What better way to celebrate National Bourbon Heritage Month than with a refreshing Bourbon cocktail? Throughout the month, we’ll be posting various bourbon cocktail recipes. If anyone has the patriotic zeal (Bourbon Heritage Month is authorized by Act of Congress!) to try these bourbon cocktail recipes or any others this month, send a photo to [email protected] and we’ll post them to the site! This one’s a small twist on a time-tested favorite. Tradition says the first Old Fashioned was created by a bartender at Louisville’s Pendennis Club in the late 19th century, and that Colonel James E. Pepper, a…
Author: Bill
Bill
Bill is the Co-Founder, Editor-in Chief, and official Bourbon-o-Phile for ModernThirst.com, and Founder and Chief Blending Officer for Four Gate Whiskey Company. He is a native of Louisville, KY in the heart of Bourbon Country. He attended the University of Kentucky in the mid to late 1990s. He has also been published on Liquor.com. He has conducted various bourbon and whiskey tastings in cities across the country, and consulted for multiple national labels. He is married with two daughters, and lives in east Louisville. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter @BillStraub and email him at [email protected].
I’ve been following Matt’s Barrel Aging Experiment with great interest over the past month or so. So I was pretty excited when Matt delivered sample of his first two pours from the barrel to me along with a control sample of the un-aged Old Weller Antique. So during my Fantasy Football Draft (this is the year I finally regain the trophy…I SWEAR), I decided to do a linear tasting of the three samples. As you may remember, I’m ever so slightly more critical of Old Weller Antique than many of our readers (it has become en vogue to profusely express…
What better way to celebrate National Bourbon Heritage Month than with a refreshing Bourbon cocktail? Throughout the month, we’ll be posting various bourbon cocktail recipes. If anyone has the patriotic zeal (Bourbon Heritage Month is authorized by Act of Congress!) to try these bourbon cocktail recipes or any others this month, send us a photo and we’ll post them to the site! Today’s recipe comes courtesy of Jim Beam and DBC. It was created by Louisville’s Sean Thibodeaux. Thibodeaux is Assistant General Manager and Head Mixologist at St. Charles Exchange. BASIL HAYDEN’S® NEW YORK MANHATTAN Created by Sean Thibodeaux, Louisville, KY…
What better way to celebrate National Bourbon Heritage Month than with a refreshing Bourbon cocktail? Throughout the month, we’ll be posting various bourbon cocktail recipes. If anyone has the patriotic zeal (Bourbon Heritage Month is authorized by Act of Congress!) to try these bourbon cocktail recipes or any others this month, send us a photo and we’ll post them to the site! Today’s recipe comes courtesy of Jim Beam and DBC. It was created by James Beard award-winning celebrity chef Michael Symon. Symon has appeared on Iron Chef America, among other cooking shows, written or contributed to multiple periodicals and…
Jim Bunning. Hall of Fame pitcher, Senator, statesman. Whatever. The real reason I mention his name is that in 2007, then-Senator Bunning sponsored a resolution in the Senate that declared September to be National Bourbon Heritage Month. And should you hail from a differing party and not wish to give Senator Bunning his due on this, It passed unanimously, so we should all be able to join hands in thanks to our government for (finally) getting something right. Because that’s what we need…a federally approved reason to drink a lot of bourbon for 30 days. So if your wives, husbands,…
Try as she might, Mother Nature could not pull the plug on this one. Saturday, August 23rd was marked by torrential downpours, lightning, thunder, humidity, and beer. Wait…beer? Yup. Brew at the Zoo and Wine, Too was held at the Louisville Zoo, and played host to dozens of craft and national brewers and wine makers as well as local eateries and restaurants. Despite the ankle-deep mud and frequent rains, attendees laced up their boots, pulled on their ponchos, and drank their weight in craft beer. While it seemed the bulk of people clustered inside the tents for shelter, there…
Lots of citrus sweetness on the tip of the tongue. Candied pears, peaches, and lemon greet the mouth, and give way to a rounded simple-syrup sweetness on the middle of the tongue.
Brandy distillers at a Bourbon Society Meeting?!? What Gives? Normally, that would be a legitimate question, but the Bourbon Society of Louisville is no slave to convention. Head Distiller Brandon O’Daniel’s Copper and Kings Distillery is located in the nearby neighborhood of Butchertown in Louisville, and surprisingly, the history of Brandy in this region stretches back quite a ways. The Bourbon society welcomed Brandon as its featured speaker last night during its August meeting. Copper and Kings is relatively new on the scene, having celebrated their soft opening on July 11th of this year, but they aim to make a…
Typically, one would expect a Saturday Morning in August in Frankfort, KY to be hot and humid as the day begins. But on August 16th, the Buffalo Trace distillery woke up to a cool, cloudy morning and a visit from Modern Thirst. I’ve toured most of the distilleries on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail before. While Buffalo Trace is no longer officially a member of the Trail itself, they are one of the largest distilleries in Kentucky (the massive Jim Beam facility being the largest). I’ve actually taken a “Ghost Tour” at Buffalo Trace once before. That’s a somewhat laughable tour,…
This marks our second installment in a series of whiskey reviews dedicated to West Virginia-based spirits company Smooth Ambler. In this review, I’m focusing on the 10 year version of their Old Scout bourbon product. This should compare very nicely with the Old Scout 7 year bourbon I reviewed previously. In an age when it seems whiskey producers do everything they can to obscure the origins of their distillate, and create false and misleading narratives about the source of their whiskey, Smooth Ambler is a refreshing change of pace. While they are distilling many of their own spirits, they also…