Rating: 16/23 Why do I need bitters aged in whiskey barrels for my whiskey cocktails? Maybe these will answer the question. Hmm, these are oddly thin. I would have thought that there would be more flavor with the whiskey barrel aging than without it. I wonder whether the bitters being so pungeant on their own makes aging water them down because whiskey doesn't just depends on the distillate and barrel to impart flavor, resulting in a lot of water making its way into this when aging in a whiskey barrel. Whatever the reason, more of these bitters (by volume) are required than when using other bitters. There is some nice wood with vanilla here, but I just can't get past how watery these taste. That said, regular Peychaud's bitters are already a lit milder than Angostura, so part of what I'm struggling with is that inherent Peychaud's mildness. I really don't know why Peychaud's waters their bitters down so much. The gap between this and regular Peychaud's is less than the gap between regular Peychaud's and Angostura by a substantial margin. I still don't see any benefit from this product if I'm making a whiskey cocktail, but maybe it would be good for a cocktail made with gin or something. OK, so on its own with something like Compass Box Artist's Blend, this has a lot of potential. It's very specific in what it works with though. It seems to do best with spirits that are already obviously aged in bourbon barrels (surprisingly), but it's more like an enhancement to the spirit than a component of a cocktail. Well, a traditional cocktail at least. I don't know what to do here. What I really think this needs to be paired with is something fairly that is finished in bourbon barrels and needs a bit more of that sweetness. Now that I've realized that, my opinion of the potential this has has increased tremendously. The real question is to what extent this provides benefits that just mixing a bourbon in doesn't. My guess is that the barrel is more concentrated in here with less of the bourbon coming through, so it is more effective in simulating additional barrel aging. After all, one of the biggest revelations I had while blending at home was that letting wood chips dry with the liquid in them produces a very different (and generally better) effect than putting the liquid and wood chips into the spirit being "aged" separately. I think what has happened here is that these bitters were aged in dried bourbon barrels (or possibly just aged with chips from dry barrels). I think there's a bit of an orange note in here as well, which helps. Having gone through that now, I get why this exists and can see myself keeping a space for it on my shelf. In fact, it could quickly become a favorite if it can spruse up slightly lackluster malt whiskey with an consistency. In general, I'd put Angustura well ahead of this and regular Peychaud's a bit ahead as well. This one just seems harder to find a drink it works well in than Peychaud's and substantially harder than Angostura, which pretty much always works. I'm therefore not going higher than a 17 on this, but I can't imagine going below a 14. I think that the real calling for this might be in cocktails that are just a spirit and several (not just a couple) drops of this. Then, remind yourself that you are drinking a cocktail, so it shouldn't be as proofy as the base spirit and should have some bitters flavor. Some things I found this went well with: Compass Box Artist's Blend, Ford's Gin, Plantation 3 Star, Knappogue Castle 12. I also found a lot of things that this didn't go well with though. I think that the safest bets are mellow spirits that want more bourbon barrel character. Irish whiskey, for example, seems like a generally good pairing, especially because it frequently has some alcohol flavor it is trying to hide. Spirits that already had lots of age in wood didn't do too well with this and if they'd already acquired that tannic bitterness then they were particularly ill-suited. I had a moment when I thought that this couldn't be lower than a 16 and later on another moment when I thought that a 16 was pushing it. So I guess this is a 16. Oh, one last note: this is surprisingly red. Just a thing to keep in mind since it can mess with the color of your cocktail. Regular Peychaud's is red, but this is surprisingly redder.