Jump to content

The New Old Taylor, First Batch.


cowdery
This topic has been inactive for at least 365 days, and is now closed. Please feel free to start a new thread on the subject! 

Recommended Posts

I have it penciled in on my 2010 calendar to bump this thread no later than August.

I noticed that this has yet to occur, so I decided to take the liberty of bumping this thread. I hope that's OK.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I noticed that this has yet to occur, so I decided to take the liberty of bumping this thread. I hope that's OK.

A-OK, the threads get locked after a year of no posts, March 11, 2010 was the last post prior to yours.

I was just waiting till then.

If any newbies see this go back and check out Chuck's original post.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
bump!

probably unnecessary, but...

No! At least not for me as I somehow missed this all before. Just wonderful knowledge again being imparted here and as often on SB, miss a little, miss a lot. Oh how I hate to wait!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No! At least not for me as I somehow missed this all before. Just wonderful knowledge again being imparted here and as often on SB, miss a little, miss a lot.

A great way to discover interesting old threads is to go to Quick Links -> Who's Online and look at what the guest viewers are reading. I've found a lot of informative discussions that way. It's also mildly amusing to speculate about the Google search string that brought them here.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A great way to discover interesting old threads is to go to Quick Links -> Who's Online and look at what the guest viewers are reading. I've found a lot of informative discussions that way. It's also mildly amusing to speculate about the Google search string that brought them here.

:lol: I do this all the time. I thought I was the only one! I enjoy seeing what guests are looking up. As you have Scott, I've discovered many old and informative topics.

Worthless info alert: The one item that I see many guests hitting on over the last several months is the "Mad Men Glasses" thread......

Also, you can pretty much get an idea who the poaching lurkers of the "membership" are...i.e., years on the board, daily visitor, 0 posts, and always seem to be checking on BTAC,BTEC, 4 Roses LE's, dusty finds, etc threads... So, people, be careful about posting publicly where you find special bottles.

Back on topic....1 down, 7 to go!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...
Is this the same thing?

The just released Col E H Taylor Jr and the bourbon that is the subject of this thread are two different ones.

See post #1 here in this thread, it won't be available until 2017.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The just released Col E H Taylor Jr and the bourbon that is the subject of this thread are two different ones.

See post #1 here in this thread, it won't be available until 2017.

That is what I thought.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, a simple question: was the mashbill of white corn, 10% rye and 25% barley malt used by National Distillers for Old Taylor, i.e., until 1987?

Gary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, a simple question: was the mashbill of white corn, 10% rye and 25% barley malt used by National Distillers for Old Taylor, i.e., until 1987?

Gary

Unlikely. National had no more regard for the history or historical authenticity of the brands it owned than did the subsequent owner.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The just released Col E H Taylor Jr and the bourbon that is the subject of this thread are two different ones.

See post #1 here in this thread, it won't be available until 2017.

Okay, go ahead and slap my hand now. My once laser-like focus has become, with each advancing year, something more akin to a thousand points of light, I'm afraid.

Mea culpa.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But ND made the better bourbon (in the opinion of most here from what I can gauge). If not mash bill, what explains it? I think it may have been the particular yeast used and possibly the effects of wooden mashing vessels and fermenters. I don't think age alone explains it, the Beam/OG profile is just too different.

Gary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How long did ND make Taylor whisky? I thought they bought the place in 1935.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But ND made the better bourbon (in the opinion of most here from what I can gauge). If not mash bill, what explains it? I think it may have been the particular yeast used and possibly the effects of wooden mashing vessels and fermenters. I don't think age alone explains it, the Beam/OG profile is just too different.

Gary

I wonder about the corn itself. With corn genetics often largely controlled by Big Ag like Archer Daniels Midland, I wonder what corn is bought by the distilleries, and how much effort they put into ascertaining breeds. I know they carefully watch quality/contamination/moisture, etc. I've read that modern corn has a lot more carbohydrate, whereas corn used to have a lot more protein. This has to be a huge factor - certainly as big a factor as water or barrel char or a dozen other variables. And I'm certainly not a geneticist or a farmer, but I think breaking corn down by "white versus yellow" must be an oversimplification along the lines of breaking spirits down as "clear versus brown".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Old Taylor Distillery ran its last batch in 1972. Thereafter Old Taylor was made at the adjacent Old Crow Distillery, where it presumably was made until the Beam acquisition in 1987. It's possible they made it at Old Grand-Dad. It's also possible they used the two distilleries interchangeably.

Old Grand-Dad always had a special mash bill and yeast. It's entirely possible and, I think, likely that Crow and Taylor were the same yeast and same mash bill, i.e., the same whiskey, except Taylor was a six-year-old whereas Crow was a four-year-old. National had a lot of other bourbons at that time -- Bellows was one of them -- and I imagine that all of them except Old Grand-Dad were essentially that same whiskey, made at Old Crow.

We don't know what mash bill, yeast and other specifications they were using. We just know that recipe was never made again after 1987. We know Beam retained the Old Grand-Dad formula only. For every other bourbon they obtained from National, as well as for Old Overholt Rye, they used up the National stock, then switched everything over to the Jim Beam bourbon and rye recipes.

So I don't see what the mystery is. Of course Old Taylor changed after Beam bought it. The whiskey was a different mash bill, a different yeast, and made in a different distillery by a different company with different operating procedures, etc. That is more than enough to explain the difference and we know all of that happened.

The most unlikely theory is that they were using some kind of special corn specification for Taylor. In the post-prohibition era, despite what a lot of people dearly want to believe, 'corn' has meant #2 dent and nothing else. Possibly some distilleries had slightly different moisture content specs but that would be about it. It's also possible that some of the crappier distilleries were using crappier corn, but the industry standard is and long has been #2 dent.

Nobody has ever used anything 'special' in the modern era (excluding micro-distilleries, of course). Distilleries in the 70s and 80s certainly were not using anything that cost more than #2 dent. That's when everyone was cutting costs so they could compete on price, which might have tempted some people to use some #3 or #4, but not #1.

To bourbon distilleries, corn is a commodity. Anything they might say about 'the finest choice grains' is pure marketing fluff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My Grandmothers, who agreed on almost everything, were disparate in one regard. One made corn bread with yellow corn meal and the other used white corn meal. Dent yellow and Shoepeg white were the varietals I think but the resultant bread flavor was different. Doubt if Bourbons made in the last 50 years or so have used other than yellow dent. Perhaps one of the Micros might explore this if they really want to do something different.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My Grandmothers, who agreed on almost everything, were disparate in one regard. One made corn bread with yellow corn meal and the other used white corn meal. Dent yellow and Shoepeg white were the varietals I think but the resultant bread flavor was different. Doubt if Bourbons made in the last 50 years or so have used other than yellow dent. Perhaps one of the Micros might explore this if they really want to do something different.

Well, don't know if any micros have, but BT has been it seems.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

#2 dent corn now, and #2 dent corn then are 2 different animals. I do not know when all of the hybrids started coming along, but it was probably after ww2, but this has had a serious impact on the flavor of corn. Now, corn is bred to have way more starch in it than it used to have. To have more starch, it has to have less germ, and that is where the flavor comes from. I had this very conversation with 2 corn genetic folks last week. 1 from cornell and the other from some school in missouri. I do know that we have had to try several different farmers corn around here until we found a corn that balanced flavor and alcohol yeild. There was one we tried that had a hell of a lot more corn flavor, but the yeild was half of what it is with the corn we use now. We have played around with open pollinated corn and use a small amount of it, just because the taste is so distinctive.

I know that Steve Nally has had to do the same thing out where he is at.

I wonder if the amount of backset used back when the nd plants were operating is one of the causes of the huge change. Maybe they used a lot more backset than beam does. More backset means lower ph and therfore makes a yeast act totally different and produces different flavors. We also had to experiment to find just the right amount.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

#2 dent corn now, and #2 dent corn then are 2 different animals. I do not know when all of the hybrids started coming along, but it was probably after ww2, but this has had a serious impact on the flavor of corn.

Thanks Tom. I wondered if that wasn't the case. They talk about water and copper and oak all day long, but they don't talk about the corn. It's the single largest ingredient, and also the one thing the distilleries can't control. It's amazing, and a little frightening, how completely crops are controlled by the corporations that sell the seed and the geneticists who tailor it to specific market needs.

Seems like a big issue to me. But, like the weather, whaddaya gonna do?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I'm going to do is buy the products that please me most and refuse for the most part to pay for fancy packaging.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic has been inactive for at least 365 days, and is now closed. Please feel free to start a new thread on the subject! 
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.