I tasted Yellowstone Toasted Bourbon at a fancy launch party

Tasting glasses in front of me. Yum.

Last fall, I was invited to the awesome launch party at the Civilian Hotel in Manhattan for Limestone Branch Distillery’s bourbon finished with toasted oak staves. The product is officially called Yellowstone Special Finishes Collection Toasted Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey (100 proof, 750mL $50).

(I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while but, you know, #lifehappens.)

Anyway, I went to the lovely party, where we got to taste several Yellowstone whiskeys, including the new expression, and had dinner, family-style.

The evening’s host was Limestone Branch master distiller Stephen Beam (yes, that Beam).

”So everybody knows the name ‘Beam’ and they immediately think of my cousins who run this little distillery down the street from us,” he said that evening, to chuckles. “But there's so much more to our family than just that one branch.”

(Here is some background on Beam and how Limestone came to be.)

Beam said he worked with a nearby cooperage to choose the right staves for this project.

“They gave me like 16 different staves to choose from. It was great because we had the cooperage just like a mile away from the distillery,” he said. “So it's fantastic being right there in Kentucky and all these resources.”

The label for Yellowstone Toasted. (Limestone Branch Distillery promotional image)

From those 16 staves, Beam selected five (high toast, American oak double-toast, vanilla, rick house and spice rack, according to Yellowstone’s press release) that seemed right for achieving the flavor profile he wanted.

“Depending on how you toast the stave, you get flavors of vanilla, coconuts, spice—just different flavors that come out of the woods. No flavoring added, just the way it's toasted,” he said. “And so that combination of those five staves in varying amounts—we did like 10% of some, 30% of others—it kind of made my operations people's heads explode.”

But Beam said he assured them that “we can do this.”

“’We're not sending anybody back to the moon, we're just making bourbon,’” he said he told his staff.

By the way, the base spirit for the Toasted is Yellowstone’s four-year-old bourbon that is used in the brand’s Select blend. (Beam said he got the mash bill from his grandfather’s notes: 75% corn, 13% rye, and 12% malt.)

The staves then add “complexity, some sweetness,” making it a “great sipping whiskey,” but one not limited to enjoying on its own.

“Yellowstone Select, I always say, stands up nicely in a cocktail because the four-year-old in there gives it some of the grain notes that really make a nice cocktail,” he added. ”But now with the addition of the toasted notes, I think, it has just been spectacular in cocktails.”

One of the cocktails served at the party.

I do enjoy whiskey cocktails but most of the time I really prefer my brown spirits either neat or on the rocks. At the launch party, we tasted the Toasted in some juicy cocktails (as well as neat) and I didn’t complain because those toasty-sweet notes make it work.

My table mate, writer and entrepreneur David Thomas Tao, called the Toasted “a Heath Bar in a bottle”—a characterization that Beam later told me he didn’t mind at all.

All in all, I very much enjoyed the evening. Yes, the cocktails and food were delicious, but honestly I could listen to distillers and brewers talk about their craft all day. Their enthusiasm and passion for their work is often palpable and infectious.

So thank you, Stephen Beam and Yellowstone, for your hospitality.

Oh, one final thing. The Toasted was Yellowstone’s first entry into its Special Finishes Collection. The second release is the Rum Cask bottling, which dropped in March. I haven’t tried it yet but I can’t wait.

This was a huge screen.