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I recently had the distinct pleasure to assist a friend of mine in finishing off a bottle of George T Stagg. The whiskey was delicious as usual (I believe it was bottled in the Fall of 2004) but what surprised us was the remnants that we found in the bottom of our tasting glasses.

There was a fine black precipitate that we could only guess was a bit of the char from the barrel. We then took an un-opened bottle of Stagg, peered through the whiskey, and sure enough, there seemed to be some extra "goodness" lurking on the bottom.

Now I've heard that George T Stagg is un-filtered but I assumed that there was some small form of "screening" that was done before bottling.

Has anyone else run into this substance at the bottom of your Stagg bottles and do you think it should be consumed with great relish (which I must admit that we did) or should it be avoided like the plague?

Art L wrote:Has anyone else run into this substance at the bottom of your Stagg bottles and do you think it should be consumed with great relish (which I must admit that we did) or should it be avoided like the plague?

Art,

I've never noticed this before, but it could be after drinking a bunch of GTS that I may not have had the capacity TO see it.

So tell us, since you consumed the "droppings" with relish, how was it? How did you feel afterwards? Any superb insights after ingesting? Or any noted ill effects (hopefully none)?

Alas, I'm a newbie to the whiskey world and my palate is unfortunately underdeveloped.
My friends are helping me along but I am having a tough time describing the flavors of what I'm drinking.
So all I can say is that the Stagg was yummy (char and all) and I have suffered no ill effects (that I know of!)
Perhaps my friend will have more to offer. I'll ask him and report back with any new findings.

I haven't personally emptied any bottles, but a few guys I know are saying that they had the same thing in their bottles.

Art L wrote:...Now I've heard that George T Stagg is un-filtered but I assumed that there was some small form of "screening" that was done before bottling.

Has anyone else run into this substance at the bottom of your Stagg bottles and do you think it should be consumed with great relish (which I must admit that we did) or should it be avoided like the plague?

Hi Art!
You're right... that's residual charcoal from the barrel.
The bourbon IS screened when it's dumped from the barrel; after all there are whole chunks of char floating around in there; the fine residue is what passes through the screening.
You're also correct that it won't hurt you. In fact, if a restaurant served you a steak without char you'd probably never go there again .
There is always discussion about what degree of loss filtration may cause, but nearly any whiskey enthusiast will agree that cold-filtering removes at least SOME flavor elements; you can rest assured that a bottle containing residual black char powder has not lost any of its flavor to filtering.

BTW - I think relish (no matter how great) might be one of the few things that DOESN'T go well with bourbon. Scotch, perhaps...

OK, that was my bottle of Stagg that Art L helped finish off. He's a generous guy like that I don't remember seeing this sediment in previous bottles, so perhaps it was a Spring 2005 bottle. I can see why beverages intended for the masses are chill filtered; it looked like black sand on a Hawaiian beach on the bottom of the last few glasses. Of course a true enthusiast reacts with "Hey! Look at that sediment, let's drink it!"

It did taste a little sweeter, but that might have been purely psychological. It definitely afffected mouth feel. It was obviously a lot thicker and richer, and it coated your teeth with a fine grittyness.

You wouldn't want every glass to be like that but it was an interesting finish to the bottle and not at all offensive.

The Spring 2005 bottles seem to have a considerable amount of sediment (at least the non Kentucky bottles have).

I too had the sediment in the last bottle I finished off. I took great pride in that last sip, delicious 8)

You will often find pieces of char in Booker's as well as Stagg. The bourbon is unfiltered with only the basic screen in the dump trough taking out the large pieces of char before the bourbon is put into the bottle. What is fun is to put a glass in the flow from the barrel before it touches any filtering. Then you might end up with a thumbnail size piece of char in your drink of bourbon.

One hundred and fifty years ago char in your bourbon was common, since most of it was sold by the barrel and served from the barrel into a bar decanter to the bar patron.

Mike Veach

I am happy to report that the Fall bottlings from the Buffalo Trace distillery have finally arrived at my neighborhood liquor stores way up here in New England, hooray!

I immediately purchased a bottle of each: George T Stagg, William Larue Weller, and the Sazerac Rye (a personal favorite of mine).

One of the first things I looked for was there any char hanging around in those bottles. Sure enough, in both of the non-filtered products (the Stagg and Larue) there appears to be "that something extra" on the bottom of the bottle. I look forward to giving the char a closer examination with my palate in the not too distant future.

I read this last night, had to check it myself (with my own Fall 2005 vintage), and register myself. It's true. It pretty dark in there, but when I tilted the bottle into the light, a delicate swirl of Stagg droppings(Angel droppings?) can be seen. That'd be the 'un-filtered' part, I guess.

Since we're talking about finishing bottles of Stagg, I just had the coolest thing happen...
Mike V. and I were discussing the oxidation that takes place when your bottle is more air than Bourbon. This convinced me to finish off a few bottles that have been hiding in my closet for ahhhwile. Two of my victims were Staggs. One was the 129 proof (not sure what year that was) and yes, there was a tiny bit of char in the bottom. The other was the 2002.
Fast-forward a few days, and a girlfriend is at my house. She's getting ready to move to California, and was asking what Bourbon to take to her new neighbors. She sees the two empty bottles on my counter (they're so pretty, don't ya just hate to throw them away?) and asked if she might have one for her neighbor. She picked up the empty 2002 bottle, popped the cork and took a sniff. She immediately said, "OMG, what was in this?...chocolate??" I took the bottle and she was exactly right! I have smelled chocolate that didn't smell as 'chocolatie'. I didn't noticed this in the nose of the actual Bourbon...only after the fact in the empty bottle.
I'm not sure why the aroma changed so distinctly, and I'm not sure why this amazes me so...y'all think maybe I should get out more?

I had a couple of healthy pours of GTS '05 (not sure if it was Spring or Fall) while in KY last year. I actually finished off one of the bottles at the restaurant and lo and behold....my pour had the remains of the char in the bottom of the bottle. To me, it tasted slightly different than the other pours I had enjoyed sans char. I currently have the '05 Spring and Fall and Fall '06 releases. I haven't looked at them recently but now I'm compelled to pull them out and inspect which bottle has char present.