The 2025 edition of Old Forester Birthday Bourbon is delicious, and absolutely worth getting your hands on once it’s available. The problem, unfortunately, is that this whiskey won’t be available at all in stores. Birthday Bourbon isn’t available in stores anymore — it has been relegated to a “sweepstakes,” which ran from August 15-21. I’m not sure why this is preferable to the equally disappointing scramble to find one in local stores — many of the Birthday Bourbons you’ll see people drinking were acquired on the secondary market for the last decade — but with a national rollout, it was at least possible to enjoy the thrill of the hunt.
And this is a whiskey that’s consistently worth searching for. One of the coolest things about Birthday Bourbon is that we get so many details about the batch, which is traditionally comprised of barrels from a single day’s production, and a production where something unusual happened. Previous batches have had all sorts of unique quirks — one batch’s fermentation was extra long because of a power outage caused by a squirrel.
The 2025 was bottled at 12 years of age. The batch came from 210 barrels from Warehouse K, from floors 1 and 5. This whiskey was all distilled on April 5, 2013, and unlike almost every Old Forester you’ve ever tasted, this one was not made by sour mashing. Sour mash bourbons are created when a portion of the last batch’s mash is held over and added to the next batch. This “setback” helps to ensure consistency among batches. When you start from scratch, however, it’s referred to as a sweet mash.
Though it’s admittedly a bit sweeter than other bottles, the Old Forester Birthday Bourbon 2025 is a classic Old Forester whiskey — deep woody spices, hints of dark chocolate, and a lingering cherry note that’s in and out through the finish. Great Old Forester bottles have this sort of cherry cough drop and cough drop menthol note — a product of the minty character of rye grain and, well, alcohol. That might not sound pleasant on its own, but as a background flavor, it adds this sort of cooling, syrupy texture that can counterbalance the bourbon’s spice-forward profile.
Yes, the proof point for 2025 leaves something to be desired. Birthday Bourbon does typically average a bit higher, but it has never been a cask strength release at heart. A few have taken ice or a dash of water well, but I wouldn’t get either within spilling distance of a glass of this year’s release. That’s not a negative, though. The last few years have seen a major swing toward high proof, cask strength bourbons, and the coining of the “HAZMAT” moniker for bottles hitting 130, 140, 150, and even 160 proof. I’ve had plenty of great Old Forester whiskeys with high proofs — this bottle is proof that proof doesn’t need to be high for the bourbon to be great.
In fact, the only negative thing worth saying about this bourbon is that you’ll never have the chance to walk into a store and find it — even at an absurd price hike. If you did manage to get in on the sweepstakes, you’ll likely be paying the $200 MSRP. But most of us will be looking at twice that price. Is it worth that? Absolutely, at least this year. But let’s hope that when we next celebrate the birthday of Brown-Forman founder George Garvin Brown, there’s a higher proof point, and a national rollout.
G. Clay Whittaker is a Maxim contributor covering lifestyle, whiskey, cannabis and travel. His work has also appeared in Bon Appetit, Men’s Journal, Cigar Aficionado, Playboy and Esquire. Subscribe to his newsletter Drinks & Stuff for whiskey reviews and trends, perspectives on drinks, and stuff.