New Riff Distilling, founded in 2014 on the Newport riverfront just across the Ohio from Cincinnati, was built on a promise: everything bottled would be their own, distilled on site, aged on site, and released only when ready. Backsetter is the distillery's most mischievous experiment. The name comes from an old Kentucky term for the sour mash itself — the spent mash from a previous run that is added back into the next one to manage pH and flavour.
For Backsetter Bourbon, New Riff's team took things a step further. The backset used to sour the mash came from a peated-malt run, infusing every successive batch with a subtle breath of smoke. It is not a peated bourbon in the Islay sense — the peat is carried in by the sour mash, not by the grain bill itself — and the result is a far more delicate smokiness than that suggests, weaving through the classic high-rye New Riff profile rather than dominating it.
Bottled in Bond, non-chill filtered, and matured in full-sized new charred oak barrels in the distillery's brick rickhouses, Backsetter is both a technical curiosity and a genuinely delicious bourbon. The high-rye mash gives pepper and orchard fruit, the smoke adds an earthy counterpoint, and the full proof keeps everything honest. It remains one of the more original American whiskies released in the last decade.
