Oola Waitsburg Bourbon

[chasking]

I was recently given a bottle of Waitsburg Bourbon as a gift. I was not familiar with it so I came here looking for information, and was surprised to find almost nothing about it! (I didn't think that was possible, regarding bourbon.) I did a little poking around on the interwebs and found out some stuff, so I'm going to put it here for the edification of future generations.

Waitsburg Bourbon comes from Oola, a small distillery in Washington, and it appears that it is actually made there---it's not sourced. Their own web site has very little information, but I found the following blurb on a retailer's site:

Oola Waitsburg Bourbon is crafted from a mash of approximately 65% corn, 25% rye, 13% malted barley and 12% white winter wheat. "All our grains are sourced from two organic farms in Eastern Washington," says Kirby. In addition, the use of wheat in the bourbon's mashbill "allows me to hold back on the corn and add more rye. This results in a more complex, balanced and less overly sweet bourbon."Once the ingredients arrive at the distillery, they are milled and mashed before being distilled through Kirby's copper-pot still.

Following distillation, the bourbon is matured in small, American white oak casks that are subjected to large temperature swings of up to 50-70° each day. "The idea is to extract a lot of the influence from the barrel early on in the aging process." After this initial beautyrest, the bourbon is transferred to 53-gallon, American white oak casks that boast an alligator char. The alligator char allows the whiskey to penetrate the wood, which hails from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, up to a ¼ inch. There, the bourbon rests for an additional three to four years. "These casks are then combined to marry together subtle flavors that compliment each other - usually two barrels are married together, but sometimes 3 or 4 work best to get to the optimum flavor profile before bottling."Once the barrels have been blended, the bourbon is bottled without the use of chill filtration. "We want the full richness of the nose and flavor profile to stay as intact as possible," says Kirby.

So, it's a moderately young four-grain bourbon that apparently spent part of its 3-4 years of aging in smaller casks. I'm enjoying the bottle I got. It's not cheap---$40 at Binny's---but it's an actual bourbon that's not from one of the usual suspects.

Here's a longer article about the development of the whiskey.

[smokinjoe]

That Mashbill can't be right? I'm guessing the temp fluctuations are from controlled temperature warehouses. 50-70 degree variations each day seems a stretch with natural temperature variations.

[Richnimrod]

I'm with Joe on the mashbill not being correct; having a total of 115% ingredients... NOT Possible if I learned anything in 3rd grade math class.

I had a bottle of Ola Bourbon once. :smiley_acbt: ONCE!!!

I can't recall if it was called Waitsburg; but it well may have been.

I tried to like it. Failing that, I tried to tolerate it in a couple of hi-balls. That was better. I found it OK with ginger ale, and it made an OK Manhattan. IT wasn't quite as good in an Old Fashioned; but it got by.

[flahute]

That Mashbill can't be right? I'm guessing the temp fluctuations are from controlled temperature warehouses. 50-70 degree variations each day seems a stretch with natural temperature variations.

Eastern Washington is high desert country and gets quite hot (over 100 degrees) on some summer days and then cools to the 60's at night so depending on where they store the barrels it might be possible to get temperature swings close to what they're advertising. We can see that they aren't very good with math though, so I'm not taking their claim at face value.

Edit to add: this is very dry country with relative humidity in the teens on summer days, so the warehouses are most certainly conditioned to at least provide adequate moisture.

[smokinjoe]

They're in Seattle though, right?

[flahute]

They're in Seattle though, right?

The distillery itself is, yes. But like some other distilleries here they age on the other side of the mountains in order to get the extreme temperature fluctuations.

[smokinjoe]

The distillery itself is, yes. But like some other distilleries here they age on the other side of the mountains in order to get the extreme temperature fluctuations.

Ahhhhh. Thanks, Steve. I was thinking you let the cat out of the bag on the "real" Seattle weather. Figured maybe the whole rain thing was just a ruse to keep all of the LA people from moving up there.