Episode 15: Broken Barrel Rum Cask Finished Bourbon "BevMo!" (Batch 3)

The Pot Still Column: Episode 15 - Weird Whiskey Wednesday Edition!

Broken Barrel Reserve Oak Series Rum Cask Stave Finished Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey

Batch #3 (Selected by BevMo!)

Proof: 115

Age: NAS (2+ Years)

Finish: Barbados Rum Staves and Ex-Rye Staves

Source: undisclosed Kentucky distillery

Price: $55.00

Broken Barrel Whiskey Co. is doing some wild things with whiskey, expanding on the already booming field of finished spirits. Focusing primarily on bourbon, Broken Barrel finishes its products with the help of barrel staves rather than entire casks. Their barrel breaking endeavors are well documented on their social media pages, and the team seems to take great pleasure in the smashing process. The company takes pride in its coinage of the term "oak bill," a play on the more well-known phrase, mash bill. While mash bills document the ratios of grain that go into the whiskey, the oak bill delineates the different types of wood used during production.

Today's review will cover Broken Barrel's rum cask stave finished Kentucky straight bourbon, a member of the brand's core line of products. This particular bottle is a barrel pick from BevMo! in San Diego, although it doesn't specify that it is a single barrel. The bourbon is bottled at cask strength (57.5%) and boasts an oak bill of 75% rum staves and 25% ex-rye staves. The distillate itself is produced under contract by Green River Distilling in Kentucky, a distillery recently acquired by Bardstown Bourbon Company. While I have no official word on the matter, Broken Barrel's future contracting may be affected by the recent acquisition, so we can only speculate about whether Green River will continue to produce Broken Barrel's bourbon.

The bottle itself is unique, built from opaque, black glass stamped with the Broken Barrel logo. The glass is quite the work of art, and the densely worded label is fitted into glass ridges specifically designed for this purpose. The presentation is very elegant and appealing to the eye, but it isn't my favorite bottle design. While it is undoubtedly beautiful and may be someone else's cup of tea (bourbon?), the bottle clashes strongly with every other bottle in existence, making it an eyesore on my shelves. Furthermore, the bottle is short and fat, taking up precious real-estate.

Along with the oak bill, the container proudly reports a mash bill of 70% corn, 21% rye, and 9% malted barley, revealing a substantial rye content. Funnily enough, despite my constant complaints about lack of transparency by bourbon companies when it comes to details such as mash bills, Broken Barrel's commendable transparency may be of little relevance.

The nose is completely dominated by the rum finish, making this completely unrecognizable as a bourbon. Despite being familiar with several of Broken Barrel's offerings, I would be hard pressed to categorize this properly if presented with it blindly. The rum finish is unmistakable, imparting a buttery sweetness and accentuating the dusty corn smell of the base spirit. Notes of blue raspberry slushy and cotton candy mark the desserty characteristics of this bourbon as more synthetic in nature than the usual sugars, maples, and caramels one might expect from a bourbon. This is why I commented that the mash bill may be irrelevant: this is more finish than it is whiskey.

Despite this, I find myself enjoying it, and there are plenty of redeeming characteristics that balance out the shock factor. The taste is buttery smooth, every sharp edge that may once have existed covered liberally with velvet. I wouldn't be surprised if this whiskey is only 2 or 3 years old. If the intended profile during the planning stages was what I am experiencing now, then well-aged whiskey would have been a wasteful investment. Fortunately, the extensive finishing rounds off the grainy sharpness of the young distillate, making the final product rather ageless. Butterscotch appears as the bourbon spends more time in the glass, adding to the heavily candied profile.

The finish reflects a blurry likeness of the taste, briefly treating the drinker to a hint of butterscotch, but quickly fades into oaky nothingness. I was hoping the bourbon's buttery traits would carry over into the finish, leaving an oily texture, but this is not the case.

Closing Impression:

Oh man, this is a difficult bottle to review. The profile is so dramatically different from every other bourbon that it feels unjust to use other whiskeys as comparative measures. Individually, the experience is good and the flavors are surprisingly complex. Lots of candied flavors that one rarely finds in bourbon show up here in abundance, although perceptions of those flavors may vary. I think the safest bet would be to categorize this as a flavored whiskey. This is unfair to Broken Barrel because it isn't technically true, but if I were to rate this as a traditionally finished bourbon, the results would be less pretty than Broken Barrel's ingenuity deserves. Since I don't rate flavored whiskeys on this publication, I will exercise my right to abstain from choosing a score!

While I may not be giving this a numerical score, I can leave you with a verbal one. This is not in any way a whiskey for someone who is looking for a bourbon profile. The flavors are intensely sweet and dessert-like, making this more of a digestif liqueur than a bourbon. Under normal circumstances, I would suspect that the rum barrels used for finishing this whiskey were wet enough to swim in, but the use of staves instead of liquid-bearing barrels nips that idea in the bud. That being said, I like the flavors that are present, and will happily share this bottle with friends who might be more openminded or curious in their exploration.

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Nose: Pretty Good

Taste: Curious

Finish: Eh.

Overall: Pretty whacky if you ask me