For the Whisky drinkers

[dfisk]

So, while we were at IBC, we were made aware of a really cool bar called the Whisky Cafe. They have over 1500 different bottles of Whisky on hand, plus lots of other stuff. If you are ever in Amsterdam, and you enjoy yourself a good whisky, check this place out. Here are two pictures.

[RPSharman]

Where would you even start?

I'd need at least a couple of days to get thorough 1500 whiskies!!

[Toy Robot]

AWESOME

[soundtrane]

a couple of days? Mr. sharman, you be yoda of whisky drinkers!!

[dfisk]

the staff there knows everything. We asked what we should start with, and they recommended good stuff.

[soundslikejustin]

There's a similar place in Brussels, Belgium. It's called Delirium Cafe and has 2500 different beers each 3 months. 200 on tap every day.

[OmahaAudio]

They have over 1500 different bottles of Whisky on hand

But do they have any whiskey?

[dfisk]

Yes...and I've seen it spelled both ways.

[Glen Trew]

As long as they had Jack.

gt

[Mark]

My neighbour pulled out the most amazing scotch tonight. About 50 years old! Wow! What a surprise.

[Jon Gilbert]

FWIW, the Americans and Irish usually spell it Whiskey, the Scots, Canadians, Japanese etc. spell it Whisky.

[jrd456]

FWIW, the Americans and Irish usually spell it Whiskey, the Scots, Canadians, Japanese etc. spell it Whisky.

If you drink enough, youwon't be able to spell it at all

J.D.

[RPSharman]

When referring to the alcoholic spirit from Scotland, use the spelling whisky (plural whiskies). Whiskey, with an e (plural whiskeys), is the spelling used in Ireland and America.

[dfisk]

However you spell it, this place was really cool, and I'm going back next year.

[deep owl]

Here's a pic I snapped long ago of a nice Scotch collection. Not as impressive as that bar but respectable for a personal collection.

[Toy Robot]

Here's a pic I snapped long ago of a nice Scotch collection. Not as impressive as that bar but respectable for a personal collection.

 

Dear Santa...

[mono]

 

[RPSharman]

Glad this has been resurrected!!

Found a great whisky when last in LA, called Mulholland. It's made in downtown LA and available directly from distillery or from K&L. It's 100 proof but drinks smoother than most standard 80 proof whisky. 

Also discovered Nikka Coffey Grain whisky from Japan. I have always liked Japanese whisky for its precision, but never its uniqueness. This is unique and lovely. 

My most dangerous discovery was the 12yr Red Breast Irish. It drinks like water. A lovely flavor (although a funny "nose") with the smoothest finish of any whisky I've ever had. 

You're welcome :-)

[Rachel Cameron]

Wow..a whiskey thread? Okay: Palm Ridge Reserve. I have a bottle of it (gift from a job) I sip on infrequently (and alternatively gift my neighbor for riding mower repairs, as he won't take money). It's distinctive, regional (non-blended), and very smooth. The 'regional' part of it is: the casks are alternating staves of oak and citrus. The citrus is evident in the flavor, but not overwhelmingly. I never understood sipping whiskeys before this job. I learned that day.

A couple in Tavares, Florida made the micro-batch distillery from a horse stable. Each berth has a different part of the process. It was a bit lyrical, and like hanging out with Jack Daniels for a day. We sampled and sipped. Never a more mellow job. (pics borrowed from Southern Distilling News).

[soundtrane]

wait till you get AMRUT - Single Malt made in India... Will kick the butt out of many single malts. I too was surprised - an Indian Malt??? but - YES. 

 

On 9/15/2012 at 0:26 PM, Glen Trew said:

As long as they had Jack.

 

gt

GT, hope you are well my dear friend! Still remember that dinner i cooked for you and friends in LA... btw - your email address has been compromised and you need to get your TA internet team on to this, since i get spam from your email address regularly nowadays... heh

-vin

 

[Malcolm Davies Amps CAS]

On 13 April 2017 at 11:11 AM, RPSharman said:

Glad this has been resurrected!!

Found a great whisky when last in LA, called Mulholland. It's made in downtown LA and available directly from distillery or from K&L. It's 100 proof but drinks smoother than most standard 80 proof whisky. 

Also discovered Nikka Coffey Grain whisky from Japan. I have always liked Japanese whisky for its precision, but never its uniqueness. This is unique and lovely. 

My most dangerous discovery was the 12yr Red Breast Irish. It drinks like water. A lovely flavor (although a funny "nose") with the smoothest finish of any whisky I've ever had. 

You're welcome :-)

80% & 100%. Wow! My wife bought me membership to the Whisky Society some years ago and we are offered bottles of rare malt whiskey. The strongest I've ever seen was 68%. The 40% which is the standard UK strength must be a bit of a let down for you Robert.

[jozzafunk]

80 proof is 40% alcohol - anything above from that is better with a drop of water anyways

 

[RPSharman]

Yes, Malcolm. 80 proof is 40%, and is the standard. 100% would be poison!! 

Normally 100 proof (50%) requires a few drops of water, but the Mulholland does not. It's wonderful.  

[jozzafunk]

On 7/1/2017 at 10:56 PM, RPSharman said:

Yes, Malcolm. 80 proof is 40%, and is the standard. 100% would be poison!! 

Normally 100 proof (50%) requires a few drops of water, but the Mulholland does not. It's wonderful.  

There's nothin' quite like the depth found in certain aged cask strengths - Coming to the bottom of a Adelphi Caol Illa -   outrageous stuff - too easy to drink 

[mono]

 

The best way to drink whiskey, according to science

By Jenna Gallegos August 17 at 9:00 AM

 

 

Two physical chemists walk into a bar. They order whiskeys, and a jolly Scotsman one stool over insists they add a splash of water to optimize the flavor of the spirits. Inspired by the smooth, smoky flavor, they vow to investigate a question whiskey enthusiasts answered decades ago:

 

Does adding water to whiskey really make it taste better?

 

That’s the almost true story behind a paper published this week in the journal Scientific Reports. 

"Dilution of whisky – the molecular perspective" -  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06423-5

 

Bjorn Karlsson and Ran Friedman of the Linnaeus University Center for Biomaterials Chemistry are not whiskey drinkers, but Friedman did visit Scotland, and he raised an eyebrow at the locals' dedication to watering down even the fanciest Scotch.

 

Like a good scientist, he wanted to test the assumption, so he teamed up with Karlsson and used computer simulations to model the molecular composition of whiskey.

 

There are two competing theories for why adding water to whiskey might improve the flavor, Karlsson said. The first suggests that adding water traps compounds that are unpleasant.

 

Whiskey contains fatty acid esters that have two very different ends. The head is electrostatically attracted to water and the tail is not.

Fatty acid esters in water can form compounds called micelles.

In micelles, all the tails come together in the middle while the heads form a sphere on the outside, like a bouquet of lollipops with their sticks all tied together on the inside.

 

Adding water to whiskey could, theoretically, cause more micelles to form, trapping compounds that don’t taste or smell good.

 

A competing theory suggests that adding water releases molecules that improve the flavor. Water and ethanol don’t make for a perfectly uniform mixture.

Aromatic compounds could become trapped in ethanol clusters and never reach the surface.

 

Our tongues are only capable of identifying the flavors, sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami (savory), so aroma is really important for detecting all the other flavors that connoisseurs appreciate in whiskey.

 

Karlsson and Friedman did calculations and found that fatty acid esters exist in such low concentrations that the first theory is unlikely, so they decided to focus on the second.

In reality, “whiskey is a complicated mixture of hundreds or even thousands of compounds,” Karlsson said. They focused on just three: water, ethanol, and an aromatic compound called guaiacol.

 

Guaiacol is what gives whiskey that smoky, spicy, peaty flavor. Chemically, guaiacol is similar to a lot of other whiskey aroma compounds like vanillin (with the scent of vanilla) and limonene (citrus).

These and other flavor compounds are not attracted to water and are more likely to become trapped in ethanol clusters.

 

In the researchers' simulations, they found that the concentration of ethanol had a large effect on guaiacol.

At concentrations above 59 percent ethanol (the alcohol content to which whiskey is distilled) the guaiacol was mixed throughout. Whiskey is diluted before bottling to about 40 percent ethanol.

 

In the simulation, at 40 percent, ethanol accumulated near the surface, bringing the guaiacol with it. At about 27 percent the ethanol began to aerosolize, presumably freeing the guaiacol even further.

 

If their state of the art simulations were a SIMS video game, you would play the role of a stressed out bartender and spend hours adjusting the water and alcohol levels back and forth.

 

Not enough water, and the guaiacol won’t bubble up into the nostrils of your whiskey-swilling patrons. Too much, and your angry customers spit out the flavorless, watered down spirits.

 

“Adding water changes the equilibrium,” said Daniel Lacks who was not involved with the study, but conducts similar modeling experiments at Case Western University.

The new model shows that diluting the whiskey “causes molecules to rise to the surface.”

 

But Paul Hughes, a food scientist and distilling expert at Oregon State, was not convinced that the propensity of ethanol to rise to the surface when whiskey is diluted tells the whole story.

In the simulation, only three types of molecules were included, and their activity was modeled in a very tiny volume of spirits. “My sense is that the box they’ve used isn’t tall enough,” Hughes said.

 

The ratio of surface area to volume in the simulation is not at all similar to what you get with a bottle or a glass, he said. He predicts that disruption of the ethanol clusters within the bulk of the whiskey may also be important.

 

Whether by disrupting ethanol clusters or encouraging the molecules to rise to the surface, it’s clear that adding water to whiskey has the molecular potential to release important flavor compounds like guaiacol.

 

So why isn’t whiskey simply bottled at lower alcohol concentrations?

 

If diluting whiskey really does mean that aromatic molecules evaporate from the surface, “by bottling at higher concentrations, you get less deterioration of taste,” Lacks said.

Whiskey, by definition, has to be 40 percent alcohol, said Hughes.

Diluting it would also increase packaging and distribution costs and take away the choice from the consumer.

 

At the end of the day, individuals should drink their whisky however they prefer it, said Hughes, but “if someone says they don’t like whiskey,” he added, “they just haven’t tried the right one yet.”

 

From this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/08/17/the-best-way-to-drink-whiskey-according-to-science/?utm_term=.85ab06038730