A couple of weeks ago, I came across an old bottle of bourbon in our house. It was my favorite–Jim Beam. And it was dated for the 1795-1995 bicentennial of the company. Thus it is possibly 12 years old.
I have been wondering if it is safe to drink. I know they have bottles of wine that are aged for 100 years. And bourbon, after all, has more alcohol in it than wine, right? Also: aside from whether it is safe to drink, could it have lost some of its alcohol due to evaporation?
The only experience I have is of whiskey, which was fine after a couple of decades.
I remember a long time ago on the UK Antiques Roadshow, they said that whiskey didn’t age after it was in the bottle. If the label said it was 20 years old, and the bottle had been sitting around for another twenty, the whiskey was still only 20 years old.
I’d guess that bourbon would be the same.
Drink it, drink it now!
I thought this thread was going to be along the lines of “what happens when you mix a ten-year-old and a bottle of bourbon.” Since the title was in the form of “ten-year-old” and then a PLUS sign and then “Bottle of Bourbon.”
I’m fairly certain that most hard liquor does not spoil. This LA Times article says whiskey does not change once it is in the bottle, so you should be good to go.
Scotch whiskey rather than bourbon whiskey - is what I meant to type.
I’m also guessing the bottle was unopened, but if you’re worried about evaporation, then maybe it was an opened bottle?
Wouldn’t evaporation just concentrate the fluid? I think the alcoholic content would deal to any microbes.
The bourbon isn’t poisonous at all. My family has a tradition of laying aside a case of whiskey when a boy is born, and guzzling it down 18 years later. My grandfather, father and uncles are strange… but not dead.
On the other hand, once the stuff is bottled, unlike wine, it won’t really change that much in composition once it’s out of the barrel. So what you need to do is find a rube who doesn’t know that, sell him the bottle for scads, and buy yourself ten bottles on your investment.
I should mention that if the bottle has been opened, there is a chance that some of the alcohol will have evaporated, leaving bourbon-flavored water behind (one of the nastier things I’ve ever drank… despite my love of bourbon)
No, the bottle was not opened in over 10 years. But I still wasn’t sure if it could evaporate (after all, the alcohol evaporates while it is in the barrel, I understand). Actually, I did open it and try some. I probably am imagining things, but it might have tasted a little weak. That is why I asked about the evaporation.
And what exactly does Jim B., stand for, Jim B.? You wouldn’t be THATJim B., would you now, Jim B.?? Hmm?
Bart Simpson?
When Booker Noe was still alive and spokesman for Jim Beam he used to advertise their guarantee as “If you’re not 100% satisfied with our bourbon for any reason, return the unused portion and we’ll drink it!”
The wood of the barrels is a lot more porous than a glass bottle. If the bottle has never been opened, the seal put on it at the distillery should have been enough to prevent the level of evaporation you’d notice while drinking, even after several decades. On the other hand, if someone opened it, poured out a little, and then recapped the bottle, there may have been some evaporation, especially if the new seal wasn’t good.
40%/80 proof or stronger liquor should, barring very very strange circumstances, last for yonks.
Okay, now we’re back in territory I know, or at least, knew back when your bourbon was fresh from the bottling plant.
To re-concentrate the alcohol content (if it’s been evaporated out, and not just for giggles, right?) decant into a freezer-proof container, ooh like an ice cube tray.
The theory is that the water content freezes out before the alcohol does.
It takes ages to solidify and leaves a central core of unfrozen liquid.
I can’t for some reason remember whether we added these to premixed drinks or just chucked a few into a small glass of mixer.
The idea was to finish the drink when the unfrozen core was released, but before the rest of the ice melted.
Have fun experimenting, and please report back again.
I knew what Manduck was attempting, I wish I’d thought of it first.
Well, I recently had some of the bourbon straight (prior to now, I had only had it mixed with something). And it does taste strong enough. (It was after all in a sealed container all these years.) My prior suspicions that it was weaker must have been unfounded. So I will leave it at the strength it is now. It did taste a little different. But I have such a dull sense of taste, I could just be imagining it.
In any event now I know: a ten-year-old bottle of bourbon is still good. It does lose some of the alcohol in the barrel, I know. But they are aging it in a barrel that has its insides charred. So maybe it is just more porous or something. In any event, as one of you noted, once out of the charred barrel, it stops aging.
In any event, thank you once again to all who replied
You’re just lucky it wasn’t one of those Jim Beam collectible bottles from the 1960’s-70’s. I once was given ten of those, still sealed, by the wife of a man who died. She didn’t drink, and knew I liked bourbon.
Opened the first one, drank it, lilfe was good.
Opened the second, sipped some, thought I had just ingested paint thinner. :eek:
Short story: the “glue” or whatever that was holding the cork into the decorative pottery top had dissolved, running down into the bourbon. I gave the rest away to a collector.
When I moved into my new house I found some of my old amns boxers that had some bottels of beam from around 20+ years ago, that look completely different (i think they might be ceremic). And each has a different type of bird on them. They look ugly as hell. But i was really hoping they still had bourbon in them, but he had opened them years later when times had become tough and the bourbon money for the week was short. So now i don’t think there worth much.
If you’ve ever taken a tour of a distillery where they store the casks, you can undersand how much alcohol gets through the wood.
However, unlike wine, once in the glass bottle, the chemical processes pretty much stop, so a 10-year-old Scotch saved for 7 years does not equal a 17-year-old Scotch. You’ve got to keep it in the cask for that extra 7 years.
Wine continues to evolve, so there will be a difference between a bottle kept for one year and kept for 10. You need to watch what temperature it’s kept at, and that the cork doesn’t dry out.
