Whiskey Review: Old Elk Blended Straight Bourbon Whiskey

If you’ve read my previous articles, you may have noticed that I often try to find new bottles when traveling, and my latest trip was no exception. While in the Florida Keys, at the aptly named Summerland Liquor in Summerland Key, I came across Old Elk Blended Straight Bourbon Whiskey. The only thing I knew about it was that we’ve never reviewed any of their products here at Thirty One Whiskey, so I figured it would be a bit of fun to try something completely that while enjoying the afternoon sun over the water.

History

Founded in 2013 by Curt Richardson, Old Elk is a relatively young distillery out of Colorado. Richardson wanted to make an innovative, quality spirit and didn’t want to start with a mashbill that has been seen before – so he contacted Greg Metze, a distiller with forty years in the distilled spirits business (and current reigning Master Distiller of 2024). Together, Richardson and Metze created a unique mash bill that would eventually become the signature Blended Straight Bourbon.

Reading through their online material, you quickly see that “quiet on purpose” is a common theme — speak softly and carry a big flavor profile, if you will. That concept of quietly powerful energy is what led them to choose the name they did for their distillery: Colorado is home to rare mountain dwelling elk (Who knew? Not me), and this presumably quiet animal became their namesake and mascot.

The vision of Old Elk is to make the highest quality product at the same scale of the large distilleries but keep the spirit of a startup. (And if my years of working in corporate America have taught me anything, it’s that this is harder than it sounds.) For Richardson and Metze, it means focusing on quality over efficiency and taking chances on challenging mashbills.

Product

• Learn More: What Is Bourbon Whiskey?

Let’s get the big reveal out of the way first – the product is contract sourced. That means that the Old Elk team write the recipe, and that recipe is distilled by another company out of Indiana. Exactly which distillery is an exercise left to the consumer to determine… but potentially a large, three-letter one (IYKYK).

This bourbon has a mashbill of 51% corn, 34% malted barley, and 15% rye. These grains are milled, mashed, and distilled by a partner distillery in Indiana. Once distilled, the bourbon is barrels and aged… somewhere. It’s not clear where, but it’s a very likely guess that it’s still in Indiana, because they do not mention Colorado until the blending process. 

Once the whiskey lands on the receiving dock in Colorado, there is a lot more discussion about what makes the Old Elk process different – specifically, their slow cut proofing process. The theory behind this is that by adding the water to proof down the bourbon slowly, they are better controlling the temperature to minimize the “boiling off [of] the lighter, finer flavors”. 

The folks at Still Austin have a similar process where they add water to barrels as the alcohol evaporates out, naturally proofing down the whiskey in the barrel. But for Old Elk’s version of the process, it sounds like this happens on the time scale of days, not years.

My engineering lizard brain cannot follow this logic — the spirit coming out of the barrel is going to be room temperature-ish. For the sake of this thought experiment, we can even call it above room temperature. The water going into proof it down is going to be cold, or at most room temperature. I don’t follow how adding a likely cooler liquid to a spirit to proof it would boil off anything. Until Bill Nye the Science guy explains this to me, I have my doubts. 

There is no age statement on the bottle, but the online description says five years. I’m not sure what that five actually means, but I would put it in the category of ‘no age statement’ since it’s not indicated anywhere on the bottle. 

Packaging

The bottle is unique. I may have purchased this in Florida, but I’m presently working on this article from a hotel bar in Minneapolis — and not a single bottle on their entire wall has a square base that flares out to a rounded bottle like this one does. The closest thing I can find is a bottle of Whistlepig, so that’s one great note for standing out in a crowd.

Other than the shape of the bottle, which is a medium height with a sharp shoulder that ends at a short neck, everything else is generally underwhelming. On the front of the bottle is a (maybe cliche) faded yellow label with artistic black lettering. 

Near the bottom of the bottle is a label that describes this product, and I actively dislike it: a black label with red lettering that says, “blended straight bourbon whiskey”. I think my visceral reaction is because it brings back memories of Rumple Mintz shots in college… but still… I don’t like it.

The final thing of note about this bottle is the stopper. The synthetic cork is attached to what resembles the cross section of an elk antler that has been stamped at the top with what I can only assume is the crest of the distillery. Now that’s kinda cool.

Neat

The aroma coming from this bourbon would be exactly what you expect: strong orange peel, vanilla, and some slight clove. What is missing, however, is the odor of elk young or old – a fact about which I am very pleased. 

The flavors when you take the first sip are in line with the aroma. Again, no elk, which is good (okay, enough of that joke). The overall texture is really smooth with very little spice or heat, and the flavors are harmonious. There are hints of mild vanilla, orange, maybe a hint of lime, and some clove. It’s surprising that it smells and tastes nearly the same — which isn’t as common as you’d think. 

While this is good, I would have expected more flavor for the level of malted barley in this mashbill. I was anticipating some high notes, but this reminds me more of a very tame wheated bourbon. 

On Ice

The worry about drinking any spirit on the rocks is that the ice will wash away the bold flavors — or in the case of a milder bourbon, wash away all the flavor. That unfortunately is exactly what happens here.

Once the ice goes in the glass the result is that this is just a dull and muted version of drinking this neat.  There is little to no flavor – just a bland, cold drink. The only real notes that you can pick are the orange and vanilla. 

Again, something just seems off. There is a high malted barley content in the mashbill, so I would have expected some more nutty, smokey, or chocolatey flavors that could survive the ice. But there are none of these. Again, this reminds me much more of a wheated bourbon than anything else.

Cocktail (Old Fashioned)

Okay – I found a drink that works with this spirit. The orange forward notes of the bourbon go really well in an old fashioned, and the bitters and sugar help to bring the other flavors of the bourbon forward.

Even though this is good, I am not sold on the idea that it’s great. Again, when I think of a bourbon with such a high malted barley content, I would expect some richer and more complex flavors. This would be great with some walnut bitters – a flavor that should normally be there from the barley. Why is it missing? 

In a blind taste test, I would have pegged this as a wheated bourbon 3 of 3 times so far.

Fizz (Mule)

I am never very excited going into the mule stage of the tasting — it’s no secret around here that I am not a fan of this drink. However, I appreciate the role this plays in our reviews, since it helps to examine the versatility and resiliency of a spirit.

In this case, I’ve just proofed up some ginger beer. I could have grabbed a bottle of Breckenridge Vodka (also made in Colorado), mixed it into the mule and had essentially the same cocktail. There’s next to no additional flavor added to this drink by the bourbon.

It’s just slightly alcoholic ginger beer.

Overall Rating

This bourbon is decent neat – but starts to fall apart after that point in our testing. Frankly, the only reason it got more than one star is that it’s decent neat. (Spirits in the one-star range, by my grading standards, are undrinkable.)

I often give young distilleries the benefit of the doubt – they are still trying to figure it out. However, they are contract sourced, and the biggest claim to adding value is a trademarked slow cutting process that does not make any sense. When mixing two liquids and neither of them are boiling, the resulting solution will not suffer from flavors being “boiled off”. It just seems like standard proofing down with extra steps (but again, if Bill Nye wants to explain the science of how this adds value, I’m willing to listen)

All reviews are evaluated within the context of their specific spirit classification as specified above. Click here to check out similar spirits we have reviewed.

Overall Rating: 2/5
Like it’s namesake elk, this bourbon is quiet and hidden… but unlike the elk, it’s too quiet and too hidden.