Black Steel Bourbon

Black Steel Bourbon

Demonstrating the power of the gaming audience, Guy Beahm (also known as gaming legend Dr DisRespect) launched a Kentucky straight small batch bourbon unleashing a frenzy of sales.

Last Thursday, Guy Beahm, the man behind gaming legend Dr DisRespect, announced the launch of Black Steel Bourbon, a premium Kentucky bourbon, created to bring together outstanding craft with a refreshingly untraditional spirit. Together with award winning and first female Master Distiller, they proved to the world what was missing in both the bourbon world and the gaming arena.

Upon launch, they cited the belief that bourbon was missing the mark with a younger and different audience than the bourbon category is used to and that there’s a need for a new vibrancy in the category. They were right. After Dr DisRespect introduced the brand on social, a frenzy of traffic crashed the Black Steel Spirits website and sold thousands of bottles in mere minutes.

In just 45 minutes from launch, all stock from their website, ReserveBar and Minibar Delivery were completely sold through. Requests for bottles remained so strong through the evening that Guy Beahm announced in a gaming stream last Friday that he was releasing to fans his personal stash of bottles that he had intended to reserve for gifts. Those then, too, sold out in minutes.

Black Steel is the first iteration of a limited release bourbon, created with a new generation of whiskey drinkers in mind – a drinker who desires traditional premium craft, but also has an appetite for intrigue and the unexpected. Founder Guy Beahm, known for his unapologetic and high-intensity gaming, is himself a bourbon fanatic and connoisseur – giving him a unique commonality and understanding of his younger, gaming, bourbon-loving audience.

“There’s been a resurgence of whiskey drinkers in the last 5 years and a growing number, myself included, that aren’t particularly represented by what’s out there. They understand and demand top quality, but they also don’t need to be fed sepia-tinted wheat field photography to see that quality. That’s been done – and being done. But bourbon shouldn’t be that boring – it’s bourbon.” said Beahm.

While fans are clearly enthused for the brand, the bourbon itself is receiving accolades from enthusiasts across the country. The high-quality bourbon is the result of a partnership between Beahm, award winning Master Distiller Marianne Eaves, and H+S Labs. Marianne has been honored by Forbes Magazine and was included in their 2015 Food & Drink 30 Under 30 list, as well as recognized by Wine Enthusiast Magazine as one of America’s Top 40 Under 40 Tastemakers. In keeping with the bold spirit of the brand, Marianne also brings her own history-making style to the table. As the first female Master Distiller of bourbon since Prohibition, she knows a thing or two about pushing boundaries.

Together, this unwieldy team created this delectable limited release bourbon that speaks for itself. Black Steel Bourbon delivers a smooth yet wildly distinctive flavor profile enveloped with notes of sweet grain, charred wood, green apple, vanilla bean, and citrus peel. Beahm and the H+S Labs team imbued an equally unique energy into the design. The bottle, with its striking turquoise color and subtle subversive nods found in the imagery and language, is designed to start pushing the norm of the traditional bourbon ambiance on shelves.

Jon Alagem, co-founder of H+S Labs explains, “Black Steel is the culmination of a devout love for the history and craft of bourbon but done in our own way. It’s so incredibly unique and excitingly different in its stance than what we’re traditionally used to. The epic dream of a bourbon designed by Guy Beahm and Marianne Eaves is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before, and maybe will ever see. Crack it open, you’ll see why.”

The team is currently working on the next phase of Black Steel but are encouraging email signups on the Black Steel Spirits website to receive updates on the brand’s future plans. The game has changed. We invite you to taste what winning feels like.

About the Founder Guy Beahm
Guy Beahm is the man behind Dr DisRespect, one of gaming’s most recognizable and beloved personalities that regularly entertains an extremely impressive amount of concurrent viewers and 9.9 million total reach across platforms. He has been awarded “Streamer of the Year” twice by the Esports Awards and set the North American record for concurrent viewers on his debut to YouTube at over 500k in August 2020. Doc also has expanded beyond streaming with appearances alongside Jimmy Kimmel and Klay Thompson, a national best-selling book Violence. Speed. Momentum (Simon and Schuster), and more recently building a new type of AAA gaming studio titled “Midnight Society” in partnership with BoomTV (esports event organization platform) with the goal of making the most groundbreaking game in history.

Eaves has been recognized in Whiskey Advocate Magazine as “the Next Generation” for the bourbon industry and has been honored by Forbes and included in the 2015 Food & Drink 30 under 30 list. As she stepped into the role of Master Distiller herself, taking on the herculean restoration project of Castle & Key Distillery, she was recognized by Wine Enthusiast Magazine as one of America’s Top 40 Under 40 Tastemakers.