Old Forester Birthday Bourbon Returns For a 25th Year, With a Twist

On September 2, 2002, Old Forester celebrated the 156^th birthday of founder George Garvin Brown with a bourbon, aptly named Birthday Bourbon. Bottled with a sticker stating its distillation year—1989—the whiskey was, according to the distillery, the first vintage-dated bourbon in American whiskey history. Every summer since, Old Forester has released a new Birthday Bourbon; generally, they’re 12 years old, though from 2019 to 2022, a few slipped to 11 or 10 years old. Now, the 2025 edition of Birthday Bourbon is upon us, and it features a conspicuous deviation from years past.

The 25^th Birthday Bourbon is a 12 year old whiskey blended from 210 barrels, all distilled on April 5, 2013, and aged in Old Forester’s Warehouse K on floors 1 and 5. The barrels were selected by master distiller emeritus Chris Morris and assistant master distiller Caleb Trigo. While Birthday Bourbons have, up until now, all been made using the sour mash production technique, this year’s edition was crafted without the use of backset during fermentation. Backset is an acidic liquid strained from the mash after distillation; it’s typically added back to the mash tub or fermenter as a means of protecting against bacterial contamination during subsequent fermentation, and it helps distillers achieve consistency of flavor. Given that Old Forester relied on yeast alone, and no backset, during fermentation—which proponents say lends distillers more creative control over a whiskey, and yields softer flavors—the whiskey now stands as the very first sweet mash iteration of Birthday Bourbon.

While we have yet to taste the forthcoming Birthday Bourbon, the distillery credits the sweet mash production with a silky, sweet flavor profile, rife with notes of honeycomb, vanilla, clove spice, citrus, and tropical fruits. It’s bottled at quite a low proof, as far as Birthday Bourbons go, coming in at just 46% ABV—for comparison, last year’s release was a more robust 53.5%, and the 2023 release was bottled at 48%.

Until three years ago, Old Forester was a distillery-exclusive release. But in 2022, the distillery announced availability through a sweepstakes whereby winners could purchase a bottle, albeit at the distillery on Louisville’s Whiskey Row. This year’s runs from today, August 18, through August 21, 2025. Winners will be notified by email on September 2—if you’re among this year’s lucky cohort of Birthday Bourbon winners, the bottle’s price tag is $200, and you’ll have to make the trip to Old Forester anytime between September 4 and December 20 to pick it up.