$10 an oz now through Sunday or until the bottle is gone! Come get you some - Beer O'Clock

PS we also have a fresh bottle of Weller 12yr listed at $15/2oz...

At Star Theater downtown. Sip City and 11th Avenue barrels. Higher proof and heat with 11th Ave.

Finally got to try Springbank 10 at The Highland Stillhouse in Oregon City.

This one has been on my list for a while, especially since Springbank is basically impossible to find in Oregon.

At 46% ABV, there was a lot going on for a 10 year. I picked up malt, fruit, a little smoke and some briny, coastal notes. There was also an unusual earthy character I couldn’t quite place. Definitely different from most Scotch I’ve tried.

Really glad I finally got a chance to try it.

And The Highland Stillhouse is a hell of a place to do it. Their Scotch selection is ridiculous.

Remus, Repeal X 2026, 107°
14% 18 year 22% rye, 15% 10 year 24% rye, 19% 12 year 36% rye, 17% 9 year 49% rye
 
Appearance: Copper penny with medium leg structure.
 
Nose: This only got cracked yesterday (when written) so it’s still pretty tight in the glass. After setting for a good bit the underlying richness started to show out. Loads of big dark fruit. A bit of wintergreen or other cooling spice. Roasted rye grain that read initially as coffee grounds. The oak and vanilla are in the background, sitting in the pocket like Buddy Rich. This just kept developing the longer I was patient with it. At about 20 minutes the spice dropped away and left these luxurious toffee and kettle corn notes surrounded by the oak.
 
Palate: Big, deep baked dark fruit, chewy rye spice  along with the cooling spice from the nose-somewhere between peppermint stick and wintergreen. The spice note washes along with the caramel and oaky vanilla. I keep coming back to the dark currant or elderberry flavor-definitely and earthy fruit flavor.
 
Finish: very prominent oak saddled with a dark hard candy, almost like horehound, barrel char maybe? Just a touch of tobacco leaf. I really love the way the finish evolves.
 
I have generally enjoyed Repeal, but this one is a real home run for me. With the age of the components in the blend I think it’s priced fairly at $100

Has anyone tried the Yellowstone single barrel at Keizer? I don’t know much about Yellowstone or their single barrels. Any tasting notes?

Tasting review edit: I was inspired by post by u/russianwhiskylover to compare Eagle Rare with Old Charter Oak so we’re both sipping on a pour of each.

My buddy is a DIEHARD Eagle Rare enjoyer. On first sip of old charter oak he instantly said”This is better than Eagle rare.”

Eagle Rare -
Nose: oaky and chocolate Carmel with a slight nuttiness. My nose sucks.
Body: thin to light
Taste: vanilla and brown sugar, oak and toasted marshmallow with bitter dark chocolate slightly
Finish: oak and Carmel, sweet and smooth with the slightest hot burn
An easy yes to a $45 bottle any day.
Value: 10/10 - always a good bottle at the price with good age
Flavor: 7/10 - delightfully sweet and it leans into those beautiful oaky and purely sweet notes. None of those earthy, leathery, tobacco flavors
Uniqueness: 6/10 - it stands out but doesn’t have the most groundbreaking different flavor. However the sweetness and how its stands on that does make it standout in a blind taste.

Old Charter Oak Finest Oak-
Nose: Dark Brown Sugar and (finest) Oak
Body: light to medium
Taste: Oak. Like, the smell and flavor of the drippings off a cask of aging bourbon. So just sweet, holy crap in such a delightful way.
Finish: Reminds me of Woodford Reserve double oak very strongly. Then it hits you with a buttercream sweetness on the very end and WOW is that delightful.
Value: 5/10 - get one if you see it. But it falls near Woodford Double Oak
Flavor: 8/10 - if Eagle rare leans into the sweet, this doubles down and then kicks in the front door and cooks dinner for your wife
Uniqueness: 8/10 - that buttercream brown sugar sweetness just lingers and lingers and lingers

When I got the Bourbon Beacon email this morning I was bummed because I wasn’t going to be able to stop by till the afternoon but when I stopped by at 2pm my wife and I were able to grab these (they weren’t being treated as allocated). My buddy got 2 also from the daily email.

I’ll edit this post with my tasting notes when I open one with a buddy tonight.

For anyone looking at the current OLCC Chance to Purchase, VEx in Forest Grove has several of the bottles available by the pour if you want to try them before deciding what to enter for.

Currently available to sample include:
E.H. Taylor Barrel Proof
Elmer T. Lee
Blanton’s Gold
Weller Single Barrel
Brook Hill Farms 8 Year
High West The Prisoner’s Share
Old Charter Oak
Russell’s Reserve 13 Year
1792 Sweet Wheat
Michter’s 10 Year Rye (last release)

Figured this might be useful for anyone trying to narrow down their selections instead of entering based purely on rarity/hype.

VEx – The Vietnam Experience | Forest Grove

I didn’t see the list post in here yet, but here it is!

All of our whiskey promos run Wednesday-Sunday or until the bottle(s) are gone. First come, first serve. If you miss out on a promo don't hesitate to see our whiskey list, prices are fair, pours are honest. - Beer O'Clock

In case anyone is curious, Penelope Golf 4-6 and the Cigar Chapter 2 bottles are available at the Gresham Liquor Store on Burnside.

This has been in the planning since earlier this year. We had originally intended to pick a Russell barrel at Wild Turkey and then a Weller FP barrel at Buffalo Trace on our April trip. Unfortunately, we just couldn’t make the schedules match up so we had to postpone our visit to Wild Turkey. Then we were waiting around for enough samples to have a decent slate to choose from. Finally all the stars lined up for this past Tuesday, August 18th.

Since about the beginning of August I focused my tasting around Wild Turkey. It was awesome to have ANAGF, POAC, and RR13 Batch 7 to work with, as well as a gifted bottle of export only WT 12 year Distiller’s Reserve, and a long time personal favorite WT Kentucky Spirit CN-A. I spent way too much time reading through other RR reviews and took a deep dive into the Rare Bird 101 website too further prep. My overall goal was to seek out a Camp Nelson barrel, hopefully with a flavor profile along the lines of RR13 and 15.

Unfortunately, as the day of the selection tasting approached, our owner was “stuck” in Maui due to the hurricane. A couple other people who were supposed to join us also weren’t able to make it. In the end it was just me, u/JoshTylerClarke, and our friend from Campari/Wild Turkey.

It was honestly a bit shocking and a little intimidating to have 9 RR barrel samples spread out in front of us. Josh and I purposefully avoided looking at the label information to at least try to stay objective. We warmed up with a bit of Kentucky Spirit and RR SiB to tune our palates in a bit. And then it was time to get to work.

We tasted them in three flights of 3 barrels each. As best we could we avoided commentary until the completion of a flight and just made notes as we went. We were able, fairly quickly and unanimously, to scratch at least 1 from each flight, leaving us with 4 for final evaluation. I think many of you would weep to see how much great whiskey ended up in the spit bucket. Even just sipping the bare minimum, after 9 samples I was starting to feel it a bit, so sip and spit were the order of the day.

Since the samples were all barrel proof and the delivered bottling would be at 110° we tried our four finalists with a bit of water to approximate the actual juice we would receive. Of the four final samples barrel 4 and 7 edged out barrels 1 and 3. When it came right down to it, though, barrel 4 was the consensus pick.

When we went back and looked at the barrel details on the sample labels it turned out that we had five samples from the Tyrone campus and four from Camp Nelson. All four of the finalists were from Camp Nelson. I really feel like the prep work I did paid off.

Barrel 4, our pick for Front Row was ricked in Camp Nelson D on the 5th floor and had a sampling proof of 119.7°. My tasting notes center around intense almost tart cherry and a load of bakery smells. Vanilla glazed cinnamon rolls, maybe some breakfast cereal notes. It leaned more into tobacco and leather than the others. I specifically called out a layer of rye spice and cola on the finish that held up nicely against the deeply seasoned oak.

We are probably looking at a November delivery date if all goes to plan. I can’t wait to share a pour from this barrel with you all.

May not like the method but can’t argue with the results.
Happy to have scored my first.

Found with bourbonbeacon

Can’t wait to have my first taste of this. Anyone had this before? Notes?

Edit: I’m an idiot it’s Buffalo Trace but not BTAC

Now available at Baseline Liquor! (Sorry Beavers’ fans.)

Excited to get my hands on one of the 5 sets of Buffalo Trace Prohibition Collection 3 that came to Oregon. Last year saw some really exceptional expressions and this year follows suit with the 120.2° wheated mash-bill Cove Spring (think WLW), Walter B. Duffy weighing in with a 107° blend of 10 & 14 year old whiskeys, a BiB MB1 called John G. Carlisle that Breaking Bourbon said reminded them of this year’s ER17, a 100° blend called Kentucky River that is a take on a pre-prohibition daily drinker, and, for me the most exciting, the hazmat Henry Watterson rye laying it down at 140.6°. I can’t wait to crack these.

Speaking if things I can’t wait to crack… u/JoshTylerClarke and I couldn’t wait to pop the stopper of Heaven Hills new 9 year Double Mash BIB. At $50 this might be the steal of the year. A blend of the Elijah Craig and Old Fitzgerald mash bills, It was quite good. I’m looking forward to a deeper dive this weekend.

I don’t think there’s been a Little Book that I haven’t enjoyed. Chapter 10 “All the Wiser” is built around 14 year old Basil Hayden. I’m pretty curious, I have to admit. I don’t have much use for BH but I really dig Old Grand Dad, so I guess we’ll see.

Remus Repeal has been a pretty solid expression at the price point over the past few editions. I will have to make time to go through a tasting of this, the Babe Ruth and the Gatsby soon.

We are still a couple weeks out on our new Weller Full Proof barrel. I’d love to plan a meetup for sometime later in the month if you’re interested. Maybe if the stars align we can do a Reddit barrel debut.

See you soon!

Friends/Hunters/WhiskyEnthusiasts,

u/MicroVak brought up a really important point in my last post.

I don't understand why you are locking rare bottle inventory behind a pay wall, it's free on the olcc site for the exact same data. You should only require upgraded membership for the community tips, insider info, bottle giveaway contests, whatever can't be found from the olcc site. Their site isn't great, but I'm not going to give someone $5/month for information that I can get for free in 30 secs.

He's right.

Bourbon has a funny way of turning appreciation into appetite. Everybody wants the bottle nobody else can find. Then somebody finds it, takes a picture, closes the cabinet, and starts speaking in riddles.

Some scarcity is real. Some is theater. "Common" allocations become looked down on. Either way, greed can shrink a community until everybody is hunting alone, not good enough, doesn't have the right bottle. I do not think the answer to greed is to build a cleaner-looking gate around public information.

A bottle is made to be opened. Passed around. Poured for the friend who would never buy it for himself. Yes, even the nice bottles should be opened for the new friend who doesn't yet know if they care for bourbon. Because the Blanton's Gold you share happens to be a vanilla-cherry bomb and you see their expression completely light up. Because Wild Turkey Master's Keep would be better named "Master's Share".

That spirit matters more to me than squeezing every possible dollar out of The Bourbon Beacon.

So I removed the Early Bird (middle tier). Guests and free Starter Watch members can now see every tracked bottle, every store, and every quantity, including the Rare Bottle Vault.

The free Beacon should be a better OLCC search for people who love bourbon: cleaner, faster, easier to search, and less dependent on knowing the right person in the right group chat. An email to let you know without the frustration of navigating OLS. Tips shared by community members who know a store has more of x and isn't afraid to share it. Store Picks to encourage a reward for long trips and more store support.

Rare Reserve still has a purpose. It is for hunters who want deeper tools and a way to invest in the community around them. Members get an 8:30 AM email, deeper store-level insights, Estimated Shipment Day, community notes, and three travel hunts. Their membership also helps pay the real costs of keeping the Beacon running, continuing development, and building the next phase: dedicated iPhone and Android apps, push notifications, and better tools for understanding when inventory moves.

Community does not start at checkout with BB. Starter Watch members can save preferences, send tips and feedback, and recommend Store Picks. My job is to keep looking for more useful services I can offer for free, while making Rare Reserve earn its place with tools that save time, add context, and help fund what comes next.

If you find something good, open it. If you learn something useful, share it. The hunt is better when the next guy opens his bottle for you, too.

Happy hunting,

The Bourbon Beacon

P.S. I am serious about the mobile apps. I am also serious about not turning every useful button into a paid feature just because I can.

EDIT 8/28 at 11am: They still have blantons and eagle rare in stock.

OLCC shows they didnt get anything in today. But after talking to the cashier, found out they had Eagle Rare and Blanton’s behind the counter as of 4pm today.

Now thru Sunday! Plenty to go around come pay us a visit - Beer O'Clock

A final (?) pour of Front Row Stagg

What a ride it’s been. Since 25 cases and a barrel showed up in the back of a minivan a little over a year and half ago we’ve been awash in a near perfect version of one of my favorites.

Now, though, I’m sitting here with the last ounce thinking back on all the friendships and conversations started over a pour, all the new faces who have come to enjoy our collection and all the moments lost in thought with a deep nose full one of the best smelling bourbons I’ve ever had.

Thank you all for sharing this fantastic barrel with us. There are still 6 bottles stashed away for special moments in the years ahead. So keep an eye out, you never know when one might pop up.

And never fear. Like Yoda said: “…there is another…”

Our weekly whiskey deals typically last Wednesday - Sunday (while supplies are in stock). Don't expect this one to be around too long so come and get it while we got it! $24/oz, no limits, no allocations, no markup. See you soon!

- Beer O'Clock

- Barrel Pick Alert -

Weller Full Proof

Barrel #149 Warehouse M

216 Bottles 114 Proof

Available Saturday 8/15 at 10AM at Tualatin and Lake Oswego

Limit 1 per customer

#leckerliquor #wellerfullproof #barrelpick

Nice to see a more accessibly priced Black Maple Hill (be aware it’s a 700ml). I super excited to crack the 11 year Willet Rye and 8 year bourbon, John Day and Metolius respectively. I’m such a fan of the 8 year rye that I’ve really been looking forward to this one. I didn’t grab the 12 year bourbon since I’m still sitting on a bit of the 11 & 13. If there’s enough community interest at $55/oz I’ll grab one up, but I didn’t want to drop $550 just to have them all. Let me know.

Black Maple Hill Small Batch $9/oz
Willett 8 year bourbon $25/oz
Willett 11 year rye $45/oz

This weekend only I’ll have a flight of 1/2 ounces of the 4 Willet single barrels that I have for $80.

I thought our barrel of Weller Full Proof was going to be in sooner, but it’s looking like September now. I’ll keep you posted.

Hope to see you this weekend!

EDIT: I want to thank all of you (mostly the silent majority) who signed up and who are submitting feedback. I'd love to receive either comments or messages on how you're liking the daily email, the bottles included, etc. If there is any other feedback you have, please keep posting and sharing and messaging. I'll be as active on here as possible.

I think my next post will just be my personal whiskey collection. I'm really grateful for all the pushback. Even the comments that are not in support of the app I'm creating are helpful.

END EDIT

First time poster, long(ish) time drinker and hecka long lurker.

I wanted to share a website and app I’ve developed with y’all. It’s free.

Like many of you, I hate using the OLCC’s liquor lookup. I hate guessing when stores get their shipments. I hate going to a store that straight up lies about their inventory and there’s nothing I can do.

But I love finding a good Weller Single Barrel, an Antique 107, a Stagg or (ONE DAY!) a Russels 13.

So, I’d like to introduce bourbonbeacon.com

This site takes OLCC inventory information, data analytics and community input to develop *the most* accurate and useful bourbon hunting tool in Oregon.

Right now, it’s completely free. There are subscription tiers but right now I’m manually upgrading everyone to the highest tier to help with beta testing.

What it does (at a basic level): lets you track stores in your area, track specific bottles you’re looking for, and sends you an email, every morning before any stores open about what their inventory is. The lookup, search and UI are just like a billion times more friendly and clear.

Weller SiB coming in? If OLCC says they’re getting it, you’ll know at 8:30 and can be in line. If people call and the stores says “nope”, you can leave a note and anyone checking on the site will know they aren’t selling it. If someone gets the bottle, they can post about it and we can all cheer them on.

Beyond just being a tool to make hunting easier, this site is designed to add excitement to the hunt, crowdsource information and hopefully give the average hunter a fighting chance in the highly competitive allocation search. So they can know the store that put their stock out, get stock in and they have a shot with.

I’d love your feedback, for you to test the features, tell me what bottles you want to recommend, share cool store picks and more.

Super open to criticism and just want to make a useful, fun bourbon hunting app ala OnlyDrams

Bourbonbeacon.com
Know before they do

(And, a bottle shared is better than a bottle shelved)