Review by: zSolaris

Christmas Countdown 2020 #15: Old Tub Bottled-in-Bond

Distillery: Jim Beam

Region: Kentucky

Age: 4 Year.

ABV: 50.0%

Color: 1.4, Tawny. Un-Filtered.

Price: Sample courtesy of /u/goatfester

This is the 15th installment of this years’ Christmas Countdown. You can see the entire 2020 series here or the 2019 edition here.

---

Nose: I’d let this sit out for 15-20 minutes before nosing this and there was still a ton of ethanol on first whiff. Once you get past the ethanol fumes, you get a lot of peanut dust. It’s like smelling an empty bag of peanuts. Some generic bourbon-y notes also pop in.

Palate: Two words: Nutter Butter. It tastes of those wonderful sugary peanut butter cookies that I need to never buy because I’ll eat an entire package in a sitting. It has the distinct flavor of creamy peanut butter. A bit of something sugary pops in as well.

Finish: Medium in length. A little bit of creaminess lingers but it’s mostly ethanol.

---

Conclusion: If you like peanut butter, you’ll probably like this whisky. If you don’t, I’d stay far away from this. The famed Jim Beam peanut notes are here in full force and I personally love it. Once you get past the ethanol, it smells wonderfully of peanut dust. It tastes like a Nutter Butter cookie with all of it’s creamy, peanut-y goodness and that little bit of something sugary helps it along. The ethanol is a problem, I couldn’t get it to go away at all and it’s borderline unpleasant because of it but I suppose I shouldn’t expect a whole lot for $22. For what it is, it’s tasty enough.

Final Score: 73.

---

Scoring Legend:

• 95-100: As good as it gets. Jaw-dropping, eye-widening, unforgettable whisky.
• 90-94: Sublime, a personal favorite in its category.
• 85-89: Excellent, a standout dram.
• 80-84: Quite good. Quality stuff.
• 75-79: Decent whisky worth tasting.
• 70-74: Meh. It’s definitely drinkable, but it can do better.
• 60-69: Not so good. I might not turn down a glass if I needed a drink.
• 50-59: Save it for mixing.
• 0-49: Blech.