Now, when I finally poured the ages whiskey back into the original bottle(s), I expected the Angels to take their fair share. What I didn’t expect is for them to be so greedy! These Angels are apparently as big of whiskey fans as I am, I BARELY filled 1 of the 2 750ML bottles that I poured into the barrel! Now, because the barrel is so small, the aging process is sped up greatly but so is the evaporation and the soakage into the wood.

Since I bottled it a couple of days ago and have yet to taste it myself, I’ll go ahead and live-blog the experience. I know you’re all so thrilled, at least I’m not live-tweeting it. That’s for next time…

On first nose, I pick up a very fruity note with a very herbal back. The body is smooth and then BAM! it hits you with some heat, if I had forgotten that this is “Barreling Strength” and proofed at 110, I would remember now! It’s smooth though, very smooth. Very robust on the finish with a strong herbal lingering taste. Surprisingly though, after a couple minutes from your last sip, it leaves a sweet taste and makes me want another drink, don’t mind if…. I do… ahhh…!

I guess I’m a pushover though, it could be terrible and I’d still drink it, well not really, I do have some standards. But this is really good, delicious even! I’m a blatant Bourbon lover and the fact that I got to age it myself, make the experience that much better. Definitely, next time, I will be tasting it once every week for 3 MONTHS instead of 9. You could even say that I made a booze baby in that amount of time.

That’s enough from me, the proud father of a beautiful bottle of bourbon, signing off.

- Brad

- Brad

The Benton’s Old Fashioned has made a lot of headlines on the And A Beard We Go Podcast. On episode 202, I told my story about venturing to a bar that I’ve wanted to go to for a few years now called “PDT” or Please Don’t Tell. I asked the bartender that I’m a bourbon drinker and asked what she liked to make, because, if a bartender likes to make a certain drink, they’re probably pretty good at it…

The Benton’s Old Fashioned is different than your normal Old Fashioned in more ways than the Bacon Bourbon. Let’s just get into the good stuff, let’s make one.

What THEY do:

Crack 4 cubes and drop into a glass or shaker
Fill the rest with whole cubes
1/4 ounce of Grade B maple syrup
2 dashes of Angostura Bitters
Pour 2 ounces in the Bacon Infused Bourbon, they use Four Roses Yellow Labeled Bourbon
Stir a couple times and let sit to let chill
Put 1 large ice cube in a pre-chilled glass
Strain in the cocktail
Wipe the rim of glass with an orange twist and drop in the glass

What we did:

Cracked ice and dropped in a chilled pint glass, filled rest with whole cubes
Poured in more than 2 ounces of Bacon Infused Wild Turkey
Poured in less than 1/4 ounces of Grade A Mrs. Butterworth Maple Syrup
Dashed twice with Angostura Bitters
Stirred it a few times and strained into a chilled glass
Twisted in some orange and wiped it on the rim

Like all of our drinks, when you make them for the first time, you’re going to want to try different amounts of each ingredient to meet your specific tastes. It’s a fantastic cocktail, the orange twist on the rim really tricks your senses before you actually get down to the booze and the intense bacon taste.

Please, if you’ve made this or have had one made for you, comment on the blog and let us know what you did the same or differently and what you thought of it!

Enjoy!

- Brad

I owe you all a How to and a Recipe, This one is both! How to make a Benton’s Old Fashioned, with Bacon Infused Bourbon. Yes, those two words are INDEED in the same sentence!

First up, you’ve got to infuse that bourbon, it’s actually super easy.

What you’ll need:

- A pack of bacon, the smokier, the better.
- A Fifth of bourbon
- A funnel & cheesecloth
- A bowl

Step 1: Cook up enough bacon to render 1/3 Cup of grease.
Step 2: Pour the bourbon into the bowl.
Step 3: Follow by the 1/3 Cup of grease.

Step 4: Leave sitting for about 30 minutes then put into the freezer for another hour or two. The grease will group together and can easily be spooned out.
Step 5: Put the cheesecloth in the funnel and the funnel in the bottle.
Step 6: Pour the concoction back into the bottle through the cheesecloth, this will strain any extra chunks and grittiness.

You may notice that not all of your booze will return to the bottle, you’ll be about a neck short. I would like to kin this to the “Angels Share” that you would get when aging White Dog bourbon in your White Oak Barrel.

And that’s it! You now have Bacon Infused Bourbon. I used Wild Turkey, I did this because it was just before Thanksgiving. The next time I do this, I would prefer to use a milder/smoother bourbon, like an Old Grandad or Maker’s Mark. Wild Turkey is very strong and I feel like it overpowers the initial bacon taste.

Now take that new Bacon Booze and let’s make a Benton’s Old Fashioned from PDT (Please Don’t Tell) in New York.

- Brad

Enjoy!

Zack Galifinakis Moustair

Pai Mei Moustair

Gandalf Moustair

Couldn’t let this one slip under my radar…

- Brad

It’s Thanksgiving today and we decided to jam out our November Episode the night before so we can enjoy the Holiday with fresh Hangovers and you all have a fresh Podcast for your ear holes!

In this episode, we drank a drink that we actually talked about in the episode before, the Benton’s Old Fashioned. Now, yes, we’ve made an Old Fashioned before, but who cares? They are a fantastic cocktail. This one’s a bit different, this was inspired by my recent trip to New York, and if you listened to the last episode, you’ll know where I went to find this little bit of magic. This particular cocktail requires a special type of bourbon, BACON infused BOURBON! Yup, you read that one right. I’ll have the recipe up for you soon and the step by step process explaining HOW to make your own BACON INFUSED BOURBON (I still get excited even typing that).

Step 1

Step 2

We both finally saw Kevin Smith’s Red State, so we yammered on about that in our usual non-style, we glazed over our music/comedy/podcast segment and moved right on over to our Food segment.

And being so close to Turkey Day, we expressed our particular fondness for this Holiday by blabbering on about what made our Thanksgivings so good and so different.

Enjoy!

- Brad

From Chop Shop on Supermarkethq.com.
The everyman’s guide to looking dapper on a tshirt. 141 dudes sporting a right gentlemanly combination of hair, beard or mustache with a good majority scoring with all 3. Can you figure out all 141? No way.

- Brad

This one I thought was particularly cool, An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails. She found this on one of her favorite blogs Design Sponge. The ladies at Design Sponge ran across this through the Etsy page of the Artist/Publisher Elizabeth Graeber.

“An Illustrated Guide to Cocktails, by Orr Shtuhl and Elizabeth Graeber, tells the tales of the heyday of cocktails, from the origin of the margarita to the grandeur of the first celebrity bartender with some modern twists. Along the way, this fun, handheld guide is dabbled with beautiful illustrations and, of course, recipes.”

I don’t need fancy pictures to tell me to enjoy a cocktail, but they don’t hurt!
Check out the full details of the book at Etsy and take a peek at Elizabeth Graeber’s website.

- Brad

This Hot Toddy was pretty traditional, the only variance we did was instead of using Honey, Hoover used Agave Nectar.

Like most of our drinks, theres really no correct proportion, at least to us. You’ll need a couple of ingredients though.

You’ll need:

A tempered glass – A glass heated with hot water until the whole glass is warm, pour out the water
Your favorite whiskey
Hot water
Angostura Bitters
Sliced lemons
Cloves
Cinnamon sticks
Honey or Agave Nectar

1 – Temper your glass
2 – Pour in a “shot” of whiskey
3 – Blast a couple shots for Bitters
4 – Slice a lemon and poke 3-5 cloves into the lemon cells
5 – squirt some honey or Agave Nectar into the glass, not too much though…
6 – a quick squirt of lemon juice
7 – drop in a cinnamon stick
8 – fill the rest of your glass with hot water
9 – stir, drink & repeat

Enjoy!

- Brad

I think this sums things up pretty well…

Caitlin is a make-up artist, a SFX Creature artist and obviously a fantastic colored pencil artist (I think that’s what they like to be called…).

Check out some of her awesome stuff here on caitlinbrisbin.com Also check out her creds on IMDb.

- Brad