| Don't like ads? | No ads |
I think one of the biggest rivalries among Limited Edition bourbons is between Old Forester’s Birthday Bourbon and Four Roses Small Batch Limited Edition. I know that sounds silly as the two brands have never acknowledged they are trying to compete with each other, but their release dates are so close to each other (the beginning of September) that you can’t help but feel a sort of competitiveness between them. I’m not the only one that thinks this, right?
Anyway, I have always kind of secretly rooted for Birthday Bourbon to come out on top. But my palate tells me that I prefer Four Roses SmBLE. I have no metrics to quantify this next statement, but it feels like enthusiasts also prefer the Four Roses LE to Old Forester’s. In fact, over the last 10 years or so, there seems to be one really admired Birthday Bourbon release (2019) compared to multiple Four Roses (2015, 2019, 2023). Why is that and can 2025’s break the spell?
The 2025 release of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon
Right off the bat, Old Forester’s darling falls flat on its face by coming in at a measly 92 proof. That’s the second lowest proof of any Birthday Bourbon (see more OFBB stats here). Now I’m not saying that proof is everything – and the 2021 and 2024 releases are “proof” of that (they were some of the highest proofed OFBBs but weren’t rated highly among other enthusiasts). But what I am saying is that many people in the bourbon community immediately dismissed this release after hearing about its proof.
At least the age didn’t disappoint – it’s a respectable 12-years-old. That might not seem like much to those unfamiliar with Old Forester, but spending 12 years in a heat-cycled warehouse like Warehouse K is probably comparable to spending 18 years in a regular warehouse.
Speaking of Warehouse K, that is typically a very well-liked warehouse among Old Forester enthusiasts. Check out my article on the differences between Old Forester’s warehouses here. However, the thing that sets this release apart from previous Birthday Bourbons is the fact that it used a “sweet mash” for distillation. For those of you who don’t know the difference between sweet and sour mash, sour mash is essentially taking a percentage of the previous batch’s spent mash and adding it into a new batch.
Old Forester doesn’t typically utilize a sweet mash fermentation process, so why did they do it here? I don’t have the answer to that, but I wonder if the distillery had just undergone a planned maintenance shutdown (this is common in the industry) and this was the first fermentation batch made after startup. That’s my theory at least.
Should a sweet mash have any noticeable difference between its sour mash brethren? I’m not thinking so, but honestly these Birthday Bourbon batches are more fun when you have an interesting factoid you can attach to each batch. This counts.
More Birthday Bourbon, please
I don’t think this has been reported much, but the 2024 and 2025 Birthday Bourbon releases have utilized roughly double the amount of barrels compared to previous years. And while they didn’t give us an exact bottle count, we could do some math based on previous years. For instance, 2016’s release used 93 barrels (also plucked from Warehouse K) and resulted in 2,400 6-bottle cases being created. That’s 14,400 bottles. So if 2025’s release used 210 barrels, the math says that there could be as many as 32,500 bottles produced. With numbers like that, is Birthday Bourbon even considered a limited release?
While you consider that possibility, let’s dive into how this year’s release actually tastes. As usual, I sampled it neat in a glencairn.
Tasting Notes
Nose: I feel as if the nose on this Birthday Bourbon is much fruitier than normal. I find ripe strawberries, blueberries and banana peel. There is the sweet scent of vanilla custard and toasted marshmallows. The rye of the mash bill even manages to peek through with some herbal and potpourri notes here and there. Tannins include leather polish, oak and a touch of wet wood. There is one slightly off-note that I’m wondering I’m getting wrong here, but it smells like hairspray to me. I think what I would normally find instead of it would be something akin to varnish, but today it’s not coming off that way to me!
Palate: The fruit notes remain strong on the tongue, too. With each sip, I can find plum, brûlée’d banana, cherries and lemon. Spice notes begin to show themselves with flavors of star anise, gingerbread, cinnamon and allspice. I wouldn’t call this a sweet bourbon either, but there are some notes that hold the bitterness off (which it does have some of) and that’s a touch of maple syrup and a little bit of toffee. Tannins like cacao nibs, leather, drying oak and dry cigar wrapper can also be found. Honestly, the low proof doesn’t seem to impact the flavors much, so whatever your opinion of 92 proof is, it’s not a big factor here.
Finish: As you can probably expect with Birthday Bourbon, there are lots of tannins on the finish. It would be weird if there weren’t. I am finding chocolate bitters mixed with tons of oak. The fruit seems to fall off entirely with maybe the only one lingering around being red Twizzlers. Luckily, there is enough toffee flavor to prevent this from becoming an unenjoyable, bitter affair.
Score: 8.1/10
While this wasn’t the most remarkable Old Forester Birthday Bourbon I’ve had, it also wasn’t the letdown I expected it to be. Make no mistake, I don’t think I’ve given one a score this low, but it didn’t have the heft behind each sip to make any of the flavors really stand out and take lead.
I appreciate the fruitier elements in this bottle and wonder if some of that wasn’t the cause of the sweet mash (fermentation is where the compounds that make fruit notes occur). So if I had to sum up what stood out the most about this bottle, it would be the symbiotic nature of the fruit and oak working together.
Final Thoughts
Old Forester’s Birthday Bourbon has skyrocketed in price over the past 7 recent years. It’s now at $200 which I know most enthusiasts will still buy it at. Part of me has considered that this doesn’t taste like a $200 bottle. I know it’s one of the oldest products wearing the Old Forester name, but that’s mattering less and less these days among enthusiasts.
The main selling point of the bottle continues to be, well, the bottle itself. So if you’re on a budget – or only have a certain budget to spend on bourbon these days – then this is a bottle that you can feel good about skipping this year. That’s a shame really because it’s yet another year where Four Roses beats it in terms of greatness. I guess there’s always next year.