Just A Bunch of Things I Found on Vacation

I am…

IMAGE: A map with collectable lapel pins in it focusing on the states of Kentucky and Tennessee

I am an impulse buyer. Sure, I can make it through a grocery checkout line without buying a candy bar. But it isn’t likely that I will leave a liquor store, festival or distillery without buying at least something. Here are a few of the ones I picked up last month while visiting Tennessee and Kentucky. Even though some of them travelled almost as far as I did to get there.

Lincoln County Reserve Bourbon Barrel Aged Maple Syrup

Until my teenage years, we never bought syrup. My family made it. We tapped the trees and boiled the sap into syrup. But then we had a fire and the sugar shack we boiled sap in burned down. And since it was a collaboration between my grandparents and one of their cousins, the shack never got replaced. My brother has decided to carry on the tradition though, in order to teach his kids. I however buy mine from a 92-year-old lady who has been making it forever.

So, one could say that I am quite the connoisseur of maple syrup. Either that or you could say that I’ve been spoiled by amazing maple syrup my entire life. And I’m pretty biased. I really do think that the best maple syrup comes from the upper midwest. Fight me Canada. That said, I do like trying new things and so when I saw Lincoln County Reserve selling Bourbon Barrel Aged Maple Syrup at the Kentucky Bourbon Festival, I knew that a bottle would be coming home with me. And funny thing, that syrup was made in Wisconsin. Merrill, Wisconsin, a city of fewer than 10,000 people and an innumerable number of maple trees. This bourbon was aged in 10 gallon used bourbon barrels from Distillery 291 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

But is it any good? In a word, yes! It’s buttery with a nice bourbon flavor. The bourbon is not overpowering bringing a lot of brown sugar and caramel notes. It has a great mouthfeel, nice and thick. And let me tell you, it is amazing on French Toast and sausage. Highly recommended.

IMAGE: A six pack of Freddie’s Old Fashioned Root Beer.

Freddie's Old Fashioned Root Beer

Let me tell you about my college life. I had a wife, a kid, a job, and a major that was deceptively time-consuming. You might think that a fine art degree would be a cakewalk, but at least at the university I went to, you’d be wrong. Multiple all-nighters per week were extremely common as, due to our finances, I tried to fit a five-year plan for college into as few quarters as possible. One way we saved money was by renting an old farmhouse about a half-hour outside of town. Honestly, it was a pretty nice place. It was maintained by the local student-housing property management company. Meaning it was not maintained at all except by the elderly owner who was paying the property management company to, supposedly, do all of that for him.

Anyway, this farm was near a very small village of about 800 people. There was one grocery store, though it didn’t carry much. But one thing it did carry was Dr. McGillicuddy’s Root Beer Soda. I had no idea that the liqueur brand had lent its name to a soda, but every time I went to that tiny store for something, a bottle of that root beer came out with me. Eventually, I finished college, moved, and couldn’t find anywhere that carried the stuff. Until I first visited the Buffalo Trace Distillery. Apparently, Sazerac was the producer of that root beer, and one of the few places it could be purchased was at the distillery. I was super happy to pick up a six-pack every time I visited.

In 2019, Sazerac rebranded that root beer after beloved tour guide Freddie Johnson. He is a great guy and this is a great root beer. So I think it is a great match. But how does it taste? Caramel at first, followed by wintergreen. Unlike some root beers, the wintergreen is not overpowering though. This is subtle. After that is vanilla. The vanilla lasts long after you swallow. The thing that makes this so good is how well-balanced these flavors are. They're melded together so well that it is hard to tell where one ends and another begins. It has a nice creamy mouthfeel as well. This is my favorite root beer. A good part of that is nostalgia, but let an old man have that, ok?

IMAGE: The pink labeled bottle of MB Roland Dark Cherry Moonshine

MB Roland Kentucky Dark Cherry Moonshine

This was a gift from my friends at MB Roland, but I found a great use for it so I wanted to share. Thought I’d mention that since everything else on this post was purchased.

The folks at MB Roland are some of the nicest people I’ve met. And one side effect of them being so nice, I gave their whiskey a try shortly after they opened. That whiskey was the start of my personal whiskey journey. So I guess what I’m saying is that if you enjoy reading BourbonGuy.com, on some level you have them to thank.

We visited them while on vacation, spent the afternoon just hanging out, and since they are good friends we were given a bottle of MB Roland Dark Cherry Moonshine. Something we hadn’t tried before. I’m a big fan of this in cocktails. Especially this Cherry Manhattan from FoodandWine.com. Scroll down the page, it’s worth it. But since this could be consumed alone, let’s give it the ol’ tasting notes treatment.

Ripe, dark cherries on the nose. The month is sweet with a strong, natural dark cherry flavor. No artificial flavors or cough syrup flavors here. Very little alcohol flavor so be careful drinking neat if you really love cherries. Works great in cocktails like the one above. I could also see this playing nicely with lime juice in a cocktail or even a highball. It does need to be refrigerated after opening, but a little fridge space is a small price to pay for delicious cocktails.

IMAGE: a tiny bottle of Old Forester Oleo-Saccharum.

Old Forester Oleo-Saccharum Lemon Oil Syrup

I first heard about Oleo Saccharum in David Wonderich’s book Punch. I reviewed it here. Spoiler, I really liked it. It’s basically sugar and lemon peels left together until the sugar draws the lemon oils out of the peels and dissolves in it, creating a syrup. Easy to do, if a little time-consuming. So it was with interest that I saw this little bottle of premade Oleo-Saccharum at the Old Forester Distillery Gift Shop in Louisville, KY. I was staying in the Whiskey Row Lofts which are basically upstairs and had the thought that I might make a few cocktails with it. I did not and so it came home with me.

But what did I think of it once I did open it? It has a strong lemon nose. It’s very sweet and lemony on the mouth when you taste it by itself. It does really well in the champagne cocktail on the bottle (1 oz bourbon, 0.5 oz syrup, 4.5 oz brut sparkling wine, ice, lemon twist). It’s good, but at the end of the day, a lemon oleo-saccharum is too easy to make for me to buy this again. Especially since you use a quarter of the bottle for one cocktail. Maybe if I was on the road, travelling. But not for home use.


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Nooku Bourbon Cream

It’s…

IMAGE: Two 100mL cans of Nooku Bourbon Cream. One original and one Cold Press Coffee Flavor

It’s been a weird week here in Minnesota. There has been smoke in the air from Canadian wildfires causing air quality and air quality warnings as I’ve never seen before in the state of Minnesota. The smoke was thick in the air. So thick that it impaired visibility and carried the smell of the fires as you breathed it in. It was so bad, that even spending as little time outdoors as possible, I was still dealing with respiratory issues. As such, I decided to pivot away from the tasting I had been planning to do this past weekend toward a couple of small cans I had in my fridge from my recent trip shopping trip in Colorado. I figured it might be best to take a look at something that I wouldn’t be drinking from a nosing glass. Just in case the old sniffer was acting up.

I grabbed these as I was walking toward the checkout at Hazel’s Beverage World in Boulder, Colorado. I hadn’t really been in the market for a Cream Liqueur, but something about the tiny little can, and the fact that one was coffee-flavored, piqued my interest. I figured that for four bucks, I could indulge that curiosity. Might be good in coffee one morning while on vacation. And while I never had the chance to have it in my coffee while on vacation, I did get that opportunity this past weekend as I hid inside from the air outside.

Nooku Bourbon Creme uses two ingredients: dairy cream and Bourbon. In this case, two-year-old, high-malt bourbon from Old Elk. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the coffee version uses some sort of coffee flavor on top of that (not much of one though since it literally says that on the can). And while I haven’t had Old Elk Bourbon, I haven’t heard great things about it. Even so, I was curious to give this a try. I tried each of them straight and then added a healthy amount to an afternoon cup of coffee, just to see if my hunch on these was correct.

Nooku Bourbon Cream

Purchase Info: $3.98 for a 100 mL can at Hazel’s Beverage World, Boulder, CO.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $1.99

Details: 17% ABV. "Bourbon Whiskey with Real Dairy Cream"

Mouth: Thick, velvety, and sweet. Notes of cinnamon, caramel, and dairy.

Finish: Not much to speak of, as expected.

Thoughts: It's a bit like drinking coffee creamer. I’m not getting a lot of “bourbon” notes in it though. Speaking of that, it works pretty well in coffee. If you take your coffee with creamer, that is. In this case, I liked it about half and half. So make that coffee hot.

Nooku Bourbon Cream, Cold Brew Coffee

Purchase Info: $3.98 for a 100 mL can at Hazel’s Beverage World, Boulder, CO.

Price per Drink (50 mL): $1.99

Details: 17% ABV. "Bourbon Whiskey with Fresh Dairy Cream and Natural Coffee Flavors"

Mouth: Thick and sweet. Notes of cinnamon, chocolate, coffee, and dairy.

Finish: Chocolate Milk.

Thoughts: This is better than the regular version. And it also tastes good with coffee, even more so than the original. Personally I like my coffee black, so I’d probably prefer just a shot of bourbon instead of the cream if I felt the need to spike my coffee. Neither of them are particularly to my tastes when tasted alone either, but they aren't bad for what they are. That said, I can see a lot of people liking this.


Did you enjoy this post? If so, maybe you’d like to buy me a cup of coffee in return. Go to ko-fi.com/bourbonguy to support. And thank you, BourbonGuy.com is solely supported via your generosity.

Of course, if you want to support BourbonGuy.com and get a little something back in return, you can always head over to BourbonGuyGifts.com and purchase some merch. I’ve made tasting journals, stickers, pins, posters, and more.