By Andrew Graham Grade: B- Based 10 miles east of Great Salt Lake in Utah, Ogden’s Own Distillery is perhaps best known in their region for its portfolio of Porter’s flavored whiskies. It also makes vodka and gin, and it now sells a rye, which is sourced from MGP in Indiana. Porter’s Small Batch Rye uses the popular MGP rye ...

By Douglas Fraser Grade: C+ New Riff Distilling was established in 2014 in Newport, KY, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. This medium-sized distillery is independently owned, committed to the standards set by the Bottled in Bond Act of 1897, and to bottling without any chill filtration. They draw their water from a private well, which they drilled under their ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B+ Back when croaking “craft whiskey sucks” was a thing in blogs and forums, I often found myself occupying a space between said croakers and the sometimes too-superlative coverage got in the major media. The latter often misunderstood who they were writing about and what made them special; the former regularly confused “different” or “not famous” ...

By Douglas Fraser Grade: B+ Kinsey 4 Year Old Rye is the second of the three whiskies in the Kinsey box set I received for Christmas 2019 (I’ve also written up the 10 Year Old American Whiskey). Kinsey is a revived brand coming from New Liberty Distillery in Philadelphia, PA. The distillery pays homage to the original foundation along the ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B New Riff’s inaugural Backsetter release consists of two new spins on their staple whiskeys, their bonded bourbon and rye. That spin is the use of backset from the mash of an entirely separate, third whiskey, which was made with a mash of peated malted barley and rye. What makes all this so unorthodox is that ...