Scotch, Irish, Bourbon, Rye

I've spotted Strathisla in Sainssbury's. I may well have to try that.

What's wrong with Bushmills? I used to drink Blackbush. That was nice.

you may have a glass of whiskey or a pint of beer on the side.

Yeah, that was a pretty bad idea.

Not bad at all.

(off topic Vernors drink mix: Vernors, vodka, lime, in -- most importantly -- a copper cup = Moscow Mule)

I love Jamesons.

I think it's the oldest whiskey I've ever had, thinking about it. Pretty good

Maybe I will buy some Maker's tonight. Anymore it's one of the few I can tolerate.

Canadian Mist
Very Old Barton

There is something really, really hilarious to me about the names of really cheap whiskey.

If it's a single malt, sure. Cheaper whiskey goes great with ginger beer (as opposed to ale), though.

OTM except the opposite is true for shitty whiskeys, ie pretending to yrself or anyone that drinking this neat for any reason other than to get wasted is a pointless exercise

huh, xpost

sazerac
manhattan
rob roy
whiskey sour
mint julep
old fashioned

I've been off the whisk(e)y for a while, drinking a lot more brandy, however i was introduced to the Bronx a while back; a manhattan with red and white vermouth, a dash of bitters and a splash of campari, damned fine.

also, i agree with hstencil, but a tiny splash of cointrau or grand marier (not as good) with a squeeze of lemon over a good burboun is my favorite drink.

Oh, and no mixer. Ever. Not even ice.

The peat is very much present, but it doesn't taste like Scotch.

I had a tiny sip to see what I should eat before/after drinking it, and I felt like I'd eaten a meal. It was like...as though The Dark Crystal and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory's forests had somehow merged, and I was eating that.

tell bukowski

whisky = sitting with a glass for the better part of half an hour and tasting all the flavours. nice while reading too.

wine = with food, romantic

etc..

also as ledge says, what you drink/eat before makes a HUGE difference. After a meal, some of my favorites really don't taste like anything. When you're hungry, or after eating something very plain, like bread or crackers....wow. That beer/laphroaig thing sounds good.

qft

a whiskey sour? with claret? huh?

I like Wild Turkey.

And cheap scotch + ginger beer.

You can do a whole lot worse than the Bird.

That's not to say that its advised to have a long bout with it. It is a value-added bourbon (read: 101 proof) and that shit catches up with you more than you realize. Turkey has long been my designated crazy sauce.

And why the hell is it that I always fall onto one of these threads when I wasn't planning on drinking?

All this talk of Laphroaig and beer and bourbons and manhattans and old fashioneds.

I hadn't noticed the 101 proof before, but yeah it does have a kick to it. I got a litre in duty free when I came back from the states last November, yummy. I usually just drink beer though, not much into spirits.

got my ass some Famous Grouse to begin appreciating scotch in slow motion

<3 so far

am now capable of drinking it w/o watering down or adding ice and enjoying it

<3 <3

Still got my litre of talisker 18 yr

<3 <3

Ah Grouse, the old cooking whisky (as mum refers to it as).

Also - a LITRE of Talisker 18? Wow...

Which single malt should I go for next - having tried Balvenie, Tormore and Laphroaig, all of which I liked (though I had to have Laphroaig with just a few drops of water - I know, I know...)

a few drops of water is good i think! i usually find it adds more flavour

one ice cube opens the flavour of a single malt imo

seriously rubbish advertising:

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Image.ma/GetImage/82732?imageType=Cacd.Domain.Articles.ImageArticle&height=0&width=0
http://www.motmodel.com/imagebase/news/326.jpg

both those male models should be punched in the windpipe

i have been thinking about manhattans lately. i haven't had one in a long time.

Is Chivas Regal 18 good scotch? I tried some at a wedding and I thought it was kind of nast. But to be honest I'm not sure I even like Scotch. Bourbon and blended for me.

Chivas is a blend iirc. I'm not a fan.

Oh, I guess it's blended scotch.

Yeah, Chivas Regal 18 is a blend. Not supposed to be particularly good.

Though blended does not equal bad.

to be slightly more useful to hurting re: whether or not he likes scotch: there are many different types of scotch to choose from, there are many scotches, and not a few of them well respected, that i find extremely unpalatable; there are few allegedly potable liquids that i enjoy less than Talisker or Lagavulin - this is due to my dislike of smokiness in a whisky. I find that as a rule i tend to go for whiskys that are not smoky and that have a richness of flavour imparted to them through the casks they have been aged in, e.g. the Macallan 18, Balvenie Double Wood. Obviously any individual will have their own preferences but the gamut is fairly wide, it might just be a case of trial and error.

If I'm in the world of blends, I'll happily drink Jonnie Walker but Chivas isn't great

to my shame i thought, until a year or two ago, that johnnie walker was an American whisky because the name sounded American to me and it's always in American films but i rarely see it irl (irl being Scotland for me).

tbf it is mainly an export brand, very big in the US and Asia, and probably a bit overpriced for what it is, but it is very drinkable.

I have to give Chivas credit for being just about the only major industry left in my hometown, long after everyone else had fucked off.

http://www.businessinsider.com/bourbon-shortage-is-coming-2014-11

"Because of the recent spike in popularity of the brown spirit, distillers, who generally need to age even the cheapest stuff for 8-10 years, are warning that a major shortage is coming."

I'm driving up to Kentucky this weekend and stamping my name on a barrel Mila Kunis-style.

All I know is that three or four of my favorite whiskeys, or at least what used to be great bargains, bourbons I had no problem using to mix drinks as well as drink straight, have vanished from shelves and are practically as hard to get as Pappy. It's a small wonder that Elijah Craig 12 has stuck around.

I've made the switch to wine already

I probably like wine better than bourbon, but I love the value of bourbons, bottles of brown that can just wait on your shelf to drink at your leisure.

I've been a big fan of Evan Williams black label for years as it is just good whiskey for the money, especially if you are going to just mix it. Evan Williams black label is a good step in for Jack D. if you like that whiskey. I got a bottle of the Evan Williams Bottled in Bond white label and this stuff is fantastic for a $12 fifth of bourbon. It's very good. Evan Williams and Benchmark (made by Buffalo Trace) are the good stuff for the lower price KY bourbons. Early Times No. 354 is also some amazing bourbon for the money. If you like Makers Mark, save five bucks and try it out.

This is one Kentucky resident reporters opinion, obviously the high end bourbon's rep. is well earned, but these are the ones I have found to be quite good for the price.

Would read an earlnash bourbon blog

Owner of the Haymarket Whiskey Bar in Louisville that has like 250 different permutations of Ky. Bourbon got me and a couple pals turned onto Benchmark, he says it's the best inexpensive bourbon in the world. From what I understand, they make a year's batch and then taste it over the years as it ages and the top percentage stuff becomes Buffalo Trace and the stuff that doesn't quite get the tasters choice becomes Benchmark. I don't know if that is true, but that would be one hell of a job to have.

I don't know the top shelf that well as I am cheap, I'm sure that top level of KY bourbon is probably like sloppy kissing the Roman goddess Demeter with a good buzz, but I know that middle shelf quite well.

It doesn't taste bad, but I don't quite trust that Jim Beam Devils Cut stuff. It tastes like Seagrams VO to me, which is cool if you are mixing with 7Up. (The shit is mixing some Wild Turkey with 7Up which is the favorite drink of an old VP of IT turned me onto at a Christmas party a few years back.) My guess is that is it just brown vodka getting flavored by an already used charred barrel. I haven't been able to find any details on what the heck this Devil's Cut stuff actually is, but what the hey, it was a decent bottle of booze as a Christmas gift from a buddy.

I don't know scotch or Irish whiskey all that much at all, but I got to say my lady and I really liked making some of those ginger Jameson cocktails a couple weeks back. It wasn't some genius thing, just use some half decent booze (like Jameson) with some Canada Dry and some fresh lime. I don't know bupkus about Ginger beer, but I would like to try one of those with Jameson, which is another cocktail I read about.

as i understand it devil's cut came about when the beam company figured out how to extract some of the bourbon that was absorbed by the barrel, then they blended that back in with their regular bourbon. i've read that there's an old bourbon region trick where kids would fill a spent barrel with some water and roll it down a hill or two--it's apparently possible to get a buzz from the results. beam basically found a scalable way to accomplish the same thing.

i haven't had it in a few years but liked it when i did.

Devil's Cut is not bad at all, but there is something about it that is way different than regular Beam, which has a spicy burn in it's taste. The Seven Year is the one I like from Jim Beam. Personally, I like slow drinking shots with a chaser.

If you want a good Indiana redneck evening, you get one of those big pitchers your mom might have made Kool Ade then put a package of Wylers lemonade, then fill it to the brim with ice and pour in a whole fifth of Beam. Then fill back in what melts with 7up or water and give it a good stir. I saw people get so drunk they would fight out through 2nd floor apartment windows with that stuff. It's some dangerous shit and the college ladies in cutoff jeans liked it quite well.

I hardly ever drink whiskey straight, so I'm usually just looking for something solid for mixing purposes. Bulleit seems to fit the bill pretty well for both bourbon and rye, though what I've currently got in the house is Buffalo Trace bourbon and Rittenhouse rye. Wasn't intentional, but the fact that their profiles are so dissimilar (Buffalo Trace = smooth, sweet; RIttenhouse = high-proof, spicy) is useful. Sometimes you want one instead of the other.

Kind of curious about Irish whiskey, which I barely have an understanding of. I'm sure I had a shot of Jameson once upon a time, but I don't remember it. The one I'm most intrigued by is Redbreast, but it looks fairly pricey.

Before that, I'll probably pick up another scotch. A friend gave me a bottle of Glenmorangie single-malt, which is fine, but what I really want is an Islay scotch: Laphroaig, probably, since so many cocktails call for a Laphroaig rinse. (I'd like to drink it, too, though.)

Just noticed this upthread, posted by Ed:

Whiskey sours, topped off with claret, fine drink, so call me a homo.

This is known as a New York Sour, and it's delicious.

Oh haha, never mind, he said the same thing a few posts down.

What's a good blended scotch? I've liked Monkey Shoulder in the past.

going to islay during the whisky festival next month

"A friend gave me a bottle of Glenmorangie single-malt, which is fine, but what I really want is an Islay scotch: Laphroaig"

rong

xps Redbreast is delicious FYI

oh yeah go for the redbreast, obvs

Ha, what part of that is wrong, that I want Laphroaig?

as a preference, ya.its ok for you to want Laphroaig independently I guess.

if redbreast is too pricey to chance then price another good jameson/midleton, if you can get green spot any cheaper then go for that

This Glenfiddich 19 might as well be labeled bourbon, so sweet and rich

i'm a bourbon drinker. but i'm trying to understand.

oh really, t2?

you guys kind of are dicks. i don't know what kind of person would spend the entirety of his mid twenties posting to this messageboard.

just to take a random example.

just trying to correlate current d/n with previous

unrelated. you've met people with your same first name before. same thing.

no, I mean your actual one, which I don’t think was Treeship! Unless I’ve misread

you should be mh 2 and really besmirch me

drinking some plain old dickel btw

hello irishes,

while in ireland we had summa this shit and enjoyed it very much. you can get it in the usa in california at BevMo, at the very least. it's more scotch-y than irish-y but it's v tasty

http://www.kilbeggandistillingcompany.com/our-brands/connemara

It's pretty peaty I'd definitely have said scotch in spirit for that reason alone.

Good distillery, kilbeggan, btw. Their pot still stuff are worth grabbing if seen cheap.

This year my house bottle has been a no-age generic called "the Irishman" and I ain't even sorry

Finally broke into the Christmas bottle of Town Branch I was given last year. I guess when you have an Irish immigrant genius onequine medicine mind start a brewery and whiskey business in the middle of bourbon country TM, you might get a different taste (RIP Dr. Lyons). It's pretty good, but it is also like every flavor of bourbon turned up to the power of 10. It's a bit much straight, but enough ice or a mixed drink, the stuff is killer. I'd bet it would be good bourbon for cooking as the flavor is so LOUD. Score one for the local team.

F'n A - drinkin' on a Thursday night when you are on PTO on Friday is the shit.

I'm so out of practice, it takes nothing. Just finished off tonight said bottle of Town Branch from above. I'd call myself a light weight, but that is a total misnomer.