Which Weller CYPB Year Do I Have

Finding out which Weller CYPB release you have is simple. We will explain a little further into the article. First, a little history about this bourbon.

Weller CYPB (Craft Your Perfect Bourbon) was an extremely successful experiment that Buffalo Trace created when they were looking to add another brand to the Weller line of products. Over 100,000 people participated in the experiment, offering their ideas on what a perfect bourbon would be, including mash bill, age, and storage area in the rickhouse. It’s an interesting visual process that you can still check out here. The final result was a wheated bourbon aged around 8 years on the highest floors of the rickhouse and bottled between 90 – 99 proof. The project started in 2015 and the first release was in 2018 (how they crammed 8 years into 2015 – 2018 is an unknown mystery!)

Now it has become an annual release that comes out in May at 95 proof and a suggested MSRP of $49.99, but it is difficult to find at that price because the secondary market can be well over $500

How to Tell Which Release You Have

Do you know which release of Weller CYPB you have? It took a while for me to find the answer to this question. If you examine the label, there is no indication of the release year, no batch number or name, no way to know which year you have.

But, if you examine the bottom edge of the bottle there is a Buffalo Trace laser code etched into the bottle. In this image the code is L22138 011347B.

How to Read a Buffalo Trace Laser Code

In the example above the laser code is: L22138 011347B
L (Lot) 22 (year) 138 (day of the year) 01 (plant #) 1347 (military time of bottling) B (bottling line letter).

So, this CYPB was released from the Lot (L) that was bottled at 1:47 pm on May 18, 2022 on bottling line “B”.

Correction

Note: the numbers on the bottom of the bottle simply indicate the glass bottle information, as in the actual glass bottle (thanks Jeff for the info!). I previously said that this indicated that the release year, and that therefor this CYPB was from 2019. That information was incorrect. It is the laser codes that accurately identify each batch, not the embossed number on the bottom of the bottle.