Two Bottom Shelfers: Early Times BiB + Old Overholt 114

EARLY TIMES
Bottled in Bond (2020 release)

MASH BILL – 79% Corn, 11% Rye, 10% Malted Barley

PROOF – 100

AGE – NAS (~4 years)

DISTILLERY – The Early Times Distilling Company (this release actually distilled by Brown-Forman)

PRICE – $21

WORTH BUYING? – No

OLD OVERHOLT RYE
2023 release

MASH BILL – undisclosed

PROOF – 114

AGE – 4 years

DISTILLERY – Jim Beam

PRICE – $37

WORTH BUYING? – No

Both uncapped and tasted in The Year of No Buying (The what? 🔗 here.)

Originally I went about preparing to do notes on these two whiskeys separately, in their own posts. But after tasting each a couple of times, to be frank I didn’t find either exciting enough to spend double the time on them. They are a bourbon and a rye intended for easy drinking and mixing, not contemplating. So why not double up and save some time?

From that you already have the gist of my most general sense of these whiskeys. Both classic Kentucky labels. Both without an ounce of pretension about them. Both meant to get the job done. Bars and home shelves need such whiskeys. We can’t always make our Bourbon & Cokes and Manhattans with the good stuff!

So here we are, just over a month after uncapping and a handful of pours into each bottle. These brief notes were taken using both a simple tumbler and brandy glass. After tasting them, I’ll mix them each into a cocktail, arguably their natural habitat, and reflect on those as well.

EARLY TIMES

COLOR – medium rusty orange

NOSE – smooth peanut butter, cinnamon, a dollop of dark chocolate, a whiff of coffee

TASTE – same notes as the nose, with a prickly warmth from the 100 proof, a bit of oak and oak tannin, less chocolate, and the peanut butter now made with circus peanuts

FINISH – dry, the chocolate more like on the nose, with bitter oak tannin and dry peanut vying for the balance

OVERALL – tastes cheap, with that bitter finish and circus peanut emphasis

I don’t have much to add to these notes. Early Times is exactly what it intends to be, a cheap mixer. Tasted neat, it’s neither offensive nor enjoyable. It does come off better in the brandy glass than the tumbler, I’ll say. That’s where I got those chocolate and coffee notes. But even then it’s still not compelling.

OLD OVERHOLT

COLOR – medium rusty orange

NOSE – dirty cinnamon, rough baking spices, coffee, cheap caramel chews, faint Luxardo cherry syrup

TASTE – cinnamon hot candies, cheap but thick-cut rye bread, cheap chocolate syrup like from a plastic squeeze-bottle, cheap caramel chews, a whiff of roasted peanut, a drop of the Luxardo cherry syrup

FINISH – cinnamon hot candies, bitter coffee, faint roasted peanut, faint Luxardo cherry syrup, the warmth of the 114 proof cooling like a mint

OVERALL – cheap with personality

The air of cheapness continues here. But of the two, Overholt is definitely more interesting. The combination of rye spice and higher proof present the flavors more forwardly. And the range of flavor is greater, too. But as a neat pour, like Early Times, Overholt is likewise neither offensive nor… Well, I wouldn’t say it’s not enjoyable. It is, in that cheap amusement park candy kind of way. But it’s not that interesting. At a dive bar that only had Early Times and Overholt on offer as their house bourbon and rye, I’d definitely choose the Overholt.

So. The cocktails.

For Early Times, I tried an Old-Fashioned two ways. Both featured 2 ounces of Early Times, 2 dashes of Bokers Bitters (a very old-school fave) and a blood orange peel for zesting and garnish. But in one I used a quarter-ounce of Cointreau and the other a quarter-ounce of maple syrup.

Interesting…

The Cointreau variation was very nicely balanced between the sweetness of the Cointreau and the spiciness of the Bokers Bitters. The Early Times kind of disappeared in support of them.

With the maple syrup variation, the maple definitely took the lead. The Bokers cardamom flavor backed the maple syrup up like a supporting player. And as with the Cointreau variation, here the Early Times also laid low, the blank stage to the more colorful players.

The reason I find this interesting is because a few nights prior to this tasting, I’d tried the Early Times in Old-Fashioned coktails made with Cointreau and maple syrup, but with Angostura bitters. Both were not enjoyable. At all. I actually poured them out! And there, the Early Times was a much more noticeable player, its cheapness pulling the cocktail down. Whereas with Bokers Bitters, the Early Times recedes, and the bitters play with the sweetener to create a more agreeable whole.

Okay. Well, the lesson here is that Bokers Bitters was a go-to “back in the day” for very good reason. It’s quite diplomatic. Today, Angostura is the go-to in bars and on home bar-shelves around the globe. But my experiment compels me to explore Bokers Bitters in my cocktailing. Bokers features cardamom as its lead flavor note. And this would seem to be the more reasonable diplomat as compared to Angostura’s more medicinal spice. Very interesting.

For Old Overholt, I went with a classic Manhattan. Rye whiskey was the go-to American whiskey in that cocktail’s early days. So I dropped a 2-ounce measure of Overholt into a mixing glass, 1 ounce of Myrrha Red (sweet) Vermouth, 2 dashes of Angostura bitters, stirred it up, strained it into a chilled coupe and dropped a Luxardo cherry into it.

Nice! The Luxardo cherry and Overholt blend seamlessly. And the Myrra Red, a slightly spicy Spanish vermouth, blends well with the Overholt’s own spicy character and the Luxardo cherry’s dark sweetness. Together they make a very dark Manhattan, looking more like root beer or chilled coffee. And in this instance the herbal Angostura bitters make good friends with the rye and vermouth’s own herbal aspects.

Between tasting each of these whiskeys neat, and mixing them in cocktails, I’d say they are indeed best put to use in cocktails. As a neat pour they’re boring. But as mixers, they get the job done. Select your bitters with care, though. 😉

So if you’re a cocktailer, consider Old Overholt 114 as your possible workhorse rye. Overholt comes in multiple variations. But this 114-proof release offers more flavor than my sense-memory of the standard Overholt.

As for Early Times, it’s so generic as to not compel my particular interest for mixology. It worked fine today, and not at all the other day. So if you already prefer other bourbon mixers—e.g. Old Grand Dad or Wild Turkey 101—there’s no reason to switch them out for Early Times. It’s serviceable, not special. Overholt at least has some genuine personality to offer.

Cheers!