whiskey

I love love love Rittenhouse BIB rye whiskey. Given that I'm so happy with it, and can get it readily for a fair price, is trying other, pricier brands of rye worth it? Name names if you want to recommend any.

Well, there are fewer ryes than there are bourbons, so that makes things a little easier. You talking drinking it straight?

I normally drink it on the rocks or in an Old Fashioned.

If you're mixing it for a cocktail, maybe go for Old Overholt or Sazerac. Fancier ryes, a lot of people like Whistle Pig's Boss Hog, or the older Sazerac, if you can find it, or Handy, if you can find it. Rittenhouse makes a super fancy 23-year, but that's $$$. Willett has some good rye. That might be a good mid-high point rye.

i love the angel's envy rye

I love love love Rittenhouse BIB rye whiskey. Given that I'm so happy with it, and can get it readily for a fair price, is trying other, pricier brands of rye worth it? Name names if you want to recommend any.

― #TweetFromAnUnknownWoman (j.lu), Monday, March 31, 2014 1:54 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i would definitely recommend trying sazerac which is probably the other great mid-shelf rye left in existence. i prefer rittenhouse but there's a great contrast between the two. sazerac 18, if you can track it down, is absolutely worth the investment.

if you're just staring at the shelf of ryes keep in mind that bulleit, dickel, templeton, redemption, and a couple others i'm forgetting have a common source and use a substantially different mashbill from rittenhouse/sazerac (and from american rye whiskey as it's historically understood). you can certainly give one of these a shot, but just be aware of what you're getting.

just bought a dozen bottles of talisker 10yr for abt £21 each, reasonably safe to assume im not going to get bored of it

still taking the occasional swig outta that glendronach. it's lasting far longer than it should. ur bliss sounds tastier

theres hardly any actively crap single malt whisky, theres underwhelming and theres all sorts of limited release shit which clearly isnt remotely worth its retail price but its all drinkable

just over twenty is fine for a good entry level single malt, mostly they are around thirty quid now (~£20 net) which seems excessive and is inflated significantly from the mid 2000s

ah i can't rly complain, it's not too bad & it was a gift

my best friend received this from his mother's newish husband a few years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penderyn_(whisky) and it was incredibly atrocious. just pure shit. ffs wales

yeah never tried it but it's just whatever shit they can sell with no age statement, probably half of it to sentimental welsh people

they might make something better given time and if they do they can thank the people who bought their shit early releases (very difficult to found a distillery precisely because absent some futures scheme there is no revenue for years)

like this is almost certainly a prime example of speculative veblen collector dogshit

http://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/P-13405.aspx

i love when cask strength whiskies both "benefit from the higher bottling strength" and "take water well."

i have a bottle of rittenhouse, should i use it for fancy cocktails or just savour it straight or on the rocks (or with water, which is how i drink my scotch)

you should make at least a couple manhattans with it but it's fantastic with water too

I picked up a bottle of the Knob Creek 9 y.o. 120 proof. It is VERY good, and only ~$45. Highly recommended.

Kind of spoils more subtle bourbons like Blanton's if you have them the same night. Gotta trend up in proof, I guess.

It's counter intuitive, but higher proof bourbons can be surprisingly easy to drink.

My great-grandma drank scotch for pretty much her entire life, and lived to be 101. So yeah it's in my blood.

hold on to it s1ocki, I'm coming over with some mixology

Bushmills, bushmills black, bushmills 12 yr pot- black
Jameson, green spot, redbreast 12- green spot
Teeling, teeling small batch, teeling poitin- batch

Overall green spot ahead of redbreast

Poitin was appalling

Been sipping Heaven Hill this week. I FEEL AMAZING

You would if you have been sipping it all week. I would take a break and have some water.

Well im sipping on Perrier right now.

I had bought a bottle of Booker's for myself as a b-day present that I finally cracked

I got a bottle of Knob Creek standard the other day, and damn if'n it ain't superb. Much better than I had remembered.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2014/09/24/templeton-rye-lawsuit-iowa-recipe-consumer-fraud/16165957/

lol

awesome! delighted someone is finally doing this.

Check out this comment from 2008 on Chuck Cowdery's blog. If it's really from Scott Bush, it's amazing lawsuit evidence:
http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2008/01/what-is-this-stuff-really.html?showComment=1201740780000#c5125144523431029136

Also check out the linked recent article at the end of the comments there.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/your-craft-whiskey-is-probably-from-a-factory-distillery-in-indiana.html

yeah, that was the big media "omg we're blowing the lid off this" article, finally mainstreaming something that's been written about everywhere for years

cowdery must be the happiest guy alive today, years of trolling templeton and the others have finally paid off.

it'd be nice if he got credited more, but hey

So, knowing that, what's the best whisky to ask for at the bar? Do I need fancy terms or can I just say "Bourbon on the rocks, please"?

("Just throw a couple in their, yeah?")

there*

All I seem to drink anymore is Four Roses, but I did have a taste of Dickel white whiskey a week or two ago because it was on special and I couldn't resist. It smelled deadly but was actually quite smooth.

This rye story is pretty lol -- does it apply to Dickel rye too?

x-p
I always ask for Knotter Bourbon.

cad I would love to see a list of your top five/ten "affordable range" whiskeys, I need a new bottle of bourbon anyway and am getting kinda tired of Four Roses

lol xp

x-p
From the article I linked:

Some of those bottling and branding MGP whiskey make an effort to give the juice some sort of finishing touch to make their product distinctive. George Dickel Rye starts with MGP whiskey but charcoal-filters it before bottling. Angel’s Envy buys Indiana rye, puts it in old rum casks to soak up a little sweetness, and then charges a hefty markup. Others, such as Redemption Rye, present their MGP whiskey as-is.

The prize for the most upfront bottler has to go to Blaum Bros. of Galena, Illinois, which market Knotter—read “not our”—Bourbon with the transparent admission “We didn’t distill this bourbon. Nope, not a drop.”

cad I would love to see a list of your top five/ten "affordable range" whiskeys, I need a new bottle of bourbon anyway and am getting kinda tired of Four Roses

lol xp

― sleeve, Thursday, September 25, 2014 2:31 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's getting tougher and tougher to find dece affordable stuff, but here are some things (with the caveat that i neither have the money nor the inclination to try anything that's "craft distilled" or has an unclear origin, not that any of that stuff is affordable most of the time)

very old barton bib (if you can get it in your area, nb i haven't had it since they dropped the age statement, but man this stuff was good)
weller 107 proof
jim beam black
dickel no. 12 (still sort of affordable i think)
old grand dad bib (not really a sipper but the best mixing bourbon in the world imo)

x-p
I always ask for Knotter Bourbon.

― nickn, Thursday, September 25, 2014 7:31 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Knotter Bourbon. neat. Thanks"

I'll tell you all about it

thanks cad!

old grand dad bib

is this the 100 proof bonded stuff or something else? I was using the bonded for a while on yr recommendation

yeah it's the bonded

the 114 is kind of overkill imo

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/11/04/business/japanese-whisky-yamazaki-named-worlds-finest-dram#.VFlY1zQgtN4

perfect timing. i'll try to score a cheap bottle while in japan later this year.

has anyone tried it?

So I scored a bottle of Pappy 12 tonight, I suppose I should feel good? Lucky?

nice work! if you didnt pay over retail it's a very nice and fairly priced bourbon.

I paid $20 over, I guess? Not too worried about it, I haven't been buying bourbon much at all this year.

hi dan, what are you doing the next couple weekends? :D

Looking at this bottle, petting it occasionally, waiting for 12/5 to crack it open.