whiskey

just bought some six year russell's reserve rye

File under non-story clearly written to get free Pappy: http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/25/is-the-bourbon-boom-for-real/

what does ilx thing of tyrconnell anyway

xp for christs sakes basically all american whiskey is sour mash. that drives me nuts (re the first graph).

Ozersky, author of The Hamburger: A History, is a James Beard Award–winning food writer. His most recent book, Colonel Sanders and the American Dream, was published in May 2012. The views expressed are solely his own.

heh

omg so many lies in that article

dammit the connemara startin to grow on me

I was drinking tallishker.

After a few weeks off the sauce I picked up a bottle of standard-issue Four Roses today, looking forward to tasting something new (to me).

Standard issue Four Roses is one of those nice mid-priced go-tos of which there seem to be (thankfully) so many these days.

marker's mark is going to be going down from 45% abv to 42% abv for anyone who cares about that kinda stuff

haha i also misspell it now, same as 'chris markers'

oh lol

http://qz.com/52478/makers-mark-waters-down-its-bourbon-to-meet-rising-demand/

lmao

Yeah, that does not pass the smell test. Methinks it a) saves them a bunch of money and b) allows them to redirect those with a slightly more cash to spend to the "46" bottling, which is still going to be 47% ABV.

Chris Markers, me too.

After a night of hitting the Chris Marker bourbon too hard:
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRZ9hMZdiOEKpEcsrtUN2nmXkSYKRUmoq0p0yvSSpGg5wqrlbQ9

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/94/238172642_bf5cbcd696_z.jpg?zz=1

Real whiskey. Real cats.

sakebottles

whiskey bottles signed by francis ford coppola, zhang yimou, wim wenders, jim jarmusch, vittorio storaro.

others in the bar included chris marker, and one time godard collaborator jean-pierre gorin.

so is this purported whiskey shortage for real or what

I drank it all

you monster

depends on what you mean by shortage. but yeah, in general there aren't enough barrels at certain ages to support demand.

we're probably going to get flooded in a couple years

http://qz.com/54762/makers-mark-learns-a-painful-social-media-lesson-wont-dilute-its-bourbon/

some weird german dude insisted on buying me a neat knappogue irish whiskey - really nice & smooth

And how was the whiskey?

good for maker's; it was a dumb idea all around

"new coke" move, imo

Yeah, a lot of people have joked that Maker's gets to introduce its Coke Classic without ever having produced its New Coke, but New Maker's Mark definitely made it to stores. I saw it with my own eyes last week. What a boneheaded folly and PR fuck up all around though. If there's high demand and low supply, then you don't lower the quality. Simple economics dictates that you raise the price. If anything, the outcry was fans and detractors calling the company on its BS buff. Maker's has since, post compromise, promised the occasional shortage in the future - you know, to keep quality so high - but even those threats are hard to buy when they sell Maker's Mark at Costco in 1.75 liter jugs.

Simple economics dictates that Jack Daniels sells a metric fuckton and they've lowered their alcohol content twice

Kind of think that someone sold the MM owners on the idea that they could have a premium brand (46) and expand their following by having the original product be even more widespread. Not really the vision they're aligned with, imo.

Simple economics dictates that Jack Daniels sells a metric fuckton and they've lowered their alcohol content twice

Well, yeah. But JD never claimed a global whiskey shortage was forcing them to weaken the product to meet demand.

their claim was that "marketing had found that customers preferred a lower proof whiskey"

which is kind of worse, imo

But JD isn't even proper bourbon. It's been compromised since birth. Maker's Mark, otoh, was the epitome of disingenuous, especially for a company the coasts on "tradition."

http://spiritsjournal.klwines.com/storage/mmark%20257.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1360955255028

I'd agree with the latter but not with the former. Tennessee Whiskey is nearly functionally identical to bourbon, although the last step does give it a different flavor. Dickel for life, fuck the haters.

jack daniels could legally call itself a bourbon iirc

Charcoal filter, no? Doesn't that mess it up?

"Charcoal Filtering" and Charcoal Mellowing are TOTALLY differnt processes. To begin with, "charcoal filtering" is only called that because it takes the "charcoal" out of ready to bottle Bourbon that has been aged in the required new charred oak barrels--it is not passed through charcoal. The entire process happens in minutes and is simply so you don't have black floaty bits of charred tree in your Manhattan. The Lincoln County Process, Charcoal Mellowing, happens before the whiskey touches a barrell and if you ever go to Lynchburg, the folks at Jack Daniel's will proudly explain how it takes hours and hours for their whiskey to leach through the the ten plus feet of maple charcoal they use for the mellowing process. It is exactly the fact that this happens prior to aging and clearly effects the flavor (as noted above, Bourbon law allows no additives, even if that additive might be darn near the same thing you get from a new charred oak barrel) that disqualifies JD from ever being able to be called Bourbon.

From straightbourbon.com"

Is Jack Daniel's a bourbon?
Jack Daniel's is not considered a bourbon because it is charcoal-mellowed -- slowly, drop by drop, filtered through sugar-maple charcoal -- prior to aging, which many experts say gives it a different character. The process, called the Lincoln County Process, infuses a sweet and sooty character into the distillate as it removes impurities. But up to and after the charcoal filtering, the Jack Daniel's production is much the same as any other Bourbon. Jack Daniel's and George Dickel are two fine Tennessee Whiskeys though neither can be called bourbon.

knappogue still otm

oh my b xpost

Via Binny's:

Makers Missed the Mark.
Don't miss your chance to grab this COLLECTABLE BOTTLE.

If you missed this story, here's what happened. Maker's Mark announced that they would lower the alcohol of their beloved bourbon from 90 to 84 proof. It took less than a week for public outrage to reach such a fervor that they doubled back on their decision, promising to stick with the original recipe. We don't mean to wax poetic, but this may be one of the biggest beverage missteps since New Coke. One that will leave its mark on the industry for generations.

That makes the low proof Maker's Mark an instant collector's item for whiskey enthusiasts.

The distillery is busy reclaiming cases from wholesalers, but we're holding our allocation for you. We want to offer you the chance to buy this bottle of history. Remember, it's a limited product, production had a life measured in hours instead of days or weeks. Once it's gone, it's gone for good.

I was at a Binny's earlier today and thought about it. Then I bought a bottle of Eagle Rare instead.

got a third party bottling of highland park 21 yr, pretty nice, fairly smooth as u would expect but with a taliskerish heft and piquancy

I enjoyed reading this:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/11/130211fa_fact_sanneh?currentPage=all

I got my old man a wee pack of different Bruichladdich expressions (a ten, a fifteen and an eighteen I think?) for his birthday one year but he never did get to drink them. Now they're sitting in my kitchen cupboard, waiting for the right time. Think maybe I'll open one!

just drank a .375ml of jameson, this stuff goes down pretty smooth. i'm a little concerned i'm not drunk off it, honestly

that's only ten shots tbf

Bottle of green spot to report on, gimme a half hour

I'd be a little concerned if 375ml/ten shots of whiskey did not make me drunk. Do you weight 350 pounds?