Tom’s Foolery Bottled In Bond Single Barrel #31 Ohio Straight Bourbon Whiskey (750ml) $49.99 View

Tom’s Foolery continues to deliver on the promise of providing ultra high quality craft whiskey at absolutely amazing prices. Tom and Lianne Herbruck are the perfect partners, not only are they the sweetest most down to earth distillers on this continent, they truly care about making the very best possible whiskey the old fashioned way. They’re also super chill so when they sent out this sample of BIB bourbon at just under 5 years old I jumped at the chance to bottle, but I asked if we could push the bottling date till exactly five years, their response was “No problem!” So here we have a wonderful classic Tom’s BIB aged in their unheated warehouse to perfection. It’s got all the robust rich pot still character that we’ve come to expect from Tom, but just one year older. Unlike Kentucky bourbon, which relies on Patent Warehouses to enhance the presence of the oak in the whiskey, the Tom’s whiskey pulls out oak only in the summer and enters a deep freeze in the winter, this oxidative phase adding texture and depth. As usual, this whiskey loves air. The powerful graininess falls away and reveals an exotic bouquet of special teas and rare fruit. This barrel was distilled on May 4th, 2012 from 72% yellow dent corn, 16% winter rye, and 12% malted 6 Row barley. Fermented and distilled in the old Michter’s Jug House system and filled at 120.5 proof into a char 4 barrel from Independent Stave. Harvest proof was 123.13 and Bottled in Bond at 100 proof.

Tom’s Foolery Single Barrel #127 Cask Strength Ohio Straight Rye Whiskey (750ml) $49.99 View

We already know that Tom and Lianne Herbruck make incredible Bourbon and spectacular Apple Jack, but their most exciting product might just be the Rye whiskey. Our first barrel of Rye from Tom’s Foolery was bottled in bond distilled from Rye, Malted, Rye, Corn and a tiny dash of malted barley. That was an experimental mash bill and this one is equally unique. Our first might arguably be described as a Kentucky style rye mash bill; I wanted to explore the possibility of doing something that alluded to the original home of the special stills that created this whiskey. The distillery in Schaefferstown where these stills came from is well east of the Monongahela River valley where once the great whiskey of the same name ruled over nearly all others it, but still cranked out some killer rye. Monongahela existed thanks to hundreds of small scale farm distillers across Pennsylvania and Maryland and would have easily been the most popular and available whiskey in the US before prohibition. Now at Tom’s Foolery, they’re about as close to those old farm distillers as any one in the states today. This awesome whiskey was distilled from 70% local winter rye and 30% malted Canadian rye. After souring and mashing in cooker #2 and four days in their cypress fermenters, it was distilled on Dec 10th, 2012. The distillation yielded 36.4 gal of pure magic at 159.8 proof. Cut to 109.8 proof for barrel entry in a Cooper’s Select Char 4. This whiskey is 4.5 years old and bottled at cask strength.