Whiskey seems to have never-ending possibilities in flavor profiles and ways to enjoy it. But Ohio’s Brain Brew Custom Whiskey puts possibilities in the hands (or brains) of the consumer with a new innovation for personalized bourbon blending and tasting. Writer Betsa Marsh tells us how it works. 

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Hungry for more? Read Betsa’s article about Swing House in Ohio.

Sure, good friends might play a round of 20 Questions over a few fingers of bourbon. But wait — what? I need to answer 13 questions before I take my first sip?

Yes, if you want to experience a new whiskey that’s been personalized down to your last taste bud.

Just open an app, take a quiz about your preferences, and soon you’ll have a personalized QR code to show your mixologist. Of more than 100,000 possibilities, this glass is your exclusive bourbon blend.

Each distinctive recipe pours from the Dexter 1862 Custom Bourbon Blending Machine, an innovation from Brain Brew Custom Whiskey in Newtown, outside Cincinnati.

The Dexter 1862 Custom Bourbon Machine creates a personal bourbon in seconds. Photo courtesy Brain Brew Custom Whiskey.

Brain Brew is a sister company to Eureka! Ranch, an innovation think tank and training company. The Dexter 1862 machine combines any of the company’s Woodcraft finished bourbons, such as 200-year-old oak, maple and cherry.

Brain Brew’s unique blending machine

Each glass is a liquid portrait of its creator. Do you like vanilla, dark spice, oakiness in your whiskey? Will your bourbon be neat or in a cocktail? The AI app then synthesizes your choices into a custom pour.

To Brain Brew co-founder and CEO Doug Hall, “It’s like an 1800s version of Coke Freestyle.”

The Dexter 1862 Custom Bourbon Machine returns bourbon to its roots by creating personal bourbon in seconds. Photo courtesy Brain Brew Custom Whiskey.

The Dexter name comes from Cincinnati’s deep whiskey heritage: the region was the center of 85 percent of American whiskey business in the 1800s, Hall said. Farmers distilled their grains and brought the spirits to town, where bourbon blenders would mix from different barrels to their customers’ tastes. Edmund Dexter was one of the foremost bourbon blenders, so renowned that Charles Dickens and the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, visited him in Cincinnati.

But as with all things Eureka! Ranch, there has to be novelty. “Blending was the way of the 1800s,” Hall said. “Then in the 1900s, it was Pop Tarts and Tang, prepared everything. In the 2000s, these Millennials want custom, local, craft.”

And fun. The Dexter 1862 is, Hall declared with a chortle, “a Build-a-Bear experience for adults.”

For more information visit the Brain Brew Whiskey website, here.