This is installment number one of the “Broken Bourbon” series by the Alchemist. Subscribe to The Barrelhead Chronicles to follow this series and other great contributions from the site.
The first bourbon I ever had the “pleasure” of drinking was Kentucky Gentleman. At the time, it was $6.99 a bottle (don’t judge) and it was, at least in my opinion, a step up from getting drunk on “Beast Light” or MD 20/20. I was wrong. Not only could I not scrub the taste out of my mouth with a wire brush, it was arguably the worst hangover I have ever had, and I’ve endured some epic hangovers. Still couldn’t bring myself to pour it out. It did cost 7 bucks, after all. That’s a lot of dime beers wasted.
Since, then I had made it my mission to figure out how to “fix” bad bourbons. As you well know, crappy bourbon isn’t only located on the bottom shelf of the corner liquor store. No, my friends, it hides everywhere, on every shelf. In fact, I feel like there is more shit Bourbon today than at any other point in history. I’ll dive into what makes a shitty Bourbon shitty at another time. Too much academia this early on and most of you will never come back. Instead, I wanted to focus on the latest bottle of Broken Bourbon and how I personally fixed it so it didn’t taint the sewer discharged from my home.
Hudson Baby Bourbon Whiskey
Undoubtedly, you have seen these bottles in nearly every liquor store in the country as have I. This probably should have been the first red flag. I’ve never seen a store out of stock of Hudson Baby Bourbon Whiskey. Until now, anything that intentionally advertises itself as a “baby” Bourbon seemed to be a natural pass over. As with cheese and wine, we all know age is important in all whiskeys. It isn’t everything, but it is pretty damn important.
I finally picked up a bottle the other day at my local “sweet spot” and dusted off the bottle for a gander at the label. The dust should have been my second red flag. This is a “New York Straight Bourbon whiskey” that is distilled from a whole grain mash, non-chilled filtered and bottled in Gardiner, NY, a small town roughly 80 miles of New York City. That should have been the killer, third red flag. I haven’t met a Bourbon from the state of NY yet that I have found good, let alone reasonable.
Before putting it back on the shelf and moving on, I flipped the bottle over real quick. The back of the bottle, however, caught me off-guard with a level of intrigue. The Baby Bourbon is comprised of a blend of whiskeys from three separate barrels. Not three mash bills, three different sized casks. The science of this appealed to me. You see, by pouring a distillate into smaller barrels, you can seemingly cheat time. The smaller the barrel, the greater the surface-to-volume ratio becomes. That is, more of the liquor comes in contact with more of the barrel’s charred oak stave surfaces, taking on more of the flavor and color that make Bourbon, Bourbon.
This isn’t a new concept to me. I’ve been cheating the aging process for years with my own barrels in my own home. I’ll find a interesting bottle or blend of white dog, pour it into a 1, 2 or 3 liter barrel and pull it out just a few years later with the body and flavor of a much older Bourbon, all without the long wait.
Now be careful, there is a lot of science that is about to follow. If you don’t give a shit about the science, just skip to the Fix. Otherwise, put on your thinking caps and let me explain.
Hudson notes their Baby Bourbon is a blend of whiskey from three sizes of cask, 15 gallon, 25 gallon and 53 gallon (traditional) barrels. Each whiskey spends approximately two to four years in the barrels before being blended together, ratio and true age unknown to achieve their “artfully blended” Baby Bourbon. If you do the math, that means each bottle contains a blend of 2-4 year old (actual age) whiskey, roughly 2.75-5 year old (expedited aging in the 25 gal barrel) whisky and roughly 3.5-6 year old (expedited age in the 15 gallon barrel). That puts the calculated average “age” of the blended Bourbon at somewhere between 2 and 6 years old. While this speeding up of the process seems great, there is still a reason the old addage states, “Good things come to those who wait.”
Long story short, the absorption of critical aromatic and phenolic compounds into the liquor doesn’t occur along the same curve as the surface area-to-volume ratio curve. In other words, a shorter period of time in a smaller barrel doesn’t equal the same flavor and aroma of whiskey aged for adjusted-equivalent periods of times in traditional 53 gallon barrel. Damn science.
This was quickly realized when I opened the bottle of 2019 Hudson Baby Bourbon, Batch 2. Immediately I was overcome with the odor of turpentine. Essentially too much lignin and guaiacol and not enough tannins absorbed to break them down. This was evident in its color. The refraction of the curved bottle made the Bourbon appear darker than it actually was. Take a look at the before and after pictures below to see my point.
The Fix
To fix this bourbon, we need to get more tannins from the woods to suppress the acetone flavor from the abundant lignin and guaiacol in this batch. The problem with accelerated aging, is that the oak still takes a finite amount of time to properly release its tanins. The increased surface area-to-volume ratio exposes more of the liquids to what is released by the wood, but it doesn’t cause the wood to release more of these precious compounds. The fix, therefore, should be easy. More tanins.
To do this, I took barrel stave planks I had purchased from Maker’s Mark. This particular planks were from Maker’s 46 barrels and the charred internal portion of the barrel had been separated from the raw oak outside. These staves are marketed for grilling and smoking, both of which I really enjoy doing with these planks. We can talk about that another time. Maker’s 46 is typically dumped six years and then returned to the barrel with the staves. The staves are “seared” or heavily toasted and not charred. Treatment of the staves is called Profile 46, thus the name Maker’s 46. They do some great things experimenting with the wood of their staves at Maker’s Mark. Check out their Wood Finishing series.
So I cut two 3/4″ wide pieces off of the end of the M46 stave and dropped them directly into the bottle of the Hudson Baby Bourbon. Because the M46 stave had already been soaked for so long, they were able to give up more of the tanins as the lignin and guaiacol content had decreased, and they contained some remnants (the Devil’s cut if you will) of Maker’s 46. Just enough of the aged, wheated bourbon to mellow out the harshness of the Baby Bourbon. I left the plank pieces in the bottle for a minimum of three months. Every other week or so, I would swirl the bottle to disperse the compounds being released by the plank pieces. In just that short period of time, the color of the Baby Bourbon (i.e. tanins) improved dramatically.
I started tasting it at the three month mark, and the difference in flavor was remarkable. The turpentine was replaced by cinnamon and spice. The dryness had all but cleared and warm vanilla started to poke its way through. The long burning finish mellowed out to a nice hot, but flavorful finish. After another month, this bourbon opened up like a seven-year old (an adult in the bourbon world). I’m now close to the one year mark and finally removed the plank pieces for fear of getting too much of a charcoal flavor. With every tasting between the three month and one year mark, this bourbon and its flavor have grown with so much maturity that I often can’t wait for the monthly tasting.
At the end of the day, it took roughly $0.75 of barrel plank and at least three months to fix this $50 Bourbon, which is a shame. For me, this was a fun experiment, but probably too pricey experiment, especially if you are looking to enjoy your new purchase the night you buy it. However, if you bought this bottle and it wasn’t exactly what you hoped for in a $50 Bourbon, don’t pour it down the drain! It is still fixable. You just need some patience and some aged wood. The biggest lesson learned here is you can’t cheat Father Time. No matter how big the barrel, good bourbon still takes years to mature properly. It it wasn’t such a big deal, we’d all just be drinking white dog all of the time.
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