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Echo Spirits Bavarian Rhapsody Review

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Sunday Evening Review

 

One of the reasons that craft distilleries have become so popular is their willingness to experiment. Echo Spirits is no different as they have jumped outside of the box for the upcoming limited release Bavarian Rhapsody Whiskey. Now like with any experiment it can change the world or set your house on fire. Let’s see where this one lands.

 

Make sure you put in the comments any bottles that you would like me to review.

 

NAME – Echo Spirits Bavarian Rhapsody Whiskey – Copper Label Series

 

PROOF – 110

 

AGE – no age statement (found out that it was 18 months in a 30 gallon barrel)

 

COLOR – Chardonnay gold (1.1, Burnished on the Whiskey Magazine Color Chart)

 

NOSE – Whoppers malted milk balls, banana chips, pale ale, cream of wheat, whisper of lemon peel

 

TASTE – Cooked mash, white raisins, Whoppers malted milk balls, herbal, hefeweizen and a little banana pudding

 

FINISH – I would call this a long finish. A white wine note just keeps hanging around for a really long time.

 

REVIEW – I will tell you this is a whiskey that is not anywhere close to anything traditional. You can’t make a judgement of this off the first sip (you shouldn’t do that ever by the way). I think it has some scotch type characteristics that makes it a good grab for scotch lovers. This takes some time to appreciate due to the uniqueness of this bottle. I will also say that it doesn’t drink anywhere close to 110 proof. I would have guessed closer to 90 other than the extremely long finish is from a higher proof.

 

FINAL COMMENTS – Want to thank Echo Spirits for giving me this to review. This is a very limited and once only bottle as this can’t ever be recreated in any fashion. First, there is only 70 bottles. The other part is they don’t have the recipe to recreate it. Echo Spirits  know that it contained Bavarian wheat malt, chocolate malt, and pale malt from North High Brewing, but they don’t know what else it had or in what proportions. When North High Brewing closed down their brew-on-premise setup, they offered Echo Spirits the leftovers to turn into hand sanitizer, but it wound up tasting great coming off the still, so they put it in a barrel instead. The barrel had already aged rye whiskey for 2 years before they reused it for this expression. That is why they call it a whiskey distilled from malt mash instead of malt whiskey because the name malt whiskey requires a new barrel but everything else is the same.

 

Joe Bidinger, founder and distiller at Echo Spirits stated, “We desperately wish we had more. Personally, this might be my favorite thing we’ve made, both because it’s unique and because I like it quite a bit.”

 

This comes out this Friday, March 25th at 4pm. This shouldn’t last long as you won’t ever find a more unique and limited bottle for $35. Yes, I said $35 for a one-of-a-kind craft distilled bottle. You will need to go to Echo Spirits to get your bottle so go ahead and put this in your calendar for a Friday appointment.

 

To find out more check it out here – Echo Spirits

You can look at all the past Sunday Evenings Reviews and I would still love to hear what your personal reviews are from each of the whiskies reviewed.

Echo Spirits Straight Rye Whiskey Single Barrel Selection Review

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It’s always interesting to see a new distillery starts figuring out what their niche is. Echo Spirits is doing that now right in front of our eyes. With many of the other local distilleries focused in on bourbon, that leaves rye whiskey that is less crowded. They now have gotten to the point that they are ready to put out a limited distillery only release of a single barrel rye whiskey. We will find out if what they thought was a special barrel measures up for a special single barrel release.

 

Make sure you put in the comments any bottles that you would like me to review.

 

NAME – Echo Spirits Straight Rye Whiskey Single Barrel Selection

 

PROOF – 93

 

AGE – non-age stated but states 3 years on the website

 

COLOR –dried fallen oak leaf (1.5 auburn, polished mahogany on the Whiskey Magazine Color Chart)

 

NOSE – Milk chocolate, vanilla cream puff, dried tobacco, cinnamon dolce latte, and a toasted oak

 

TASTE – Cinnamon vanilla swirl hits you first. The is then a white pepper bite on the sides of the tongue. There is toffee, espresso, and some honey.

 

FINISH – I would call this a medium finish. A great coffee note lingers in the back and the rye spice leaves a nice spicy heat that lingers. A tobacco note sneaks in for a split second at the very end.

 

REVIEW – This is not void of all typical rye notes, but this has none of the grassy or minty notes that is common with a rye that has a mash bill of 95% rye. Really has an interesting coffee note in slightly different variations throughout. This is not a typical straight rye and has several dark notes not normal in a 3-year whiskey. When doing a special single barrel release, you want something that is atypical, but it still needs to be good. This bottle succeeds on both accords. Very nice release.

 

FINAL COMMENTS – Its always hard to put yourself out there for the first time saying what you have is special and you should buy it. If you are wrong, it would take 10 more great special releases to gain back the trust of the buying public. It may be doubly so when you are putting out a rye whiskey that doesn’t have all the normal rye tasting profiles. Kudos to Echo Spirits for have the guts to put this bottle out and what I would call a very successful first special release.