Toffee | Oak | Grilled peach | Brown sugar

Bundt cake | Cinnamon | Vanilla coffee creamer | Toasted cinnamon

Rye spice | Barrel char | Dark brown sugar | Tobacco leaf | Light astringency

Hard Truth American Odd Bourbon marks the fourth and final release in a collaboration between Hard Truth Distilling and Mellencamp Whiskey Company. The series featured four unique expressions celebrating Indiana and its growing distilling industry. Like the previous three releases, the grains used for American Odd were grown in Indiana, and the bottle label features art created by singer-songwriter Jon Mellencamp. This final release in the series is also the first to take the name of a Mellencamp painting – American Odd.

The final release in the series was also planned to be bottled in bond, and the bourbon was aged in a “prescriptive char and toast combination” designed exclusively by the Independent Stave Co. for Hard Truth’s sweet mash bourbons. The mashbill features 82% Indiana-grown corn from Doug Miller, a local fifth-generation Indiana farmer 60 miles from the distillery, and 18% rye grown in southwestern Indiana by farmer Dr. Duane Kuhlenschmidt. Notably, the company states that this is their first bottled in bond sweet mash bourbon.

Despite the bourbon’s name, its flavor profile is anything but “odd.” In a relatively straightforward delivery of bundt cake, toasted cinnamon, vanilla coffee creamer on the palate, rye spice, barrel char, dark brown sugar, and tobacco leaf on the finish, very little about it is unusual. What it is, though, is a solid Indiana-made bourbon that isn’t trying to be flashy and lets the bourbon speak for itself. It’s well-balanced and overall very well-rounded in terms of flavors and delivery. In a way, it almost seems like it’s trying to prove how far craft Indiana distilleries have come, and looking at it in that sense, it succeeds.