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Bourbon Games Episode 2: Arkansas Sweeps Cornhole and Wins the Single Barrel Challenge
Bourbon Games Season 1 Episode 2 sends Team Arkansas and Team Florida to Muddy Banks Brewing Co. for cornhole before Jason Callori blind-judges the teams’ single-barrel selections at Barrel King.
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Last Updated on September 6, 2026 by Justin Jones
BOURBON GAMES · SEASON 1 · EPISODE 2
Arkansas sweeps cornhole and wins the single barrel challenge
Gary Penna and Justin Mills took both scored challenges in the second episode of Bourbon Games Season 1, published September 5, 2026. Arkansas won a surprise cornhole match at Muddy Banks Brewing Co. two games to none, then took the 30-minute single barrel challenge when guest judge Jason Callori, tasting blind, chose their selection over Florida’s. The episode closes with an unscored feedback tasting of both teams’ developing blend bases.
Episode 2 recap. Contains results from Episodes 1 and 2 only.
The stakes, restated at the top of Episode 2
The episode opens with the teams breaking for lunch after a morning of blending. Before the surprise challenge, the rules are repeated: every challenge earns points and cash for charity, points accumulate, and the team with the most points by Sunday afternoon wins the Bourbon Games.
Every dollar raised by both teams goes into a single pool. Half of that pool follows the winner of the final blend on Sunday. The other half is divided across the weekend’s individual challenges. Cornhole, skeet, the single barrel challenge and the blind tasting battle are all named as money-carrying competitions.
The episode does not state dollar amounts, a complete points schedule, or the overall standings after Episode 2. For the rules established at the start of the competition, including the 50-point maximum on the final blend, see ArkansasLiquor.com’s Episode 1 recap. Penna identified Wounded Warrior Project as the Arkansas team’s charity in April 2026 coverage.
Hangover cornhole at Muddy Banks Brewing Co.
The teams were taken to Muddy Banks Brewing Co. without knowing a challenge was waiting. A Florida competitor named the format on camera: hangover cornhole, played the day after the opening night. The match was best of three, with the rule that if a third game were needed each team could choose its own two-person lineup. Host Kaynon confirmed the result would count toward the overall competition score.
Game one: Florida leads twice, Arkansas closes
Florida opened with a five-point lead. Arkansas came back to tie, Florida edged ahead by one, and Justin Mills scored Arkansas’s final points to win the game. No score overlay for game one appears in the episode, so the final point total is not part of the record.
Game two: Arkansas 21, Florida 1
Arkansas won the opening frame. Florida scored a single point in the following frame and never scored again. Arkansas then ran 14 unanswered points and closed the game out at 21 to 1, taking the series two games to none. On-screen graphics show the score at 19 to 1 during the run and 21 to 1 at the finish.
21-17
Game one fina; Arkansas wins
21–1
Game two final; Arkansas
2–0
Games won; series to Arkansas
The 2–0 figure refers to games won, not points scored within a game.
“Cornhole is like an Arkansas tradition.”
Justin Mills, who added that any cookout at his house turns into an aggressive cornhole tournament.
“Maybe if we had done windsurfing or jet skiing, we would have got smoked.”
Gary Penna, who said he has played cornhole and shuffleboard since he was a teenager.
Challenge: pick the single barrel Jason Callori will love
Back at Barrel King, Kaynon introduced a 30-minute challenge. Each team had to walk the warehouse and choose one single barrel that guest judge Jason Callori, of The Mash and Drum, would prefer. Callori would taste both selections blind.
Callori set one restriction and one preference. The barrel had to be eight years old or younger, explicitly ruling out the 10, 12 and 13-year stock in the warehouse. As for what he wanted in the glass, he said he likes a long finish and wants it deep, rich and dark.
A note on the wording. Callori says “eight years or below is kind of like your minimum.” In context the rule he describes is a maximum age of eight years, since he had just excluded the older barrels. The word minimum appears to be a verbal slip and should not be repeated as the rule.
Kaynon clarified that the winning barrel would not be dumped. The selection existed solely for the challenge, though Callori noted the teams might find something worth using in their blends.
Arkansas leans on Mills’s history with the judge
Mills said he had competed in Callori’s blending challenges before and had worked out what the judge likes in a profile. Penna said Mills had competed in two Blendageddon events and finished in the top four, then deferred the pick to him outright. The episode’s wording does not establish whether the top-four finish applies to both events or one.
Penna is heard passing on a rye during the search. Mills said the team narrowed it to two barrels and chose the one with the longer finish. Penna told him he did not need to taste it: if Mills thought that was the one, it was the one.
Florida works the problem of another person’s palate
The Florida competitors talked through the difficulty of selecting for someone else. One framed it as the gap between liking a whiskey yourself and believing the judge will like it more. Another described single barrel selection as honing in on nuance, and a third raised palate fatigue and the difficulty of maintaining acuity across many samples.
Callori tastes glass A and glass B blind
Callori graded the two samples in tiers: nose, palate, then finish. He noted immediately that one team had poured him a larger sample and that the two whiskeys differed visibly in color. No numerical scores were given at any point.
Sample A · Florida
Nose. Something grapey and wine-like, with a dryness. Callori said he did not think it was a wheated bourbon but that it carried a grainy, wheaty funk.
Palate. Very fruit forward. Apple rind, pear, heavy cinnamon and spice, with a cinnamon line running through a note that teetered between grape and apple. Pleasant mouthfeel and a pie crust or pastry character. He said it tasted better than the nose had led him to expect.
Guesses. He suspected a wine finish while tasting and later said he had thought it was a rye whiskey. Both are sensory impressions, not confirmed production details.
Sample B · Arkansas
Nose. Visibly darker in the glass. Dark cherry, chocolate and oak char, with a pastry cream note and a hint of tangerine, citrus and clove. Callori preferred this nose.
Palate. Not what he expected. Savory and almost soy sauce-like, earthy, a little salty and briny, with the cherry returning underneath. Strong texture and carrying spice. He said it smells better than it tastes.
Guesses. The citrus and clove made him think of a higher rye content. This is not a verified mash bill.
The verdict: letter B, by a hair
Callori called both selections good single barrels and said both were missing something he wanted. He praised A’s uniqueness, fruit and spice, and said it would make a great blending component. He gave the win to B on better texture, a better finish and a distinctive character he thought drinkers would respond to, adding that a little more dark fruit would have made it exceptional. Arkansas was revealed as the team behind letter B.
The episode does not disclose the barrel numbers, ages, proofs, mash bills or source distilleries of either selection, and it does not state how many competition points or charity dollars the win carried.
Two blind tastings, two opposite lettering schemes
Episode 2 contains two separate blind tastings, and the letters are assigned independently in each. Mixing them up reverses the results.
Single barrel challenge
Arkansas is B. Florida is A. Arkansas wins.
Blend feedback tasting
Arkansas is A. Florida is B. No points awarded.
Arkansas dumps its base and does the volume math
Penna introduced the first barrel picked for the Arkansas blend as an MGP straight bourbon whiskey, describing it as just over eight years old and then correcting himself to almost nine. Mills dumped the barrel. In a later exchange Penna refers to an added MGP component as a nine-year. The exact age is not resolved on camera, and this record preserves all three phrasings rather than standardizing them.
Penna then worked through the ratio out loud. The vat held 102 bottle-equivalents. The team’s bench ratio was two to one, tested as a one-ounce pour against a half-ounce pour. To hold that ratio at scale, 51 bottle-equivalents had to go in from the new barrel, bringing the batch to 153. The blend would then sit overnight.
102
Bottle-equivalents already in the vat
2:1
Bench ratio, one ounce to a half ounce
51
Bottle-equivalents to add from the new barrel
153
Resulting batch at the end of day one
Why the volume matters. Episode 1 established that each final blend must yield at least 500 bottles and no more than 1,300, drawn from stock aged five to 18 years. Episode 2 does not restate that rule, but it explains why volume dominates the day one conversation. At 153 bottle-equivalents, Arkansas is still well short of the floor, and the panel spends much of the feedback session worrying aloud about whether Florida can scale its blend without wrecking it.
The 153 figure is the arithmetic result of the stated ratio, not a confirmed production yield. The episode does not state a bottle size, so no conversion to gallons is possible from the available material.
An unscored tasting of both bases
Kaynon opened the final segment by stating twice that no points were on the line. The panel of Kaynon, Jason Callori and Barrel King co-founder Jarrod Record tasted both blends blind and then gave feedback. Arkansas identified itself as sample A. Florida was sample B.
Despite the chapter marker on the YouTube video reading “Feedback on the Final Blends,” these were day one bases, not finished competition blends.
Sample A · Arkansas
Components disclosed. Mills said the team used two O.Z. Tyler barrels and had just added an MGP. Penna described that addition as a nine-year.
Nose. Cream cheese frosting and confectioners sugar, something sour, an unusual tropical note, a candy apple character and a double oak note. The panel agreed it was clean but light on char.
Palate. Overwhelmingly apple. Caramel apple with toasted nuts on top and a pastry note underneath, and pronounced heat. Callori described it as an apple pie set on fire and put in your mouth.
Guidance. Protect the caramel apple character at all costs. Add age, oak or char and pull the heat back, but without erasing what makes it distinctive. Callori said that if they could get age into it without killing the caramel apple, it could be a home run.
Sample B · Florida
Components disclosed. Florida described its blend as a bourbon and rye combination.
Nose. Where the oak and the age live, in the panel’s words. Toffee and oak, and an aroma all three judges called excellent.
Palate. It did not deliver what the nose promised. The oak and char failed to carry through, and the finish dissipated quickly. Callori called it flat, with the standard bourbon components present but nothing standing out.
Guidance. Add something younger to bring brightness, spice and liveliness. Record suggested going heavy Kentucky and warned that a small volume of the right whiskey could finish it, while scaling up carelessly could ruin it.
The panel guessed the teams backwards
Callori told the room that based on how Arkansas had been blending earlier in the day, the judges had all expected sample B to be theirs, because of the age and oak on the nose. Record said the same thing to the Arkansas team directly: he had smelled A first and thought it was not for him, then tasted it and concluded it was in an excellent place for a base.
Kaynon added that if he had to buy one of the two bottles as they stood that day, his palate preferred A. That was a personal preference expressed during an unscored session, not a challenge result.
Two further details surfaced. Kaynon noted that neither team had yet added any 13-year whiskey, which he described as part of the challenge. He also remarked on how young half of one blend was relative to its oak depth. From context that comment refers to sample B, since he says in the same breath that A was the one lacking oak depth.
The blend rests, and a hazmat bottle comes out
Record closed the session by telling both teams that the whiskey would keep changing overnight. Whatever they came back to in the morning would not be what they left, and every subsequent addition would build on that. Kaynon called it a great day one.
Barrel King blend manager Lauren Rogers then brought out a bottle at Jarrod Record’s request. It is identified on camera as a Jack Daniel’s Tanyard Hill, and someone in the room calls it a hazmat. Jack Daniel’s released Single Barrel Special Release Tanyard Hill Rye in October 2025, a barrel proof Tennessee rye from a 70 percent rye mash bill, barreled in November 2015 in Barrel House 1 atop Tanyard Hill and bottled between 130.2 and 148.8 proof. The upper end of that range clears the 140-proof hazmat threshold, which matches the reaction in the room. The exact bottle and proof are not shown on screen.
The episode ends with an open call. Barrel King invites bourbon clubs to email a video explaining why they deserve the next spot in the Bourbon Games to [email protected], with the subject line “the next Bourbon Games winner.”
What Episode 2 does not disclose
This record notes the following gaps so that later reporting does not fill them by assumption.
- No point totals for cornhole game one.
- No competition points or charity dollar amounts awarded for either the cornhole or the single barrel challenge.
- No updated overall standings after Episode 2.
- No barrel numbers, ages, proofs, mash bills or source distilleries for either single barrel selection.
- The MGP base age is stated three different ways and never resolved.
- Whether the Arkansas sample the panel tasted included the freshly added MGP is left open by the phrase “we just added.”
- Surnames are not given for the Florida competitors Jake, Jason and Matt, or for host Kaynon.
- The Sip Along Pack is promoted without a stated price.
Arkansas leads on the board with the blend still ahead
Through two episodes Arkansas has won the opening bottle-sales challenge, the cornhole match and the single barrel challenge. The largest score in the competition, the final blend, is still ahead, and both bases were a long way from finished when the day ended.
For the competition rules, team introductions and the opening 40–19 result, see the Episode 1 recap. Background on both clubs appears in the Season 1 preview and in ArkansasLiquor.com’s coverage of the April 2026 charity barrel showdown.
Sources: Bourbon Games Season 1, Episode 2, published by Mixx Tank; the episode’s published description and captions; Barrel King’s official series page; and Barrel King’s team page for the roles of Rachael Record, Jarrod Record and Lauren Rogers.
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Justin Jones
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