Whisky and Scotch Recommendations

Went with the Trace to start my mini-celebration last week after getting accepted to graduate school. It was a good night.

wordsmythe wrote:

Went with the Trace to start my mini-celebration last week after getting accepted to graduate school. It was a good night.

Wha? Tell us more! What program?

Congratulations!

HedgeWizard wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Went with the Trace to start my mini-celebration last week after getting accepted to graduate school. It was a good night.

Wha? Tell us more! What program?

Congratulations!

I'm pretty sure I covered it elsewhere both on GWJ and Twitter, but I'm going to be part of this.

wordsmythe wrote:
HedgeWizard wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Went with the Trace to start my mini-celebration last week after getting accepted to graduate school. It was a good night.

Wha? Tell us more! What program?

Congratulations!

I'm pretty sure I covered it elsewhere both on GWJ and Twitter, but I'm going to be part of this.

Very cool! Congratulations again.

Can't say as I recall seeing it in your feed, but it might have been buried, or I might be oblivious, or both. Probably both.

Bought some Buffalo Trace today. About to try my first glass.

Edit: spicy!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Bought some Buffalo Trace today. About to try my first glass.

Edit: spicy!

Yeah, it runs spicy...not as spicy as a rye whiskey (I'm using Sazerac as my example here) but if you drink a glass of Beam after a glass of Buffalo Trace, it'll taste like sugar glaze in your mouth.

The sweetest bourbon I can remember tasting was Sam Houston. Can anyone top that?

Thread on Sweet Whiskeys

I think I found a couple on that site that I may have to try.

Hmm, I never thought of Red breast as a sweet whisky, but I suppose its smoothness could be translated as sweetness. Elijah Craig is definitely up there in sweetness.

Yeesh those guys are much more experienced than I am. Rare to see so many names I'm unfamiliar with in a single place.

Really if you can get through the peat, I would consider Laphroiag 18 to be "sweet." ....assuming you can get through the smoke, of course.

It was really only spicy on the first taste. Didn't notice it after that.

Seth wrote:

Yeesh those guys are much more experienced than I am. Rare to see so many names I'm unfamiliar with in a single place.

No joke, so many that I've never even heard about.

Yeah, but what about whiskeys?

I bought a bottle of Evan Williams Honey Reserve, and by golly if it isn't rather nice.

It's especially heavy on the honey, with just a hint of bourbon in the back. So much so that the wife, who can't stand boubon or whiskey, loves it. In fact, when I gave her a taste, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently, she tried it about 3 years ago, while dressed as Santa and completely off-her-t*ts, and by the next day, couldn't remember the name of it.

Jonman wrote:

I bought a bottle of Evan Williams Honey Reserve, and by golly if it isn't rather nice.

It's especially heavy on the honey, with just a hint of bourbon in the back. So much so that the wife, who can't stand boubon or whiskey, loves it. In fact, when I gave her a taste, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently, she tried it about 3 years ago, while dressed as Santa and completely off-her-t*ts, and by the next day, couldn't remember the name of it.

I am going to try and work the phrase off-her-t*ts into more sentences.

Last summer I picked up a bottle of The Macallan Cask Strength for my father in law. While there for a visit this weekend he commented that he didn't have anyone to drink it with, so we should have some. I'm pretty sure we went through over half the bottle. For the first time since college, I was still tipsy when I woke up in the morning.

I drink pretty much everything neat, almost to the point of dogma. This, however, needed some water to open it up. We decided that room temp with a splash of water was best.

Fruity nose. You can instantly tell it was aged in sherry casks without reading the label. Almost a dessert scotch, if there can be such a thing.

Bottom line, probably the best scotch I've had for the price (which was around $50).

NathanialG wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I bought a bottle of Evan Williams Honey Reserve, and by golly if it isn't rather nice.

It's especially heavy on the honey, with just a hint of bourbon in the back. So much so that the wife, who can't stand boubon or whiskey, loves it. In fact, when I gave her a taste, her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Apparently, she tried it about 3 years ago, while dressed as Santa and completely off-her-t*ts, and by the next day, couldn't remember the name of it.

I am going to try and work the phrase off-her-t*ts into more sentences.

It can also be used interchangable with "ripped-to-the-t*ts".

Jonman wrote:

"ripped-to-the-t*ts".

That sounds painful.

In whiskey-related news, my local liquor store started carrying Buffalo Trace so I bought some and gave it a try this weekend. It's tasty.

muttonchop wrote:
Jonman wrote:

"ripped-to-the-t*ts".

That sounds painful.

In whiskey-related news, my local liquor store started carrying Buffalo Trace so I bought some and gave it a try this weekend. It's tasty.

It is!

Tasty today? painful tomorrow?

Ghostship wrote:

Tasty today? painful tomorrow?

The whiskey or the ripped t*ts?

Had a chance to walk through two distilleries. Some notes:

1) the "bourbon trail" is more of a "bourbon highway." each distillery is a solid half hour from another, with a few being WAY outside the beaten path. Expect to spend more time driving than touring if you want to hit more than three

2) Woodford Reserve is idyllic. I want to live on their grounds and hang out with their employees and sleep in their warehouse. I'm always cautious of small batch distilleries that are owned by behemoth corporations (Woodford Reserve is owned by the same corporation that owns Jack Daniels), but it seems like not much has changed there in terms of the recipe. And yeah it's pretty sweet for sappy tourists like me to get my name printed on a copper tag on my own bottle.

3) Buffalo Trace was equally fantastic -- they were bottling Blanton's and Eagle Rare when I went, and you can walk up and strike up conversations with the people on the bottling line. It's pretty ridiculous that every bottle of Blanton's in the world comes from a slow moving conveyor where every step of taking the bottle from empty to filled, labeled, wax-sealed, and signed is done by hand. They also have a Chief Feline Officer -- Elijah Pepper, a 15 year old barncat that lives in the warehouses. I can only assume he was born in a pool of whiskey.

I learned a lot about the steps required to make a bourbon. For example, according to the Buffalo Trace guy, there's not a single working distillery in Bourbon county anymore. The definition of bourbon has everything to do with the grain bill and aging -- not technically where it's made (although the water in Kentucky, having been filtered by limestone, tends to yield very good results).

Tried Rip Van Winkle (excellent) -- but could not find ANY of the Pappy Van Winkle line, despite being in the place they made it. But I did find out that if you up the rye content on your bourbon, it makes it spicier, and when you add wheat, it gets sweeter.

Good stuff overall.

So my last bourbon was Buffalo Trace and when that was gone, I was drinking Jack. Went to the ABC store yesterday and picked up my usual Beam 5 year. But then when I got to drinking it last night, ugh! I don't know if it was just a clash of tastes between it and what I had for dinner, but it did not taste good going down. Did Buffalo Trace ruin me for lesser bourbons??!?!

LilCodger wrote:

Cask Strength
... needed some water to open it up.

*Ahem*
Duh.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

So my last bourbon was Buffalo Trace and when that was gone, I was drinking Jack. Went to the ABC store yesterday and picked up my usual Beam 5 year. But then when I got to drinking it last night, ugh! I don't know if it was just a clash of tastes between it and what I had for dinner, but it did not taste good going down. Did Buffalo Trace ruin me for lesser bourbons??!?!

So it turns out, no, it didn't ruin me. The next imbibing went much better.

Had to get this today:
IMAGE(http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6028/5952518982_0614b90677.jpg)

Plan to sample it during TF2 tonight.

wordsmythe wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Cask Strength
... needed some water to open it up.

*Ahem*
Duh.
:P

Dude, my favorite drink is a neat Booker's.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Had to get this today:
IMAGE(http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6028/5952518982_0614b90677.jpg)

Plan to sample it during TF2 tonight.

That looks heavenly... or perhaps devilishly delightful!

I thought it was good. First taste was spicy, like Buffalo Trace's. And I just love the label.

LilCodger wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Cask Strength
... needed some water to open it up.

*Ahem*
Duh.
:P

Dude, my favorite drink is a neat Booker's. :)

More power to you. Though it's my favorite for a Manhattan, I have to water Booker's down a bit. I tried it neat once and it singed off my nose hairs!

Minarchist wrote:
LilCodger wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

Cask Strength
... needed some water to open it up.

*Ahem*
Duh.
:P

Dude, my favorite drink is a neat Booker's. :)

More power to you. Though it's my favorite for a Manhattan, I have to water Booker's down a bit. I tried it neat once and it singed off my nose hairs!

Well, that would save me some trimming.

What I was trying (poorly) to state was that I thought the water actually brought out better flavors in the Macallan Cask Strength. I have had Booker's (and every other bourbon I drink) both neat and with water. While I can understand that most folks need the water to make it drinkable at all, I don't find that it changes the flavor or aroma in a positive way for me. It's not often that I drink something that I think *needs* to be watered. When I do, it's almost always a scotch.

My two cents: though it's been mentioned a thousand times already in this thread, I'll recommend the Balvenie Doublewood. It's my go-to bottle anytime someone mentions that they'd like to get into drinking single malts, but don't know where to start. And without getting real in depth into tasting notes, I just know that it tastes good and is "moderately" priced.