Tag: bourbon

Romancing the barrel

~ Meg ~ 48 Comments

Week 9 in The Year of Drinking Adventurously.  Bourbon barrel aged beer.

Despite the growing craft beer movement, the beer industry is still dominated by large industrial brewers like Anheuser Busch.  So chances are, unless you are a beer afficionado, you aren’t likely to have tried a bourbon-barrel aged beer.  Just like it sounds, a batch of beer is stored for a period of time -aging- in a bourbon barrel for a number of weeks.  It gives the brew a distinctive flavor.  And really, it’s quite the practical reuse of something that would otherwise be discarded.

Yep, that’s right.  Bourbon producers only use a barrel once.  That seems like such a waste!  No worries, though, the rest of the whisky producing world is happy to take America’s bourbon barrels off her hands.  Canada, Ireland, Scotland… they all use old bourbon barrels to store and age their whiskies.  And of course, another one of the uses for a pre-owned bourbon barrel is aging beer.  Even small-time microbreweries are acquiring old barrels for this purpose.

I chose to drink Allagash Brewery’s Curieux. IMG_1272And what a sexy brew it is!  (Thus the ‘romance’ in the title.)  It’s corked – champagne style.  At eleven percent alcohol. it’s another butt-kicker, so be forewarned.  Curieux is made by aging Allagash’s Belgian Tripel in Jim Beam barrels for eight weeks.  At that time a splash of fresh tripel is added before kegging or bottling the batch.  The end result?  Hints of vanilla, coconut and bourbon…  Yum!  And wait till you hear this –the recommended food pairing is cheesecake, roquefort or creme brulee!!  I think it’s really funny that beer has gotten snobby enough for food pairing! (snort!)

Ok, so I’m sipping on it, as I write this.  The flavors are subtle.  Not strongly of any one thing.  Not real beer-like either.  Highly carbonated but without a lot of head.  Crisp and… woo! going straight to my head!  Bring on the creme brulee…

Don’t forget to see what Lula drank this week!

 

Not your Grandad’s Bourbon

~ Meg ~ 45 Comments

It’s week two of the Year of Drinking Adventurously.  Bourbon. (Find all 52 entries, here.)

This week we cross the pond from Scotland to the southern United States to sample bourbon, America’s most famous spirit.  Bourbon has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity recently.  Even cool kids like Hilary Clinton are drinking it.

huffpo-Hillary-Clinton.jpg
Hilary touring the Maker’s Mark Distillery, image courtesy Huffington Post

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t been caught up in this wave of bourbon trendiness.  Honestly, three or four years ago, I wouldn’t have touched the stuff given another whiskey option.  That’s what happens when your earliest bourbon memories are sneaking a taste of your Dad’s Old Grandad on the rocks when he isn’t looking.  Blech.

Then I met Woodford Reserve and my life was forever changed.  The thing I hated about bourbon was that “corny, sour mashy” taste and smell.  The Woodford had none of that.  Recently, I acquired a bottle of Blanton’s Bourbon and it’s become my new favorite.

My bottle, not my kitchen

However, I can’t find it in my local liquor store leaving me to buy this instead:

 

 

My bottle, my kitchen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So how does one drink their bourbon?  Straight up?  Yes.  But I can’t keep posting that every week, you’ll stop reading.  Here are 2 of my favorite options:

1. The classic Manhattan:manhattan-cocktail

In a shaker with ice:  3 oz. bourbon, 1 oz. sweet vermouth, 2-3 dashes bitters, 1 Maraschino cherry.  Shake and pour into Martini glass or if you prefer, serve on the rocks.

I know it looks like a girly drink but if you were hoping for a Cosmo, you will be sorely disappointed.  You have to like whiskey to like this cocktail.

2. The bourbon hot toddy:

(No photo because it looks like a cup of tea)

In a small sauce pan:  3-4 oz. bourbon, juice of half a lemon (or a fresh orange or tangerine is nice too), 1-2 tablespoons honey, water to dilute (not too much!)  Heat until honey has dissolved (don’t boil it or you’ll cook off the alcohol and then what would be the point?), serve in a teacup or mug.

Comfort in a cup!  Nice on a sore throat, too.  Even my tea-totaling Nana would have a hot toddy when she had a chest cold.  This was the perfect drink for me with the nagging cough I’ve been battling.

I struggled to tie this into writing.  Bourbon was the drink of choice for some famous authors like William Faulkner, Hunter S. Thompson and Samuel Clemens.  Bourbon is featured in the lyrics of over 400 hundred songs.  I’m sure it’s fueled the muse in many famous drinkers over the years.  That’s all I got!

Make sure you check out Lula’s post today.  She wrote about rye, bourbon’s kissing cousin!