On the back of some American whiskey bottles, and on most distillery websites, you will find three or four numbers that add up to one hundred. Seventy-five, thirteen, twelve. Sixty, thirty-five, five. Those numbers are the mash bill — the proportion of each grain in the recipe — and they tell you more about how the whiskey will taste than almost anything else on the label. This piece explains how to read one and what the numbers predict, with the recipes of the major brands as a reference.
Our grain and mash bills guide covers the chemistry of what each grain contributes; this is the practical, brand-by-brand version.
What a mash bill is
Whiskey begins with grain cooked in water to release its starch, then converted to sugar by enzymes and fermented by yeast. The “mash” is that grain-and-water mixture, and the “bill” is the list of ingredients, expressed as percentages by weight. A mash bill of 75/13/12 means 75 per cent corn, 13 per cent rye and 12 per cent malted barley. The order is conventionally corn, then the flavouring grain, then malt. The malting and mashing guide explains the process step by step.
American whiskey law fixes the minimum for the dominant grain: 51 per cent corn for bourbon, 51 per cent rye for rye whiskey, 51 per cent wheat for wheat whiskey, 51 per cent malted barley for malt whiskey. Beyond that, the distiller is free.
The three roles
Nearly every American mash bill has three components doing three jobs.
The base grain supplies most of the fermentable sugar and the basic character. In bourbon it is corn, which produces a sweet, round, full-bodied spirit. In rye whiskey it is rye.
The flavouring grain is the second-largest component and the one that most shapes the whiskey’s personality. In bourbon it is almost always rye or wheat. Rye brings pepper, mint, dill and a dry spiciness; wheat brings softness, bread and a gentle sweetness. The choice between them is the biggest fork in bourbon flavour, and the bourbon and wheated bourbon style pages follow the two paths.
Malted barley is there for its enzymes, which convert the starches in the other grains to fermentable sugar. Most distilleries use between 5 and 15 per cent, and at those levels it contributes little flavour beyond a faint cereal nuttiness. A few use more, and a few use commercial enzymes instead and skip it.
Reading the numbers
Three quick rules of thumb:
Rye below 10 per cent gives a soft, sweet, corn-forward bourbon. The rye is almost a seasoning.
Rye between 10 and 20 per cent is the Kentucky standard: a balance of sweetness and spice.
Rye above 20 per cent is “high rye” bourbon: assertive, peppery, drier, often with a minty lift. Above 35 per cent it begins to taste like a rye whiskey with extra corn.
Wheat in place of rye at 15–20 per cent gives a wheated bourbon: soft, rounded, with the barrel doing most of the talking.
For rye whiskey, the rule is simpler: at 51 per cent it tastes like spicy bourbon; at 95 per cent it tastes like rye and nothing else.
The published mash bills
Not every distillery discloses its recipe, and some of the numbers below are reported rather than confirmed. They are nevertheless the best available map.
Low rye (under 10 per cent)
- Jack Daniel’s: 80 corn / 8 rye / 12 malt
- Buffalo Trace Mash Bill #1 (Buffalo Trace, Eagle Rare, Stagg): under 10 per cent rye, exact figures undisclosed
Standard rye (10–20 per cent)
- Jim Beam (also Knob Creek, Booker’s): 77 / 13 / 10
- Wild Turkey: 75 / 13 / 12
- Heaven Hill (Evan Williams, Elijah Craig): 78 / 10 / 12
- Old Forester and Woodford Reserve: 72 / 18 / 10
- Four Roses “E” recipe: 75 / 20 / 5
- Buffalo Trace Mash Bill #2 (Blanton’s, Elmer T. Lee): 12–15 per cent rye, undisclosed
High rye (over 20 per cent)
- Bulleit: 68 / 28 / 4
- Old Grand-Dad and Basil Hayden’s: 63 / 27 / 10
- Four Roses “B” recipe: 60 / 35 / 5
Wheated
- Maker’s Mark: 70 corn / 16 wheat / 14 malt
- Larceny and Old Fitzgerald (Heaven Hill): 68 / 20 wheat / 12
- Weller and Pappy Van Winkle (Buffalo Trace): wheated, figures undisclosed
Rye whiskey
- MGP / Ross & Squibb (Bulleit Rye, Dickel Rye, many others): 95 rye / 5 malt
- Rittenhouse and Pikesville (Heaven Hill): 51 rye / 37 corn / 12 malt
- Wild Turkey Rye: reported 52 / 37 / 12
- Old Overholt (Beam): reported 51 rye-plus
The Four Roses page covers the only major distillery that combines two mash bills with five yeasts; the MGP page covers the Indiana plant whose 95/5 rye is behind so many labels.
What the mash bill doesn’t tell you
A great deal. Two distilleries with identical mash bills can make quite different whiskeys, because the mash bill is only the first variable. Yeast strain drives the fruity and floral esters — Four Roses demonstrates this by running the same mash with five yeasts and getting five whiskeys. Distillation proof, barrel entry proof, the char level of the barrel, the warehouse and its climate, and the age all push the spirit around. Old Forester and Woodford Reserve share a recipe and taste distinctly different because Woodford adds pot-still spirit and uses different barrels.
So the mash bill predicts tendency, not result. A 35 per cent rye bourbon will be spicier than a 10 per cent one from the same distillery, reliably; a 35 per cent rye bourbon from one distillery versus a 20 per cent from another is a less certain comparison.
Four-grain and the outliers
A small number of distilleries break the three-component pattern. “Four-grain” bourbons use corn, rye, wheat and malt together — Woodford’s Four Wood and Four Grain, Wilderness Trail’s bottlings and a number of craft producers — aiming for both spice and softness. Some use malted rye or malted wheat rather than the raw grain, which changes the flavour contribution noticeably. A few, mostly in the craft sector, go to 100 per cent of a single grain: all-corn bourbons, all-rye ryes, all-malt American single malts. And the oldest American whiskeys were often two-grain affairs, corn and rye with no barley, relying on wild enzymes and long cooking. The three-grain bill is the Kentucky norm rather than a law of nature.
Why distilleries disclose — or don’t
Transparency has become a selling point. Newer distilleries publish their mash bills as proof that they made the whiskey themselves, and some larger ones have followed. Others treat the recipe as proprietary, often for no better reason than habit; Buffalo Trace’s refusal to confirm its two bourbon recipes has become a running joke among enthusiasts who have estimated them to within a point or two anyway. Sourced whiskey is a different case: a brand bottling MGP rye may publish 95/5 because it is MGP’s recipe and no secret, while a brand sourcing bourbon from an undisclosed distillery may decline to say because the mash bill would identify the source.
How to use this
When you find a bourbon you like, look up its mash bill. If it is high rye, try another high-rye bourbon from a different distillery; if it is wheated, try another wheater. You will quickly learn whether you are a rye person or a wheat person, which is the single most useful thing a bourbon drinker can know about themselves. The rye whiskey page is the next step if the spice appeals.
Where the mash bill is known, we list it in our reviews of American whiskey, because it is the quickest way to predict what a bottle will taste like.
