I've repeatedly said Elijah Craig Barrel Proof is the best semi-available bang for your buck barrel proof bourbon out there. I easily put it over the other similar contenders like Stagg Jr and Colonel Taylor Barrel proof. It's the next best thing to my favorite yearly release, George T. Stagg and it's a lot easier to obtain. Having sampled or worked through a bottle of all of the batches, I also happen to think that it's been a super consistent product since day one. But whiskey nerds being whiskey nerds, there's been some muttering lately that the latest batch (which also happens to be the lowest proof released yet) isn't as good as previous releases. I didn't really buy into that as I remember those same comments about the 128 proof batch which I thought was just as great as any of the others. So in the interest of science I pulled an older batch out of the bunker and tasted them side by side. I'm going into this with the assumption that the higher proof batch is probably a little better but the differences won't be substantial.
Batch 11: Aged 12 years; 69.7% ABV; $60
Batch 13/A117: Aged 12 years; 63.5% ABV; $60
Color: It's hard to tell from the pictures but the 139.4 batch is a shade darker than the latest one. That's not really surprising as it's nearly 6% more alcohol by volume.
Nose: Batch 13 is more mild but still has a pretty high amount of heat. It's also more sweet forward with typical bourbon caramel and vanilla and smells younger with a little bit of fruitiness. Batch 11 is hot and boozy, smells like a high proof super oak forward bruiser of a bourbon with lots of wood spice. There is some sweetness here but it's dark like cocoa powder.
Taste: Batch 13 has quite a bit of peanut on the front which is something I used to only get in Beam bourbon but am picking up more and more in Heaven Hill products. It's proof heavy with a wallop of typical bourbon sweet notes and a slight rye spice bite in the finish. I would have guessed about 10 years old blind. Batch 11 on the other hand kicks things into a much higher gear. The viscosity is thicker and the sweet notes are more on the burnt caramel side rather than straight up caramel. It's also more dark cocoa than vanilla and the wood influence has more prominence/depth. This one certainly tastes 12 years old, maybe even a bit older and encroaching on a George T. Stagg profile.
Thoughts: Tasting it on its own I had said I thought this new batch was up to par but after this comparison I can't stand by that. That's not to say that it's bad, it's still a really good bourbon that by itself is pretty tasty. Compared with a beefier batch though it's thinner, has less oak influence, and has more young fruity notes instead of the dark fudgy chocolate oak bomb that I've come to expect in this line. Having said all that, I think I picked the nearly the worst possible candidate for this side by side because batch 11 is a real knockout, maybe one of the best in the line. All in all though I still feel like this a relatively consistent product, certainly more consistent than Stagg Jr which was all over the place in the first three batches. Comparison aside, that batch 11 though... whew man is it good. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's that kind of experience that makes this product the next best thing to George T. Stagg.
Rating Batch 11: B+ / A-
Rating Batch 13: B
Note that price is not considered when assigning a rating.
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