Ranger Creek .36 Texas Bourbon Goes Full Time

Texas-based Ranger Creek Brewing & Distilling has, for some time now, been building up its whiskey program towards the goal of having a standard, year round offering. Such things can take patience to get right, and now, after six years, they think they have it with the release of their Ranger Creek .36 Texas Bourbon.

Now, to be clear, the new Ranger Creek .36 Texas Bourbon is not, in fact, incredibly new. It has been on the market for a bit now in the form of a limited edition release from last year. It also follows previous variants which were found in their Small Caliber Series and Single Barrel lines, including a white whiskey. Confused by all of this? Here is a better way to understand it, as explained by the distillery:

.36 Small Caliber Series is a small batch bourbon aged in innovative small barrels and packaged in small 375 ml bottles. .36 Single Barrel is aged in one hand selected, large barrel and is packaged in traditional 750 ml bottles. This .36 Texas Bourbon is a small batch bourbon aged in traditional large barrels and packaged in 750 ml bottles…

Though each .36 bourbon uses the same recipe, the individualized barrel aging techniques make each one distinct. The .36 White is the “white dog” that goes into the barrel and allows consumers to experience the clear, white whiskey before any barrel aging. The .36 White is then put into either small barrels or large barrels for maturation. The small barrels produce fully mature bourbon in 9-18 months.

The distillery labels this whiskey as their .36 Small Caliber Bourbon and packages it in small, 375 ml bottles. The traditional, large barrels take 2-4 years to produce fully mature whiskey. The distillery labels this whiskey as their .36 Texas Straight Bourbon and packages it in traditional, large, 750 ml bottles. The different releases allow enthusiasts to try the .36 bourbons alongside each other to taste differences and similarities and, ultimately, to choose their favorite.

Thus the Ranger Creek .36 Texas Bourbon is the new mainstay that’s available in 750 ml bottles, aged a minimum of two years and priced around $55.

“We’ve been working on this bourbon for over 6 years, which means we’ve spent tons of money to make it and then just patiently waited for a really long time,” said Mark McDavid, co-founder of Ranger Creek, in a prepared statement. “There’s no other Texas bourbon out there that has won the kind of awards as our .36 that’s available at this kind of price, so we’re very excited to see what it will do.”