Castle & Cairn

I've been meaning to kill off my oldest bottle Costco's  Kirkland BiB  Bourbon for a bit now. The 2024 iteration was a good bit better than the 2025 for whatever reason, but this bottle had gotten pushed to the back of the cabinet. Unfortunately a good amount of headspace in that 1L bottle has resulted in a bit of over oxidation; most of the interested fruited notes are gone. With a few sips of a prior pour left in the glass, I absentmindedly tossed in a few glugs of Total Wine's Wolcott Rickhouse Reserve , also a Barton-1792 product, hoping that a little bit of fresh juice would liven up the Kirkland. The Wolcott impressed me for being relatively easy drinking at 120 proof and around $35, especially given how hard to find 1792 Full Proof had been over the past few years. Results of this impromptu mix were favorable, so I have set out to better document the ratios involved and recreate my accidental success. Vámonos! For the uninitiated, Whiskey Frankenstein is the practi...

Introduced in the first half of 2023, Ultra Strawberry Dreams is Monster Energy's take on a sweet and tart red berry beverage, crisp and lacking the overly syrupy feel of many other strawberry beverages. After release, it became the best selling Monster Flavor in both the US and UK, toping the charts for low sugar energy drinks. The embossed can art features a dreamscape of abstract strawberries, lips, skulls, and rainbows etched into the bright pink outer covering. Is strawberry and aphrodisiac? Monster seems to think so.   🛒 Price:  $2.99  - I got it for around $1.30 a can on Amazon. Monster runs 30% off coupons for setting up subscribe and save fairly often which brings the cost of a 15-pack under $20. ✨Calories:  10 ,  16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine:  150mg, slightly less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor: The strawberry is evident from the get-go but is not overly sweet, more of a berry tingle with a subtle tart element. There is some "creaminess" which I pe...

Produced by Jim Beam, Basil Hayden  Bourbon is the brainchild of Booker Noe, spawning this easy-drinking offering in 1992 as part of the "Small Batch" collection. Inspired and named for Meredith Basil Hayden Sr, a rye farmer in Maryland who was one of the pioneers in "high-rye" bourbon. Originally bearing an 8-year age statement, this bottle like many others lost its age stamp while stocks were under pressure during the bourbon boom of the late 2010s. With Jim Beam Black getting a 7-year mark back, have hopes that this bottle will regain its as well. Under the Basil Hayden label, Beam continues to release an expansive lineup of variations, most of them playing around with various parts of the mash or finish, including Toasted, 10YR, Dark Rye, Rye malt, Red Wine Cask Finish, and Subtle Smoke. The original Basil Hayden was specifically designed by Noe to be very light bodied and easy drinking, an inviting bridge into the world of bourbon at a semi-premium price point....

  QuickTrip has a solid history of being in the energy drink business with it's "Rooster Booster" brand, most often in a Big Q from the fountain or a Freezoni branded slushi. A few years ago, they rolled out a 16oz canned line simply titled "QT Energy" to stay abreast of continued consumer preference trends. The cans feature a digital camouflage design, in this case blue pixels, and seem to be primarily marketed at young men (like most energy drinks). In the store, they're usually about knee level on the left hand side of the main energy drink cooler, somewhat hard to  find compared to blocks of larger numbers of SKUs for other brands. 🛒 Price:  $2.39 (often 2/$4 or with a BOGO coupon in the app). This one was a BOGO for me ✨Calories:  10 ,  16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine:  140mg,  less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor: A tingly and unapologetic blue raspberry. There is a pleasant tartness to it but I also get a decent bit of metal and multivitamin in the transi...

This special edition of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof is the result of my visit to the "You do Bourbon Experience" at Haven Hill's distillery campus. The tour package was about $40 and primarily consisted of a tasting of four full proof editions from Heaven Hill's lineup: Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Rye, Bernheim Barrel Proof, and Larceny Barrel Proof. July 2025 was the first time they offered the rye and it was tasty but didn't edge our the bourbon for me. Participants assess short pours of the four options before picking one to bottle, a process in which you pull a large lever to fill the bottle to a perfectly and then apply the labels, adding your name and any custom messaging as you see fit. The "fill your own bottle" gimmick is quickly popping up at other places (Bardstown and Michter's come to mind), and I can happily say that it is quite fun.  You may know that Elijah Craig typically releases three batches for yea...

QuickTrip has a solid history of being in the energy drink business with it's "Rooster Booster" brand, most often in a Big Q from the fountain. Around 2022, they rolled out a 16oz canned line simply titled "QT Energy" to capitalize on continued growth in the energy drink segment, particularly with gen-z. The cans feature a digital camouflage design, in this case gray pixels, and seem to be primarily marketed at young men. In the store, they're usually about knee level on the left hand side of the main energy drink cooler, somewhat hard to spot compared to blocks of larger numbers of SKUs for other brands. 🛒 Price:  $2.39 (often 2/$4 or with a BOGO coupon in the app). This one was a BOGO for me ✨Calories:  10 ,  16oz. can 🍵 Caffeine:  160mg, slightly less than a cup of coffee 👅 Flavor:  Whereas the red original flavor was very much a Red Bull clone, this one tastes very much like the original Monster Energy, almost exactly the same as their Zero Sugar of...