Although not my personal choice (I don’t buy anything lower than Ancient Age and generally prefer Ancient Ancient Age), a friend of mine buys Benchmark… and having had plenty of drinks mixed with it, I’ve got to say–it’s not bad at all.
Benchmark is the lowest rung on the Buffalo Trace ladder, and highly recommended for someone looking to score maximum bourbon for minimum money.
It isn’t bourbon, but I am also a big fan of Kessler for mixed drinks. While it doesn’t have a great deal of flavor, it also doesn’t have any of the rough edges you get with a lot of comparably-priced liquor. In a pinch it can be consumed straight without too much wincing. I just picked up a 1.75L bottle on sale for $14US. That’s a great value for the money.
Also, on my grandmother’s behalf, I’d like to ask everyone to stop picking on Old Crow. She loves the stuff, though I’ve only seen her drink it in Manhattans, never straight.
Please note that if you are going to have Old Crow, don’t ever do it at a place called Dirty Frank’s.
In my limited experience with the blended stuff at the extreme low end, it’s not so much that they’re acrid, harsh and godawful, so much as it’s that they’re diluted, and not very flavorful at all.
I think in essence, what they do is take straight bourbon and dilute it with what amounts to everclear and water. I don’t know the ratio, but it ends up 80 proof, and usually not very intense.
Same thing goes for Scotch- think about the difference between most blended scotch whiskys (not including blended malts) and single malts- there’s a world of difference between them in terms of intensity.
Old Crow and other rotgut is awesome to deglaze a pan that you’ve fried steaks in, with or without mushrooms. I have a jug for just that reason. And if you’re eating dinner with someone who likes drinking rotgut, you have a compatible beverage to go with their dinner.
Also, after scraping the seeds out of a vanilla bean to put in custard, I put the empty pod into a fifth bottle of rotgut. That’s not as perfect a plan – a couplea vanilla pods will scent the booze, but you have to use 2 or 3 times as much of this stuff as you would of commercial vanilla extract. Still, hey, free vanilla extract. (as in, you’re going to throw the pod away afterward anyway.)
Ten High is the most enjoyable of the cheap bourbons, IMO. It’s straight, not blended. If it’s rotgut, it’s rotgut of an unusually high order.
I particularly like it in Scots-Irish Coffee (reheated joe + a shot of 10H + a shpritz of Reddi wip).
Old Crow is a perfectly fine bourbon. The only thing ‘wrong’ with it is it’s age, I believe it is only aged two years. That young and of course it’s not going to have the developed character of an 8 or 12-year-old, but there is nothing bad or off about it, it’s decent quality. And I don’'t mean for mixing - try sipping it neat. You’ll gain an appreciation for what time in the barrel does for a whiskey, but also what a young bourbon can be.
Another plug for Benchmark:
http://www.thepartysource.com/spirits_education_view.php?article=00023
And around here (Kentucky), it’s less than $20 for a 1.75.
:smack:
I don’t know why I keep making that mistake…and I spent many years in Kentucky drinking oodles of Eagle Rare (my favorite bourbon), Blanton’s, Basil Hayden, Knob Creek, Woodford Reserve, etc.
Kessler was my and my college buddies el-cheapo whiskey fix. But you’re right…its blended.
Early Times and Kentucky Deluxe are inexpensive but drinkable if you’re poor and taking shots. Can’t recall offhand if they’re specifically bourbon or not, but I think so.
Cheers!
This is a total cheat, but I think Laird’s Applejack is a great bargain – it’s obviously not bourbon, but I think it’s a good alternative to a lot of similar-priced bourbons.
The price has risen a bit lately, but it used to be $10 a bottle here and it was considerably better than most $10 bourbon.
Ev Wiliams, who I kind of look at as the younger, naive cousin of Mssrs. Jack and Jim, is my go-to for bourbon on the cheap.
In Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the main character often indulges in Old Crow. I was surprised to read this, because like many of you all I had thought of OC as near unswillable, well, swill.
To Typoink, I currently have a half-full bottle of Laird’s Applejack getting more and more comfortable with its place on the shelf. I wanted to like the stuff (really!), but to me it had no character or life beyond a slight, light tartness. A quick glance of the bottle says it’s comrpised of 35% apple brandy and 65% grain neutral spirits - probably the problem. I think I paid around 16 for the 750ml, and largely because of the abundance of neutral grain I feel like I got cheated.
And since I’ve got you here, at the liquor store I work at we have a single-malt Scotch called Tamdhu that sells for $20 a fifth. I was always put off by the high prices of single-malts (being a poor college grad) and assumed this stuff would be the Scottish equivalent of Kentucky Velvet, et al. But it’s surprisingly good!
As with all things, overindulgence is a bad idea. I’ve never been so sick in my life, and it had nothing to do with the quality of the intoxicant. It could have been 15-year old scotch, and I would have the same reaction to it today as I do to Old Crow.
The only way to know what you really like is to do a blind taste test. The impact of price and label are incredibly strong, and for many folks those factors are more important than taste.
I was pretty impressed by how unpredictable those factors were when I had my son set up a blind test of eight brands (I also did this with vodkas), ranging from the very cheapest supermarket generic to the most expensive mass-market labels (the specialty bourbons have such distinctive flavors they really do belong in a different category). A group of friends got together and ranked them from 1 to 8. The ONLY pattern that was significant was that no one ranked the first sample they tasted highest.
Try it. You may find that you actually PREFER something less expensive.
Actually, I drink the cheap, harsh stuff to slow me down. If I start sipping Maker’s 46, for example, it goes down too smooth and I tend to over-indulge a bit. If I pour a glass of Bulliett that doesn’t happen.
Get the Laird’s bonded apple brandy or the “Old apple brandy”. They’re aged 5 and 7 years, I believe, and are straight apple brandies, not that blended stuff they sell as “Applejack”. WAY more flavor and aroma, and are kind of reminiscent of an apple whiskey more than anything else.
And I wouldn’t call Bulleit “cheap, harsh stuff”. Maybe not Booker’s or Woodford Reserve, but light years ahead of most of the brands mentioned in this thread.
Ok then, Beam. 
You had me at “Buffalo Trace”. I was in Louisville today and picked up a fifth of Benchmark for $7.99. Broke the seal on the screw-top 10 minutes ago. It is not very complex and lacks a clean finish, but definitely not rotgut and something I could keep around as a sipping whiskey. Thanks for the tip!