How to Decode Four Roses Bourbon Recipes

There’s definitely some science going on at Four Roses.

And that’s not terribly unique – basically every major distillery dabbles in proprietary yeast strain development, mashbill tinkering and of course, a healthy dose of blending. But from our research, we’re not sure that anyone goes as far in depth as Four Roses does in developing their yeast strains. They’re not shy when it comes to talking about them, but rest assured that the strains sit under lock and key at their facility. While mashbills and distillation techniques are vitally important in the overall flavor profile, they are much more easily replicated. According to Britannica, there are over 8,000 yeast strains that have been identified (and over 2,000 species), which makes ‘cracking the code’ on the yeast much more difficult. For Four Roses, this means having a unique proprietary advantage over competitors – that cannot be easily replicated.

The basic anatomy of a Four Roses recipe

When you get a Four Roses Single Barrel and it says ‘OESV’ or ‘OBSK’ on the tag or label, that’s just referring to the recipe that was used for that particular bottle. Four Roses has a total of ten recipes (which we’ll get to in a bit). But here’s the gist of what those letters mean on each recipe:

So for each recipe, you can expect to see:

• 1 distillery designation
• 1 mashbill
• 1 designation (they’re all straight Bourbon)
• 1 yeast strain

So what about this ‘OESV’ bottle? What can we expect? Firstly, it’s produced at Four Roses Distillery (as all recipes are), which gives us the first letter of ‘O’ (they are all ‘O’). It’s the ‘E’ mashbill, which should be less rye-forward and therefore a tad less spicy and more on the sweet side. Every recipe (and therefore, bottle) has a designation of ‘S’, which simply means straight Bourbon. In this particular example, we have the yeast strain of ‘V’. That would indicate that this bottle is going to have a rather fruity profile with the yeast strain imparting delicate fruit notes.

We made you a recipe cheat sheet.

Go ahead, give it a whirl. Select the recipe you find on the bottle and we’ll do all the lifting for ya!

Choose a Four Roses recipe:

OBSVOBSKOBSOOBSQOBSFOESVOESKOESOOESQOESF

Want to know a bit more? Well of course you do, if you’re Bourbon Nerds like we are! Keep reading below to learn about the yeast strains and mashbills.

Let’s jump right into the yeast.

Figuratively, of course. Four Roses has 5 proprietary yeast strains, and speaking from experience, this is probably what makes the taste profile so different among their products. Each strain imparts different notes to each product, as shown below:

These flavor characteristics allow Four Roses to create bottles that can really be unique. Doing so allows different characteristics to mingle and create a particularly distinct flavor altogether. These strains, coupled with the mashbill for that recipe (which we’ll dive into next), is what makes the magic in each Four Roses bottling.

They leverage two mashbills.

In each of the recipes, you’re going to find either an ‘E’ or a ‘B’, and this letter stands for the mashbill that Four Roses puts in each recipe. Here’s what those are made up of:

The 75% corn in mashbill ‘E’ is what’s going to make things a bit sweeter in the bottles that utilize it. It’s likely you’ll get less of the sharper or spicier notes simply with the lack of rye – leaving a “smoother” profile overall, with less bite.

Mashbill ‘B’ is going to be a bit on the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s high rye, which means it’ll taste a lot more like…rye. This generally means that it’ll have a bit more spice characteristic in general; probably a bit peppery. This is good though, because it can really enhance some of the characteristics of the yeast strains, like in the ‘K’ strain. Additionally, it can enhance what would be a smoother and sweeter strain like ‘O’ or ‘V’ and impart some pepper spice, which would help give it that sweet/spicy balance.

You’re now a Four Roses recipe expert.

Go forth and shop in confidence now, fellow Bourbon Nerd. You know exactly what you’re getting in the Four Roses single barrel you see on store shelves. When you see ‘OESK’ or ‘OBSO’ you now know what you’re getting into! In truth, all of these recipes are really incredible and you cannot go wrong in getting any which one. So go forth, friends, and enjoy that bottle (responsibly). Cheers!