BOTM 12/05: Elijah Craig 12yo

[jeff]

This month's BOTM always seems to draw strong opinions when discussed. Love it or hate it, this bourbon is steeped in tradition and bourbon folklore. A great offering from the heart of bourbon country. The Bourbon of the Month for December, 2005 is:

Elijah Craig 12yo

Let's hear what you have to say!

Sound Off

[Bamber]

As an aside, one of the UK's biggest off licence chains has started stocking this as their standard American offering (Oddbins).

Great value and great whisky. A quite 'moody' whisky, which I always enjoy most at the start of an evening.

[Edward_call_me_Ed]

I like it a lot. It is especially good when drinking it over a charcoal fire. Something about the smoke from the fire brings out the distinctive taste of this fine whiskey. Too bad it is getting colder now and most of the list won't want to try this.

Ed

[DrinkyBanjo]

I am currently out of this but when I had it I like it a good bit, especially for the $13 I paid for it!

[jburlowski]

I used to like this a lot but the quality seems to have declined / become inconsistent recently. Could this be a result of the HH fire?

[Schock]

When I introduce someone to good bourbon, I ask them to take a sniff of EC 12 yr. Part of it is the shape of the bottle, but I think it has the best nose of any bourbon at any price. Everyone's response is the same - they smile and say "wow!"

Jimmy

[BourbonJoe]

I, along with others, have noted considerable variability in this product. One one occasion the whiskey was almost undrinkable due to a sharp metallic taste. Others have noted this as well. The next bottle will be super and among the finest bourbons available. Because of this variability, I rarely buy it anymore.

Joe

[BobA]

Had a bottle about a year ago. Didn't like it; I think "metallic" is an accurate term. Tried it again a few months later, on a friend's purchase, and got the same taste. I won't be buying a bottle to do this month's BOTM, but encourage other newer drinkers to do so; it has too many admirers to assume your reaction will be like mine.

Bob

[TNbourbon]

I used to like this a lot but the quality seems to have declined / become inconsistent recently. Could this be a result of the HH fire?

Doesn't seem likely, since the fire was in '96, or at least 3 years after any currently-bottled 12yo was distilled.

As for me, I fall into both categories Jeff mentioned -- I hated it the first time I tried it (some of that medical lab metal Joe mentioned), and love a bottle from 1997 I currently have open. It's cheap enough I'll probably go for a tiebreaker bottle, but if I get 2 out of 3 clinkers, I may surrender to the odds.

[barturtle]

Well, a quick check of "Whiskey South"(my LA collection) turned up no EC 12. I'm not suprised since it's mostly dusty-corners and not in KY bottles. Figured I'd wait a week to get back to "Whiskey North"(my main collection in KY) before I get to try this, but a check of my excel inventory says there's none there either. So looks like Ima goin' to the store tommorrow. Now, can I really go to the store and only leave with one bottle...

[ratcheer]

Thanks, Jeff. I will check to see if they still carry it at Alabama ABC. I'm pretty sure they do, but nothing surprises me there, anymore (in the sense of, "Oh, hell, they have stopped carrying something else!")

Tim

[mobourbon]

I really like the EC 12. I've had several bottles and each one was good. For the price, it's great. The 1.75 liter bottles are on sale in PA. for $29.99! $2 off.

PA is like Alabama, Tim. PA just closed out the 750 ml bottles. They are closing out bottles with low profit margins. There are still some around for $10.99! Before it was closed out, it was $16.99.

Anyway, when I go to work tomorrow, I'll pick up a .75 liter bottle. We have 5 in out store.

Bottom line, good bourbon for a good price. Thanks for choosing it, Jeff.

[sdchap00]

I've probably had about 5-6 bottles of EC12 over the last 5-6 years. It's one of the cheaper "premium" bourbons here in Kentucky, and I tend to alternate between it and Buffalo Trace as my standard around the house bourbon. You just can't beat the quality at that price -- great value.

As for the hit-or-miss bottle (I haven't had one myself), but could it be a product of the rather large cork they use in the bottle? It has more surface area than just about any other bourbon cork I think I've seen -- could it be bad cork? From what I understand, wine with natural corks has a "going bad" rate of about 5-10% due to issues with the cork; maybe the same goes for bourbon. With the larger cork, this could possible mean EC has an increased chance of cork pollution.

[NYtaster]

I too have yet to find a "bad" bottle of EC 12yo, lately it has been on of my favorites, not the best but great for the price. Here in the great white north its really the only good bottle under $20, even Beam Black is at $23 and in my opinion thst is nowhere near the bourbon that EC is.

Tim

"I'm an optimist, even if the glass is half empty, there is more in the bottle!!!"

[jburlowski]

The quality / consistentcy problems I have noticed with EC 12 are not the type one would associate with "bad cork". Rather it seems that the flavor profile seems to vary from bottle to bottle... some seem less complex; almost watered-down in flavour.

When it is good I like this bourbon a lot ---- and it is a great value. But I have been burned enough to not trust that I will always get the same product.

[JeffRenner]

The quality / consistentcy problems I have noticed with EC 12 are not the type one would associate with "bad cork".

While I agree with you that the described problems are not typical of cork problems, last year I had a classic "corked" bottle of EC12. I opened the bottle and poured a splash, and the nose reeked of the musty, damp cellar smell of 2,4,6-trichloranisole, which comes from a reaction between chlorine (used in the sterilizing process) and a penicillin mold found in the cork. I am quite sensitive to TCA (typical sensitivity is reported to be in the low parts per trillion range).

Examination of the cork showed a deep, inch long, black crevice that no doubt harbored the mold (see photo below).

There was a thread about this problem a year ago or so.

I emailed Heaven Hill from their web site, describing the taint and the state of the cork, offering to send them a photo, and they sent me a check for $19, which almost covered the cost (there was sales tax). No photo proof required. I thought that was a class response.

About seven years ago, when I was rediscovering bourbon, I bought a bottle of Eagle Rare 10-year-old, based on the high recommendation of Paul Pacult in his 1997 Kindred Spirits. It had the same problem, which, in my ignorance (although I had long known about corked wine), I attributed to a musty barrel stave, perhaps in a barrel on the bottom level of a dirt floor warehouse. It tasted just like a musty, damp, earth floored cellar smells.

(I have since concluded, BTW, that Pacult's palate and mine are not in synch - I find Jim Murray and Michael Jackson (in that order) to be better guides.)

I haven't made my mind up about EC12, but it certainly is not my favorite. I guess it just doesn't sing to me. But I seem always to have an open bottle on hand, and it seems to get empty now and then.

Jeff

[Brennan77]

I've got about a 1/3 bottle left that I've been working on for a month or so. I had a pour last night to go along with reading this thread. While an enjoyable bourbon, there's something there, everytime, that sort of spoils what would otherwise be a great pour. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe it's that metallic description that I've seen a few times. Whatever it is, it makes this bourbon into something only decent to good. There's a lot of bourbons I want to try before I'd buy this one again. Though if I found it for sale, I wouldn't be opposed to having it on the shelf.

Interestingly, my uncle is in Kentucky right now on a "business trip". They'll be touring Heaven Hill. I'd love to try some of the other products and I'm sure he'll be bringing a bottle or 3 of something.

[JeffRenner]

Interestingly, my uncle is in Kentucky right now on a "business trip". They'll be touring Heaven Hill. I'd love to try some of the other products and I'm sure he'll be bringing a bottle or 3 of something.

A Heaven Hill secret of limited availability is the 10-year-old Old Heaven Hill Very Rare Aged 10-Years 100 proof Bottled-in-Bond. You might alert your uncle to this.

I think I paid about $10 for this at The Party Source in Bellevue, KY, just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

Now this is definitely a value, only a little more than the much more pedestrian Evan Williams 7-year-old, which I find to be rather a one-trick-pony. This is rich, fruity, complex, with a rye-firmness to balance the barrel sweetness.

And I love the quaint, old-fashioned bottle and label. Kinda reminds me of the bottle for A-1 steak sauce. (There are two other labels, bTW.)

Since we are now approaching the ten year anniversary of the fire that destroyed the HH distillery, this may not be available in its present form that much longer. My current bottle, which is only half full, was bottled in March, '03 (I bought it this past August).

I'd better get some more soon myself! (And I was just down in Cincinnati the last two weekends. )

Jeff

(Edited to insert photo of my BiB rather than the 80 proof I had found on the 'net.)

[TNbourbon]

...A Heaven Hill secret of limited availability is the 10-year-old Old Heaven Hill Very Rare Aged 10-Years 100 proof Bottled-in-Bond...

Seconded. No trip to KY is complete without bringing home a bottle.

[kbuzbee]

Amen, Tim. Brought home a few myself (Thank you very much!!)

[Edward_call_me_Ed]

There has been a lot of talk about bad bottles of Elijah Craig 12 yo. I don't know. Before my last bottle I would have said that was unlikely. However, I didn't enjoy my last bottle as much as I have earlier bottles. Nothing really wrong with it. No metallic taste. Just drier than I remember earlier bottles being. I thought my tastes might have changed a bit. I have been enjoying Elmer T Lee, which is much sweeter. Also, I have been enjoying many other Heaven Hill bourbons that are sweeter than their EC 12 with more prominent cookie spice as opposed to EC's menthol.

Oh, I just remembered that the bottle of EC 12 I had while I was home in the States this summer seemed different to me than the bottles I had drunk in Japan. I don't remember how it was different. I thought it was different diet, different setting with different aromas in the atmosphere, etc. Again, it wasn't bad and the difference was fairly subtle.

I finished off my open bottle last night and will open the new bottle this week. That should give me some idea if it was me or the bottle. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the last bottle, especially over the last couple of weeks.

Ed

[JeffRenner]

I finished off my open bottle last night and will open the new bottle this week. That should give me some idea if it was me or the bottle.

When I have a little left of a bottle of a whiskey other than a mass produced one, I like to open the new one before the old one is gone and compare them. This is especially instructive with single barrel bottlings, but small vattings like EC12 or Buffalo Trace can be fun, too. Usually, I can't tell a difference, but sometimes I can.

Jeff

[Edward_call_me_Ed]

I do that too. I can usually taste a difference between single barrels. I don't recall finding a significant difference between different bottles of batch bourbons. I had intended to do that with the last of the old EC and the new bottle, but I went to a little party at a friend's house and decided to take the last of the EC 12 with me rather than drink beer. I could have taken a different bourbon, but the EC called my name as I stood among the bottles. I will have to rely on memory, which means that I will have to get the new bottle open really soon.

Ed

[gr8erdane]

I'm sitting here with a pour of EC 12 now. This has always been one of my favorite every occasion bourbons for quite some time. However the current bottle I have just doesn't seem to have everything I had in prior bottles. Up til now it has been consistently yummy but after several pours over several days, the taste is just not what I've come to expect. There isn't any mustiness or off flavors, more a LACK of flavors I have grown to love in this bottle. It's almost a third gone now so I have more "reflecting" to do on it. One bad experience out of three 750s and one 1.75 is still a good batting average though. I'll still buy this and recommend it to others as a great value for the dollar.

[hookfinger]

I have had a couple of bottles of this and I too am in the camp of the unimpressed. Given that it is the BOTM and many folks who have fine taste like it, coupled with the fact that apparently it is going to disappear from the shelves around here soon means I will attempt to pick one up tonight. Hopefully I am not too late. Thank you once again PLCB for your infinite wisdom.