There’s a particular hour in the summer—somewhere between brunch and the lazy descent into golden hour—when you want a drink that doesn’t knock you over, but still knows its way around a flavor profile. That’s the moment Jim Beam is aiming for with its newest innovation: Jim Beam Sunshine Blend, a low-ABV, brown rice–infused bourbon made for daytime sipping, released just in time to chase the North American heat.
At $19.99 a bottle, Sunshine Blend isn’t angling for prestige so much as presence. It wants to be on your patio table, next to the lemonade pitcher, with a wedge of lime on the rim. It wants to be poured at a tailgate, passed around during a cookout, thrown over ice with club soda, or stirred into a grapefruit Paloma with a pinch of salt. It’s bourbon for the people, made not to be revered in solitude, but shared under an open sky.
The blend is 65% classic 4-year Jim Beam and 35% brown rice bourbon—a mash bill of 55% corn, 35% brown rice, and 10% malted barley. The addition of brown rice softens the edge of the corn and amplifies the natural sweetness, bringing a kind of culinary familiarity to the glass. The result? A delicate bourbon with gentle vanilla and caramel notes, a little floral airiness, and a finish that’s mellow enough for newcomers, but layered enough to surprise longtime Beam loyalists.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the brown rice mash bill is the same one Beam has toyed with in previous premium releases—Little Book, Basil Hayden. But where those leaned contemplative, Sunshine Blend is deliberately casual. It doesn’t demand analysis. It just asks: You got ice?
The fact that Jim Beam, the world’s top-selling bourbon brand, is turning its gaze toward daytime, sessionable drinking feels like a shift in American whiskey culture. Not away from complexity, but toward accessibility—toward a version of bourbon that knows how to play in the sun.
Available now at select retailers nationwide, Jim Beam Sunshine Blend isn’t just a seasonal release—it’s a mood in a bottle. One that might just change how, and when, we drink our bourbon. For more information, head over to the brand’s official website.
Last month, Jim Beam also launched Lineage Batch #2, a newly released, 15-year-old Kentucky Straight Bourbon.
