an OldFashion is a proprietary blend of the Old Forester bitters line. I have some of them in the office. We should try them sometime. But if I don't have it, obviously Angostura is your go-to. Back in the day, I used to be in Angostura about a dash and a little bit of a half dash of Ango and then maybe a couple of drops of the Fee Brothers Old Fashion, but not so much anymore. If I can go two dashes Ango and a half dash of an orange bitters, I'm good. Or just Ango, I don't know. The answer is all of the above, I guess. That's sweet tea though. All about the old fashions and the sweet tea. But honestly, if I go to a bar, I'm like, I need an Old Forester, Old Fashioned on the sweet side, Low on the bitters, thank you, with orange and lemon peel. Thanks. That's my go-to old fashion. It sounds like a pretty damn delicious drink. I know. We should have those right now. We should go to the tasting room and have Angie make them. Thanks, guys, for your questions. $20 Binny's gift cards for you. Everybody else can email their questions at comments.binnys.com or hit us up on social media, at Binny's Beb on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Jackie, this has been terrific. Thank you guys so much for the opportunity to come and chat OFO with you. Please keep the questions coming. I mean, the Binny's people know where to find me, so if you ever have a question about Old Forester, we're here to answer it for you. Try the rye, hashtag TryRye. Is that a hashtag? It is now. All right. You're welcome. Hashtag TryRye. That's the episode title. Hashtag Old Fo, not just for old folks. I like that. All right. Cool. Everybody, thanks for listening to Barrel, the Bottle, the Binny's Podcast. We'll be back with another episode next week. Until next time, I'm Greg. I'm Hillary. I'm Pat. I'm Shannon. I'm Jackie from Old Forester and keep on tasting. What was that whiskey that did it for you that would connected you? Oh Lordy, okay, well, there's what Jackie's first bourbon experience was in her life, and then there was what Jackie used to drink after that experience, and then there was what Jackie drinks now, and then there's Jackie speaking in third person on a podcast, so whatever.