Picking Old Forester Barrel Strength
On Tuesday, August 17, the Bourbon Crusaders were led on an epic quest to pick our 38th barrel in downtown Louisville — an Old Forester barrel strength bourbon.
Our barrel-picking experience was led by Tyler Mirt, Old Forester’s knowledgeable distillery manager. We were also honored to have Brown-Forman’s renowned master distiller, Chris Morris, join us on our pick as well.
Prior to our pick, Tyler brought our group on an incredibly insightful tour of the distillery. What made an already amazing tour truly monumental was having Mr. Morris join us, as he often provided ancillary anecdotes that were enlightening in a way that only someone with 45+ years of working in the whiskey industry—with nearly 20 of those years as Brown-Forman’s master distiller—could provide.
Following our tour, we were led into one of the distillery’s Private tasting rooms, where Tyler walked us through his unique process of tasting barrels, which offered a noteworthy perspective given Tyler’s experience as a sommelier, in addition to his innate knowledge of bourbon.
This was also a special tour/tasting for our group, which we are incredibly grateful for. Not only was our group among the first to select an Old Forester barrel strength bourbon in-person at the distillery, but we also had the rare opportunity to select a barrel from five samples (as opposed to the standard three).
We were led through our pick by Brown-Forman’s Master Distiller Mr. Chris Morris and Old Forester’s distillery manager Tyler Mirt.
After a quick palate calibration (courtesy of Old Forester’s 100 proof expression), we were off-and-running, tasting through five barrel samples at barrel strength. Other than knowing that the barrels’ age were consistent with the standard Old Forester barrel strength expressions (i.e. approx 4 years old), we knew nothing about the specific proof or age of any individual barrel.
At Old Forrester, age truly is just a number given the distillery’s long-established process of heat-cycled warehouse aging. Jackie Zykan (Old Forester’s Master Taster) detailed Old Forester’s use of heat-cycling a few years ago:
“In Kentucky, it gets pretty toasty in the warehouse during the summer, so we just kind of let the barrels hang out all natural. During the winter, however, that’s when we really start to, I don’t want to use the word–force-maturation, but it’s kind of forced. Once it gets down to about the mid-60s Fahrenheit inside, they crank on the heat, and when temperature gets into about the mid-90s Fahrenheit, they turn it off. By doing that you get this tea bag effect where the temperature dips up and down, up and down, as opposed to just letting it hold still all winter long. By doing that you’re replicating seasonal cycling all throughout the winter time. This is an old practice; it’s not something new. This is something everyone used to do but now it’s just a matter of whether or not they wanted to maintain the cost. It’s an expensive process to heat cycle.”
Now, back to the pick! After quietly and judiciously tasting through each of the five samples, we were asked to eliminate two of the five samples.
After tallying votes for what three barrels were liked the most up to that point, barrel numbers 2 and 4 received the least amount of votes, and were eliminated. With barrels 1, 3 and 5 remaining, it took another round of deliberation to find our near-unanimous winner — barrel #5!
Our commitment to picking barrels blind was undoubtedly highlighted with this barrel — although we later learned our selection was the highest proof (132.1) of our five options, it was also the youngest of the bunch by a few months, with a barrel date of 5/21/17. Again — age is just a number!
Embodying Old Forester’s notorious banana profile, one of our members noted our selection was “supposedly the bruiser” given our selection was the highest proof, but he “didn’t find it overly powerful—just delicious.”
We’re beyond thrilled to have picked a delicious and well-balanced barrel. And once again, cheers and thank you to Tyler and Mr. Morris for guiding our group through an incredible tour-experience and barrel selection!
