First round is out of the barrel after 4 weeks, it's delicious, dangerous in that I could easily drink a few of them every night, especially since it only entails pouting over ice
Second round is in. This is where I think things will start getting interesting. I filled it with the same proportions, but instead of bourbon I used High West Double Rye. I'm leaving that in for 8 weeks, then going to drain and refill with the same Elijah Craig mix I used in the first run. I'm hoping that the wood will retain a bunch of the rye goodness and pass that long to the bourbon on the final run, that one will probably need to rest for a while in there, but I'm really looking forward to playing around with it.
I haven't done a comparison between the barrel aged and non-ba old fashioned yet, I only kept about 4 ounces of the control off to the side but I'll do that at some point and report back. For now I'm just enjoying the results
Ed - BA manhattan's are one of my favorite drinks, I almost went with them here but wanted to change it up since i've been swaying towards old fashioned lately. Hope you get a chance to try it out as well