Craft vs. Big Bourbon - tasting it Blind

So….if you have watched some of the Friday episodes you will notice that I am always blinding the Big Human with the whiskey. And, we have done several episodes with friends of the show where we do the same thing. We taste the whiskey's blind. Matter of fact, we have just launched some blind whiskey challenges. A super premium, allocated expensive whiskey up against an easy to find whiskey. Check out the video below.

The purpose of this format, for us, is pretty simple. A person’s “idea” of what they might think of a whiskey can be colored or influenced by any number of items;

• Bottle / Packaging

• Color

• What they have heard from others

• Past history

• What they read somewhere (whiskey magazines / online reviews)

• Youtubers (us included)

• What their parents drank

• What they drank (or remember drinking when in school)

• Etc....

I’m sure there are others as well. But when it comes down to it, when you are only judging based off of what you can smell, taste and see in the glass, it levels the playing field. Mostly.

There is still one advantage that can be hard to look past. Big Bourbon often times has a stronger winning taste than Craft Whiskey. Which makes sense. They have been at it longer, much longer than most all craft distillers. They have the stocks of whiskey (barrels sitting in the rack houses) they can pull from. And if a particular barrel doesn’t live up to the profile they want, they can choose to easily let it sit or blend it with another. They have that scalability. Craft doesn’t usually have that kind of flexibility with their stocks. They just aren’t sitting on tens of thousands of barrels at any given time.

There’s a distinct taste difference between Big Bourbon and Craft. And that is primarily due to a pot still. A pot still just has a certain “funk” that comes from it (at least that's how a lot of people describe it). That’s not to say it’s bad, it’s just different. Where as a continuous column still doesn’t have that. So when I put a craft whiskey in a blind with some Big Bourbons, it’s usually identified pretty quickly from seasoned whiskey drinkers. Not always, but most of the time.

So, it makes sense that in a mixed blind of Big Bourbon and Craft, the Big Bourbon wins out most of the time. Big Bourbon has that consistency that they can pull from and always strive for. They can go on the “hunt” for those barrels, across their entire inventory of thousands and thousands of barrels for the right barrel.

However, craft does have an advantage in that they can make a decision to take a left turn and do something at a small scale very quickly and see if it works. Big Bourbon doesn’t have that option most of the time. Craft can choose to try something completely new and wind up with a very unique spirit. Sometimes so unique that it’s easy to pick out in a blind.

We will continue to do blind tastings. Whether that be a follow-up tasting from a distillery we have been at, a Big Human tasting or just a bottle with some friends of the show. Big Bourbon or Craft, you never know what’s going to show up in the blind. At least those trying it blind on camera don’t. And it may surprise you. It did for Jeff L. Check out the video of the blind tasting we did of a Hillrock Estate. A whiskey that he had told us in the past that he did not like. Or check out the video of a blind tasting we did with the Proof 319 club of the always polarizing Willet Pot Still.

Tasting it blind is the way to go....and oh so much fun. Let us know what you think of blind tastings, and if you enjoy doing them.