Bookers -Phantom Pipes-- A Masterpiece or Just High Proof-

Oh my god. Yeah. There's a brown box. Yeah. I remember not so long ago saying I'm never buying another one of these again, and yet I keep buying them, and you want to know why? Why? Because I like nuts. He likes nuts, and he cannot lie. You other people might deny, but this little thing over here, yeah, no kidding. I can't stop. I gotta stop at that point. It's a little thing. Well, you know. Listen. Big thing. Whatever. What is the name of this Booker's bag? This is Phantom Pipes. This is 2025-04, and yes, if you've watched the channel, you may hear us say that I like nuts in my whiskey. I do like a nutty profile in my whiskey, and the one distiller that comes to mind when you think about nutty whiskey is Jim B. That being said, Heaven Hill can have a little bit of a nut flavor because supposedly after the Heaven Hill fire, Jim Beam gave them some of their yeast to do it. I don't know that that's a fact. I've heard it. I'm pretty sure that's at least partially true. Jack Daniels can also have a little bit of a nut component to some of their whiskey. Most definitely. And I don't think it's any coincidence that those are three of my favorite whiskeys. Booker's, I have a love-hate relationship with. I want to love it. I really do. It's Cask Strength, Jim Beam, everything that I should love. They're not that old. These are usually like seven- to eight-year whiskeys. They are Cask Strength, but these were going for like a hundred bucks, and just some of them were not hundred-dollar whiskeys. Some of them, some of the older batches were great. Some of the more recent batches, 2023, 2024, were kind of eh. Some of the 2025s, I thought, started to pick it up. Finally was able to get my hands on the last batch in 2025, the Phantom Pipes. So let's see. Let's see if this is something we want to continue with. America. Another fake cork pop-up provided by Aaron. So let's see here. I agree. The 2025s, some of them were fairly good. A couple of them were really on the sweet. I feel like one that was a cookie dough. Yeah, you can take some of mine. There was one that was really cookie dough I liked. One of the Booker's, our favorite Booker's of the year, did end up in our top Whiskey of the Year competition, and I feel like it finished somewhere in the teens. Yeah. Right? It was somewhere in the teens. It didn't make the top ten cut, but it was rock solid. It was very respectable whiskey. And for $100 nowadays for a barrel proof, it's not bad. They're not even... Like what? $80 bucks now. Now you're talking. They're a little more palatable to buy. Some of those 2023, you're paying $120 to $115, and it was not that way. But for $80 for a, you know, cast string of whiskey... American whiskey consumers, thank you for putting the screws to Booker's and Jim Beam. I'm sorry Jim Beam. I like you. I like a lot of stuff you do, Jim Beam, but you've gotten a little bit out of line in your pricing. This is 126.4 proof. That's seven years, six months, 15 days. Now, a lot of people will say that Stag is between six and eight years. It's not age stated. I do like that this tells you exactly what it is. Apparently Booker's is usually taken from the middle of the Rick Houses. I like it. It's got a nice nose. It's got a Jim Beam, Booker's nose. It does kind of have that Jim Beam nose. You get some of that peanut shell. Back on the Booker's pricing conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, please put the screws to Wild Turkey because they are so out of line, it is ridiculous. Yeah, but again, they make really good whiskey and their standard stuff isn't out of line, but their limited releases have gotten pretty crazy, but I mean, you can get a rare breed for a decent price and that's a hell of a whiskey. Rare breed's great. Wild Turkey 101 and the others. That's fine. The eight year. Lovely. Russell's 13. Are you kidding me? $250 for a 13 year whiskey? What are you smoking? Single Rick House. $300. Yeah, you start getting. Come on. You can buy the best Jim Beam part for $2.00, $2.50. I mean, Heritage can go hand to hand with it at $2.50 and that's a great whiskey and you're getting 15 year old juice. It's beautiful. I think you mean Lineage. Lineage. Heritage is the. Heaven Hill product. Heaven Hill 1. Yeah. Wrong one. Close enough. But same thing. The Heritage is usually around $2.50. I think even the William Heaven Hills are right around that $300, but that's also. Yeah, those are very short supply. I understand when there's only a thousand bottles of something charging that price, but when you have something that there's 20, 30, 40 thousand bottles of and you want to jack up the price 50%, I'm really glad that supply and demand and economics helped influence things back in line. I do like this nose. It's got a good nose. It's a traditional Booker's nose. Now. It's a really well rounded nose. We also have traditionally said that on fresh crack these have been okay and then going back to them they've vastly improved, so. They do. That's one thing I'll say with Booker's and the Jim Beam, especially the Booker's, they open up. They do get better 30 days later. I think it's a really well rounded nose. I can get sweet. I can get a little bit of the spice. I can get a little bit of the wood. Your exhaling is making me wonder if it's going to be really spicy. Did you get the official year, month, and date? I did, yeah. You missed it, but I did. That was. Why are you exhaling so much? That was proofy on my first sip. Did you take a really big sip? That was a kick in the, kick in the you know what's. Those had some good things. My first drink, I got a well rounded sip. I would have told you it drinks 126 to 128 proof, 30 proof. I think I heard what you said earlier. I think it drinks it's proof, but I took you know standard mark poquito sip and I got a little sweet up front, some good rye characteristic, light wood back. That second sip was a lot more tame for me, so maybe I did just take a large sip. That first sip to me was like Cracker Jack, kind of a caramel popcorn with some nut in there. Yeah. I get the caramel. I get a real light nut, almost creamy peanut butter. Not quite. Yeah, I don't get as much of a creamy peanut butter. It's more like that, like I think that Cracker Jack note hits well because there is that roasted peanut in there, but it's not quite as sweet as like a creamy peanut butter. But there is that caramel and even that kind of popcorn note. That first sip really kind of reached up and grabbed me and said whoa, but that second sip was very, very nice. Water. Dude, water before it. I'm telling you, like the water, a little bit of water before it really brightens up the, it just intensifies the flavor characteristics significantly. I like that. I do too. I, it really, it really brightens the vanilla caramel, caramel corn note that you're getting on the front end. Makes the rye characteristics, the basing spices and stuff I'm getting, the mid-pelt, the little bit of wood come alive. And then what's interesting, it returns back to the caramels and stuff on the deep dark end of the finish. Yeah, having that little bit of water left on my tongue gave it a lot more buttery note. Still got those caramels, those vanillas, still that little bit of, of nuttiness, but that was, that just made it a little bit more buttery to me. Let's see what this little card here says. What does the card say? What is the card say? What they're trying to tell us about this batch, because the fourth U.S. release of the Booker's 2025 collections is Booker's Batch 2025-04 Phantom Pipe Batch. This is named after a curious discovery some of the engineers made in the distillery a few years ago, whole bunch of pipes that don't feed anywhere at all. Dad's friend, Jack, once said there were three ways to do something. There's the right way, the wrong way, and there's the Booker way. Those pipes are a shining example of how to do things Booker's way. It's a pretty long story. Pretty long story. This is made up of barrels from five different production dates. Youngest barrels in the batch are aged seven years, six months, and 15 days and approved for 126.4. Breakdown is as follows, and this is kind of nice, 22% of the batch came from the fourth floor of Warehouse 3, a seven-story warehouse, 11% of the batch came from the fifth floor of Warehouse 1, a seven-story warehouse, 30% of the batch came from the sixth floor of Warehouse G at the Waterfill Frasier, a seven-story warehouse, 9% of the batch came from the third floor of Warehouse O, a seven-story warehouse, 28% of the batch came from the fifth floor of Warehouse 4, a seven-story warehouse. The golden amber color is very pleasing to the eye and nose, is pleasant with vanilla notes and wood notes coming from aging in the oak barrels for over seven years. Do you get a nut note on this? I do, but it's not overly pronounced. It's not really super strong. It's an accoutrement, as they would say, and again, that's why I'm still leaning towards that Cracker Jack note, because there's nuts in Cracker Jack, but it's not the big thing. It's that caramel and that popcorn, and then just that, every once in a while you get that little hint of a roasted peanut. So the first two-thirds of this experience, I was down with it. And every time I keep going back to it, when I get to the nut note of the palate, it goes that little bit of nut, and then there's like a, for whatever reason, there's a sourness to it on the end that's not helping me. Okay. It's, I, it's, yeah, it's, I don't know why, I'm, um, I started off really liking this. See, I think I like that sour note. Nope. I don't know. I'm giving this... I kind of like this. What are you giving it? Eight point four. Sixty-eight, man! No, you're nuts. I am nuts. Let me just make sure. Sixty-eight. The same score I gave OGD. I, I don't know, I, I'll, I'll tell you, I started off, and initially I liked it, and I was in the sevens. I was probably in the mid-sevens, and I got, I got into it a little ways, and I started playing with the water and stuff, and that, that sour note on the back end of the nut, nope. Nope. You can drink that sour nutty ---- all day. You go right ahead. That ain't for me. Uh-uh. Man. Nope. I like it. Not this batch. I like it. Well, if you have bad taste, you might want to pass on this. If you have good taste, this might be something you want to pick up. But as always, you should keep the whiskey flowing. I think you missed some of my whiskey. Cheers.