Russell's Reserve Single Barrel Straight Bourbon Whiskey (Beast Masters "Brine Harder") Quick Review

My reviews tend to be long-winded and very in-depth. I know that many readers don’t have the time or patience to read them all. This is why I have decided to create a “Quick Review” format. I’m not going to cover backstories, distilling methods or anything like that if I know I’ve covered it in a previous review of a similar bottle. You’ll find that a lot of these quick reviews will be based on single barrel picks because their backstory is usually the same with the exception of the group that picked them.

Introduction

Beast Masters is a whiskey membership program that allows its followers to have access to rare and unique single barrel picks. Membership is free and there are a lot of perks that come with it such as access to live tastings. There is even a Beast Masters Wine Club they’ve recently started.

Like most single barrel pick groups, Beast Masters creates unique stickers that are shipped with the bottles you purchase. It only takes a minute to peruse through their previous picks to realize that they all seem to have a “pickle” theme to them. Case and point, this single barrel I’m reviewing today titled “Brine Harder.”

The pickle joke started by the pick team members while they were in a Kentucky Liquor Barn checkout line. Apparently someone pointed out a picture of a sweating pickle inside of a plastic bag that the group could not stop laughing at. As anyone who’s been on a barrel pick before will know, sometimes the inspiration for a sticker will come from the most inane thing that happened during the pick. In this case, the pickle joke stuck and has been used as a theme for every barrel pick since. In full transparency, I honestly thought it came from the Beast Masters picking barrels of whiskey that had briny or dill-heavy notes. Oops!

Russell’s Reserve Single Barrel Bourbon – “Brine Harder”

Just like the Die Hard movie franchise, “Brine Harder” is the second Russell’s Reserve pick that the Beast Masters have done. The pick came from Warehouse K (Tyrone), Floor 4 and was distilled on December 26, 2012 and bottled on July 22, 2021. This makes it about 8.5 years old. I sampled this neat in a glencairn.

Tasting Notes

Nose: Scents of a melted Payday bar rise to the top with the salted caramel being the most impactful. Other sweet notes include raw honey. There is a tiny amount of herbal notes that are hard to discern which specific herb I’m smelling. Baking spices like clove, allspice and cinnamon accompany fruit notes like apples and cherries.

Palate: Baking spices, chili powder and Cinnamon Red Hots wake my tongue up in a hurry. There is a decent amount of oak followed by chocolate. I even get a flavor close to walnut baklava. Fruit notes are mostly courtesy of lime and orange peel.

Finish: Prickly spice notes like cinnamon stick remain on my tongue after the sip is complete. Sweetness comes by way of honey-roasted peanuts. Tannins like oak and tobacco leaf make the finish seem more mature than its 8.5 years in a barrel would suggest. Finally, the herbal notes from the palate remain and give the whole dram a bit more rye-forward feeling than I expected.

Score: 7.9/10

This was a fine Russell’s Reserve example that really highlights the spicy nature I typically get from Warehouse K barrels. I was also pleased to find a bourbon that was a bit more rye-forward than I expected. The one thing I was hoping to find more of was fruit notes, but I guess I’ll live, haha. Beast Masters picked a solid barrel and I’m happy to have one of their selections in my collection. Plus, the artwork is very eye-grabbing whenever you’re showing off your shelves or strangers. It’s guaranteed to always stand out.