Breaking Bourbon Award Winning Single Barrel Club picks are selected by Breaking Bourbon, and whenever possible with the help of Patreon supporters. The bottles are made available to Patreon supporters first by pledge tier. If any bottles remain after all supporters have had an opportunity to purchase, they are made available to the public on a first come, first served basis. Each barrel is sponsored by a retailer partner, who sells the bottles directly to end purchasers.

Retailer Partner: Seelbach’s

Classification: Straight Bourbon

Company: OKI Spirits LLC

Distillery: MGP

Age: 5 Years

Proof: 111.5

Mashbill: 60% Corn, 36% Rye, 4% Malted Barley

Yield: 199

ReleaseDate: July 2022

For this pick, we partnered with Seelbach’s, which was founded by Blake Riber, also the creator of Bourbonr and the Bourbonr Facebook group. An online-only retailer with a twist, we interviewed Riber to discuss how he’s running his shop differently than everyone else. “Unlocking Craft Spirits” he calls it - seeking out up-and-coming craft distilleries and learning about their process and tasting through their products to find hidden gems.

The O.K.I. brand was started by New Riff Distilling as a sourced line with the intention of getting the distillery off the ground as whiskey stocks aged awaiting the day they would become ready to be bottled. O.K.I. stands for Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, or as originally stated on the bottles, distilled in Indiana, bottled in Kentucky, and loved in Ohio. The brand eventually went defunct as New Riff phased it out replacing it with their own stock and new label. In 2020, local entrepreneurs Jake Warm Chad Brizendine acquired and relaunched the brand, hoping to breathe new life into it.

As fate would have it, we first met Jake Warm on a barrel pick at New Riff Distilling in December, 2021 when we selected our Space-Man Riff barrel along with a barrel for Seelbach’s. We were always fans of the O.K.I. brand and remembered watching it start, grow, and then phase out as New Riff grew in their early days. It’s a time and brand new bourbon fans probably will not remember or have an association with, but for those of us who have been in the whiskey world for a while, it certainly elicits feelings of nostalgia.

For this pick, we’re excited to bring a honey barrel to the club. Since there are plenty of 36% rye MGP distilled barrels in the market, it’s clear after tasting a ton of them that some are much better than others. We turn a lot of them down when tasting barrels for the club, so when we find one we really like we get pretty excited about it. Surprisingly, the barrel we picked falls on the lower proof side at just over 111 proof, but it packs a ton of flavor. It’s robust and savory with Butterfinger candy bar leading the way on the nose (this ended up playing into our sticker idea coincidentally, though it was completely unplanned) along with tobacco, leather, oak, graham cracker, and gingerbread highlights.

For the sticker, we poised the concept to our Patreon/Single Barrel Club members (the two are one and the same), and immediately the play on O.K.I generated a Ned Flanders “Okilly Dokilly” parody that just stuck. We expect this barrel to go quickly.

Tasting Notes:

‍‍Nose: Butterfinger candy bar | Tobacco leaf | Charred oak | Dried fruit | Punchy

Palate: Graham cracker | Dry oak | Leather | Robust & savory with a thick mouthfeel

Finish: Baking spices | Gingerbread | Tobacco | Stone fruit | Long

Distillers, Producers, and Retailers: If you would like to be a part of this program and get your name in front of millions of bourbon enthusiasts, contact us.

‍Please note these bottles will not be sold by Breaking Bourbon, but will be sold by retailers we partner with in order to fulfill the orders and ship the bottles directly to Patreon supporters. Breaking Bourbon will receive no compensation from our partner retailers under these agreements (with the exception of a bottle from each barrel for editorial purposes). If you represent a retailer and ship to consumers and you’re interested in partnering just let us know!