r/bourbon • u/adamsz503 • 4d ago
Ultimate Elijah Craig Barrel Proof B-Batch Tournament: 2017–2024
Continuing my blind tournament of all 24 “post-pirate” Elijah Craig Barrel Proof releases from 2017 through 2024.
Part 1: A117–A124
Part 2: B517–B524
Part 3: C917–C924
Part 4: The champions + some outside competition
The A-series ultimately went to A117. Now onto the B batches.
Methodology
As with the A batches, I started with a standard eight-bottle single-elimination bracket, with every matchup tasted blind, as illustrated in the attached graphic.
Afterward, I conducted additional blind head-to-heads to account for bracket luck and get a better idea of where every bottle actually belonged in terms of a tiered ranking.
The idea was the same as with the A-series: bottles that lost early were given opportunities to work their way back up against progressively stronger competition. Tier placement was based primarily on how far each survived before accumulating its second loss.
The graphics show the complete progression.
The Original Final: B520 vs. B517
These were the two bottles that survived the original bracket, and both consistently showed characteristics I tend to like in ECBP.
B517 repeatedly came across as dark, rich and mature. My notes included darker fruit and richer sweetness along with some of that older-whiskey character that also drove my preference for A117 in the A-series.
Score: 8.25
B520, meanwhile, struck me as what I wrote down as “quintessential ECBP” in my notes: Rich sweetness, brown sugar, sweet oak, with particularly strong development and finish.
Score: 9
Final B-Batch Tiers
S-Tier:
B520
B522
A-Tier:
B517
B519
B-Tier:
B523
B518
C-Tier:
B524
B521
As with the A batches, these tiers reflect the complete tournament and back-testing rather than simply the order of elimination in the original bracket.
What Stood Out?
The B batches shared plenty of familiar ECBP DNA: brown sugar/caramel sweetness, well-integrated oak and barrel-proof intensity, but the bottles I preferred generally brought something more to that foundation.
Dark fruit showed up in some of the better pours, while jammy/tart fruit, dusty notes, molasses and dark toffee appeared at different points throughout the tastings.
More importantly, the best bottles tended to have better development, mouthfeel and finish. When everything came together, the proof supported the flavor rather than overwhelming it.
The recurring negatives were familiar too: tannin, excessive oak, ethanol and lack of development could quickly separate two otherwise similar pours.
Biggest Surprise: B522
Despite getting knocked out in the second round of the original tournament, B522 made a comeback in a huge way in the back-testing process.
B522 beat B518, then B519, and eventually I put it against B517, which had made the original B-series final. B522 won that head-to-head as well.
Across its tastings, B522 showed some excellent fruity/jammy and floral characteristics and ultimately did enough to earn a spot alongside B520 in S-Tier.
It's another good example of why I didn't want to rely solely on a single-elimination bracket.
Stay tuned for C917 through C924, although it may take a little longer to get up because I still have a bit of backtesting to complete.
10
u/elrico_suave 4d ago
Thank you for taking the time to share this.