The Devil's Cut is the pick of a dear Jim Beam shelf

Jim Beam is the value end of Kentucky, the bourbon people buy by the handle without thinking twice. Its shelf midpoint here is around $73, and the neighbourhoods its bottles are grouped with sit down near $43, so you would expect at least one easy buy in the range. This week there is not an obvious one. To place each bottle, the model sets it beside the ten whiskeys nearest in flavour and takes the middle of their prices, the going rate for that style, what I will call the bottle's room. Four Jim Beams can be priced cleanly this week, and all four are over theirs.

The one with the most to say for itself is the Devil's Cut. At $70 it is about 43% over a room of roughly $49, the smallest gap of the four and the only bottle here doing something different in the glass. The name points to the bourbon coaxed back out of the barrel wood, and it drinks richer for it: caramel and wood and a warm spice, fuller and darker than the plain white label. If you are going to buy a Jim Beam, this is the one carrying the most character for its premium, even though the premium is real.

Then the white labels, which are the same light, grain-and-corn bourbon in three sizes, and a tidy illustration of how the gap grows with the glass. The 1L is $69, about 60% over a room near $43. The 1.125L is $79, about 84% over the same sort of room. And the 1.75L handle is $135, about 214% over a room near $43, more than triple its neighbours and the widest gap on the Jim Beam shelf by a street. It is the same plain, sweet-corn, light-oak spirit all the way up, pleasant and unfussy and built for mixing. The only thing that changes as the bottle grows is how far over its room it sits, which is precisely backwards from the way buying in bulk is meant to work.

It is worth being fair to the white label while saying all that. As a mixing bourbon it is perfectly good, the light, grainy, faintly rye-edged spirit that has filled a million highballs, and nobody buying it to pour over ice and top with cola is being short-changed on the whiskey. The point is narrower, and only about the money: whatever size you reach for, you are paying more over the neighbourhood than the bottle's plainness suggests, and the premium grows precisely as the bottle does. Knowing that does not mean leaving it on the shelf. It means buying the size that costs you least over its room, which here is the smallest of the big bottles rather than the biggest.

What is missing this week is the obvious counterweight. The aged Black expressions, usually the smart pick in this range, cannot be given a clean price this time: the model has them sharing a neighbourhood band with their own siblings rather than standing on their own, so no fair gap can be read for them and they are set aside. That matters for how you read the rest. Without the Black bottles anchoring the value end, the part of the Jim Beam shelf that can be judged is all premium and no bargain, which is an unusual look for a brand whose whole promise is being cheap.

The thing to take from it is that the bourbon is not the variable. Jim Beam white label is Jim Beam white label whether it comes in a litre or a handle, and the Devil's Cut aside, you are not climbing a quality ladder as the price rises. You are climbing a volume ladder, and paying a steeper premium over the neighbourhood at each rung. On a shelf where the brand's entire appeal is cheapness, the bottle that looks like the biggest saving, the handle, is the one charging most dearly against its own company.

It is a useful reminder that a low-rent reputation and a low price are not the same thing on the day. Jim Beam has spent decades teaching people it is the affordable option, and that lesson sticks to the label whatever the tag underneath it says. The handle trades hardest on it, which is exactly why it is worth checking: the bottle you assume is the cheap, sensible, bulk-buy choice is, measured against the whiskeys it actually sits beside, the dearest thing on the shelf this week.

So, buying. If you want a Jim Beam with something to it, the Devil's Cut at $70 is the one to reach for, richer than the white labels and asking the least over its room, though it is still over. If you just need everyday mixing bourbon and the brand is the point, the White Label 1L at $69 is the least stretched of the big white-label bottles, with the 1.125L at $79 a wider gap for a little more liquid. Leave the 1.75L handle at $135 unless you are stocking a party and the convenience genuinely outweighs paying more than triple its room. And if it is the aged Black you are after, it is worth waiting for a week the shelf prices it cleanly, because this week it cannot be judged on value at all.