Four Roses Ten Recipe Bourbon Tasting Set

This new and limited product is a dream come true for fans of Four Roses and an incredible opportunity for any lovers of bourbon and whiskey.  For the first time outside of the Kentucky distillery a set of all ten Four Roses Bourbon recipes is available with no painstaking bottle hunting and collecting required.  The 50 ml samples are bottled without chill filtration at a robust 104 proof, and a link on the package connects you to a guided tasting video with Four Roses Master Distiller Brent Elliot.  

As you may know, Four Roses distills a total of ten different "recipes" of bourbon, which are then combined in different proportions to create their different bottlings.  These recipes are distinguished by their mash bill and the yeast strain used in fermentation and given letter codes in the form of

O __ S __

where the blanks are filled by a letter representing the mash bill and the yeast strain, respectively. For example, the standard single barrel distillery bottling is the OBSV recipe, while the small batch is a combination of four recipes, OBSO, OBSK, OESO, and OESK.

All Four Roses recipe codes start with "O" and feature an "S" in the third spot, a throwback to the time when Four Roses was owned by Seagram's, who owned other distilleries as well.  The "O" referes to the Four Roses Distillery in Lawrenceburg, KY (formerly called Old Prentice), and the "S" stands for Straight whiskey (the only kind Four Roses makes these days).  In the second slot, a "B" indicates the higher rye mash bill (60% corn, 35% rye, 5% malted barley) while an "E" indicates the lower rye mash bill (70% corn, 20% rye, 5% malted barley).  The final letter tells us which of five distinct yeast strains were used and can be  F, K, O, Q, or V, each of which brings unique flavors to the whiskey (see the Four Roses website for more details).