A business associate recently told me about this whiskey, and after I did him a favor, he decided to buy me a bottle.  Balcones has received positive reviews for the extraordinary quality and taste profile of their blue corn whiskey.  According to the labeling, Brimstone is smoked with Texas scrub oak, which makes it a smoked blue corn whiskey – to my knowledge a unique product.

Most New Yorkers (actually, a fair percentage of Americans) confuse grilling with barbecuing.  Grilling involves cooking on grates over flame heat – either direct or semi-direct.  Barbecuing involves cooking by exposure to hot wood smoke, and is therefore a much slower process.  Brimstone is very much the whiskey embodiment of “texas barbecue in a bottle.”  The gentleman who gave it to me told me that, lacking a better descriptor, he tells people that they taste like barbecue potato chips.  Honestly, that is like comparing a Rembrandt painting to a child’s finger painting.  No “b-b-q” potato chip can come remotely close to the oily, salty, smoky oak flavor that overlays the blue corn whiskey taste in this bottle. 

Personally, I do not barbecue.  I grill, but I tend to grill at the lower end of the temperature range of grilling, where one gets some smoke flavor.  I find Balcones Brimstone fascinating, and I will definitey be buying more once I finish this bottle.