Jump to content

Whisk(e)y


S John

Recommended Posts

11 minutes ago, Rhom said:

My wife is a fan of Blanton's.  Woodford Reserve is generally my go to bourbon.

The Four Roses really is a nice, reasonably priced drink.  I like it quite a bit.

I don't care much for rye whiskey.  It comes across as too harsh for me.

Last year I tried something interesting; there's a Marriott in Louisville that was remodeled with a bourbon theme a couple years back.  In their whiskey bar, they have a special freezer that makes bourbon ice cubes.  I have learned to enjoy my whiskey neat, so that often means warm.  By using the ice cubes made from the bourbon, it chills the beverage without diluting the drink.  Yum.

I will only drink whiskey with an ice cube if it's the really big ones that chill but doesn't dilute. Small ice cubes are the worst.

8 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Had a rye old fashioned a few months ago and it just wasn't as smooth as I like. 

That's fair. I like it quite a bit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Had a rye old fashioned a few months ago and it just wasn't as smooth as I like. 

It was traditionally made with Rye. :)

Lot of variables in play here besides the Rye though.  Quality of the whiskey, quality of the bartender, recipe...  A good old fashioned is astonishingly hard to find for some reason.  But it will tend to make the cocktail less sweet, so it's really all subjective in the end.  I can drink them either way, as long as they are well made.(no muddled fruit, for the love of god)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I prefer bourbons. I like Blanton's, but they've decided to create artificial scarcity and it's not worth my time to go searching for it. Definitely seems to have helped the brand image, though, despite it not being any better than other bourbons at similar price points.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am no fan of scotch. And we keep trying, as we have no shortage of options. I get all flaming alcohol and no flavor. It also causes strong blech face and full body shivers. Bourbon I can drink neat but I'm really more into bourbon/Rye cocktails. I like Eagle Rare and Blantons, but we have a few others on the go at the moment. We use Bulleit Rye in our cocktails, and I also like the rye from localish distiller Catoctin Creek. Crown Royal Northern Harvest is also quite good. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I rarely drink but when I winter overnight hike or take long day hikes most of my hiking crew drinks Bourbon in the evenings after we cook dinner. I've taken a few pulls from the flask and it warms you up on cold nights and I think it helps get me to sleep in the tent at night. I could not image drinking it in warm weather but it does the trick in cold weather. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Swordfish said:

yeah.  You can pretty much sub in Rye for bourbon in almost any cocktail recipe.

I've been making a ton of suburbans, old fashioneds and manhattans recently.

I've been partial to Boulevardiers recently - so good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulevardier_(cocktail) 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like both bourbon and Scotch (I'm drinking Craigellachie single malt right now). It depends on my mood. I almost always drink it neat. Sometimes with a drop or two of water. I haven't had a cocktail in forever, it seems. I don't care for rye as much. I do find that we are often out of bourbon because hubby does not care for it as much and I am usually too lazy to go to the liquor store to buy it.  I got Ser Stripe some Japanese whiskey for Christmas on the recommendation of a friend. I didn't care for it. I, on the other hand, was given a bottle of Oban single malt for Christmas and I hid it so hubby would keep his filthy paws off of it. We generally drink Maker's Mark or Bulleit bourbon. We sometimes have a bottle of Rebel Yell for fun, but I liked the old bottle with the horse  better. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, kairparavel said:

I am no fan of scotch. And we keep trying, as we have no shortage of options. I get all flaming alcohol and no flavor. It also causes strong blech face and full body shivers. Bourbon I can drink neat but I'm really more into bourbon/Rye cocktails. I like Eagle Rare and Blantons, but we have a few others on the go at the moment. We use Bulleit Rye in our cocktails, and I also like the rye from localish distiller Catoctin Creek. Crown Royal Northern Harvest is also quite good. 

Have you tried it with just a dash of lukewarm water?  Opens up the flavor and tames the alcohol a bit.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brandy Old Fashioneds or GTFO. :P

In college I had some severe allergic type reactions on more than one occasion when drinking bourbon. Wasn't even a lot, and I started having all of these hives...beedless to say, I swore of bourbon, scotch, and whiskey for 20 some years as a result.  Just in the last few have I begun slowly trying such items again.  So far so good, but none of them are go to choices for me, as I really learned to appreciate Gin in those intervening twenty years...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

You are wrong.  Bourbon and scotch have different purposes and different uses and they both should be appreciated for what they are.

Exactly this. I rarely drink anything besides bourbon and scotch these days; bourbon is my mixing drink and scotch is my sipping drink. 

Also, a good bourbon is significantly smoother than some of the really peaty scotches, like Ardberg or Bruichladdich. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, aceluby said:

Have you tried it with just a dash of lukewarm water?  Opens up the flavor and tames the alcohol a bit.  

Agree with this. Something I also do sometimes. My grandfather refuses to drink it any other way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As someone who has lived his whole life in the state of Kentucky, I've drank more than my fair share of bourbon since I became of age. I honestly have never really tried much Scotch, outside of the time my best friend got married and his open bar had Johnny Walker available late in the evening after the bourbon had long been all consumed. It was all right, I guess. Nothing special at all though. I'm sure there's some great Scotches out there, but I'll probably never buy them. Great bourbon is just too plentiful (and relatively inexpensive) here.

I rarely spend more than $40 for a bottle of bourbon, because if you know what you're doing, you can find some really excellent choices at low price points.

One of my traditional go-to choices is the aforementioned Four Roses. The yellow label is priced like a bargain bourbon, but it's considerably better than most others at that price point. I never really bother with the yellow label though, because the brand really excels with its small batch and single barrel offerings. The small batch usually sells well below $30 a bottle and the single barrel is usually in the mid-$30s range. And for that price, it's tough to beat. Both are really nice sipping bourbons.

In the past year or two, though, I've been going more with the Elijah Craig 12-year though. It's around $25 a bottle around these parts and you can't go wrong with it. I usually have it with just an ice cube and it's perfect. At that price though, you can make some nice cocktails and not feel like you're throwing money away.

If I'm in the mood for something with a little more bite, I'll go with Old Grand-Dad 114. It's got more rye than most bourbons and is basically a (much) better version of Old Grand-Dad, one of the better bargain bourbons.

Other bourbons I have enjoyed over the years include Woodford and Knob Creek, and while they're both very good, their prices have creeped up to the point where they're just not quite worth it. I don't think either is appreciably better than either the Craig 12-year or OGD 114. (Or the Four Roses single barrel for that matter.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, MisterOJ said:

As someone who has lived his whole life in the state of Kentucky, I've drank more than my fair share of bourbon since I became of age. I honestly have never really tried much Scotch, outside of the time my best friend got married and his open bar had Johnny Walker available late in the evening after the bourbon had long been all consumed. It was all right, I guess. Nothing special at all though. I'm sure there's some great Scotches out there, but I'll probably never buy them. Great bourbon is just too plentiful (and relatively inexpensive) here.

I rarely spend more than $40 for a bottle of bourbon, because if you know what you're doing, you can find some really excellent choices at low price points.

One of my traditional go-to choices is the aforementioned Four Roses. The yellow label is priced like a bargain bourbon, but it's considerably better than most others at that price point. I never really bother with the yellow label though, because the brand really excels with its small batch and single barrel offerings. The small batch usually sells well below $30 a bottle and the single barrel is usually in the mid-$30s range. And for that price, it's tough to beat. Both are really nice sipping bourbons.

In the past year or two, though, I've been going more with the Elijah Craig 12-year though. It's around $25 a bottle around these parts and you can't go wrong with it. I usually have it with just an ice cube and it's perfect. At that price though, you can make some nice cocktails and not feel like you're throwing money away.

If I'm in the mood for something with a little more bite, I'll go with Old Grand-Dad 114. It's got more rye than most bourbons and is basically a (much) better version of Old Grand-Dad, one of the better bargain bourbons.

Other bourbons I have enjoyed over the years include Woodford and Knob Creek, and while they're both very good, their prices have creeped up to the point where they're just not quite worth it. I don't think either is appreciably better than either the Craig 12-year or OGD 114. (Or the Four Roses single barrel for that matter.)

My husband and I met over Knob Creek.  It still has warm fuzzy associations even though we do not have liquor in the house any more (and he does not drink).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

My husband and I met over Knob Creek.  It still has warm fuzzy associations even though we do not have liquor in the house any more (and he does not drink).

My fiancé and I met over whiskey as well. Perfect first date on a cold December evening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do prefer Scotch, and specifically the more aggressively peated or otherwise flavourful varieties. Most Bourbon I tried was too sweet for me, IIRC Maker's Mark was ok'ish. I might have to try four roses now, I think it is available here reasonably well. Irish Whiskey has its charms as well, and I did enjoy the samples of Japanese I've tried (Nikka I believe).

19 hours ago, kairparavel said:

I am no fan of scotch. And we keep trying, as we have no shortage of options. I get all flaming alcohol and no flavor. It also causes strong blech face and full body shivers. Bourbon I can drink neat but I'm really more into bourbon/Rye cocktails. I like Eagle Rare and Blantons, but we have a few others on the go at the moment. We use Bulleit Rye in our cocktails, and I also like the rye from localish distiller Catoctin Creek. Crown Royal Northern Harvest is also quite good. 

Considering my preferences the lack of flavour for Scotch amazes me. But preferences and the way we experience taste differs for each individual.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, Seli said:

I do prefer Scotch, and specifically the more aggressively peated or otherwise flavourful varieties. Most Bourbon I tried was too sweet for me, IIRC Maker's Mark was ok'ish. I might have to try four roses now, I think it is available here reasonably well. Irish Whiskey has its charms as well, and I did enjoy the samples of Japanese I've tried (Nikka I believe).

I've been on the Japanese kick lately. Ichiro is my favorite so far. It's so complex and flavorful as the distiller buys barrels from all over the world of whiskies he enjoys and then makes his whisky in them. I understand it's not for everyone but it really works for me. The other one I've been enjoying lately is Kavalan (or King Car) which is a Taiwanese whisky. Also complex and unique. 

Nikka and Hibiki do make good whiskies. I have a bottle of Nikka Coffey Grain which is pretty good (more scotch like) and I've tried several others. Different from scotch/bourbon but not worse. Definitely worth a sip if you haven't tried it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fun story.  I actually met Tom Bulliet once at the Bulliowet release party in Portland.  He showed up to talk about the whiskey with a large group of local bartenders.  He seemed like a really nice guy.  Very charismatic.  He was also very very short.

At any rate, someone asked him about Scotch,and he replied something like "I love Scotch.  I make half my money selling my barrels to Scotch makers'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...