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GramCracker posted:I just picked up a bottle of Makers 46. It's not bad, but it's not great; it tastes like Makers, but at the same time it doesn't. I probably won't buy it again. I got a bottle at an event, got to dip it myself and everything. Started drinking Maker's when I was 16, so the only real kick I get from the stuff is nostalgic. Makes a drat fine mixer, if you can afford the price point.
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Jun 8, 2012 00:45
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Lily Catts posted:Me and my friends drank a bottle of Green Label over the weekend. One friend sends us a photo of his own liquor haul on Monday and he bought another bottle of Green Label. The most he's tried before was Double Black, and he prefers blended to single malt. Feels great lol Blended Malt is fun, though I like a bit of grain in my blend for mixing purposes.
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Jun 21, 2023 13:01
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JohnCompany posted:I've had success converting bourbon fans with sherry-heavy scotch. How much is Aberlour 12 or Springbank 10 near you? Macallan is the gorilla for a reason.
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Jun 29, 2023 18:17
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Josh Lyman posted:I paid for entry to the Qantas lounge and got drunk on champagne and Glenlivet 12 instead There you go.
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Jul 13, 2023 00:15
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Vox Nihili posted:They have a plant in Kansas? I was only familiar with their gigantic facility in Indiana. Industrial Ethanol, yeah. Corn went up, commodities got fucky with inflation and higher interest rates, so they’re winding down the plant. I don’t know what this means on a macro level, but it’s not the Indiana plant which is MGPI (the I is for ingredients, it’s their whisky plant). They acquired Luxco to have in-house brands and are turning their production from contract and sourcing towards in-house stuff, so there’s that.
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Jul 14, 2023 14:51
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Klungar posted:Have you tried Asheville Distilling Company? I know my parents were a fan of them.
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Jul 14, 2023 16:11
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Lyon posted:I think everything I listed is pretty good value for the price. This is based on what's available in Pennsylvania. PA is rough because of the markup by the control board, same with NC and a few other states that have built alcohol profits into their yearly budget, but that’s a cool list. I’ll preface this lil’ rant with an invitation- if any of y’all head to Louisville, DM me and I will happily take you somewhere nice for a dram. So I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years (!), and I have tried whiskey(ies) that you cannot buy, ones that don’t exist anymore, every premium and super premium offering that I could get my hands on. I can’t remember how half of them taste. The “best” bourbon I’ve ever had have been with people, in particular situations, making memories. Buy what you like, what you can afford (stretch a little maybe?) and *drink them*. Drink them with friends. Drink them on the porch with the dogs after a long week. Drink them to celebrate, drink them when things don’t go your way (but gently). Buy your favorite weird ones, because you never know when they’re gonna go away (OGD 114, for instance, is always on the chopping block because it can make more money as Basil Hayden’s). Buy ones at a distillery because it was a beautiful day and you remember the smell of the mash- I’ve never had a bottle of Maker’s White Dog make it all the way home, for instance. Value is a similar proposition- it’s going to depend on your budget. Here in KY, we get stuff that doesn’t leave the Commonwealth (like the JTS Brown BiB noted above). My go-to is Very Old Barton 100, aged about three years. It costs $15 a fifth. When I was living in NYC it was OGD Bonded. Old Forester 86 label is a banger, as is Wild Turkey 101. The big house bourbons are excellent because they have so much stock it’s easy to make a consistent product. If I want a great value, smaller producers that create good product abound- I love the Peerless Rye, for instance, but it’s worth the $70 and change. Drink Willet where you can find it. Oh, and the best whiskies I ever drank? Both of them in the last three years. One was a high-rye 6 year Bardstown Bourbon Co from the barrel, which my Mom who was visiting for the first time at Easter declared to be her favorite, because it was her first time in a Rickhouse and seeing what I’ve been doing with my career for the last fifteen years. The other was rail shots of Old Crow on the night I met my fiancée at a dive bar in Brooklyn.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:24
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drat, I didn’t mean to kill this dead. Prompt- which small, newer makers are people enjoying? I saw New Riff in the chat, anything else I should keep an eye out for?
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Aug 31, 2023 15:51
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Nuurd posted:I have a soft spot for the Chattanooga Whiskey folks. I like their single barrels especially. I’m in the northeast TN region so distribution is pretty good. Are they doing their own distilling? I don’t know that I’ve seen it up in KY but we are going to Boone after Labor Day and I might have to pop into a shop if you think it’s something special.
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Aug 31, 2023 17:24
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I’m shocked we’ve done so much Islay chat and no one is standing for Bowmore. The 17 was a brilliant dram.
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Sep 1, 2023 21:02
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Vox Nihili posted:Man the price hikes are nuts. OGD114 used to be $25 all day everyday. That price increase is why the juice didn’t get diluted and dressed up into Basil Hayden, I’m afraid.
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Sep 7, 2023 12:52
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Hakarne posted:All this talk about hunting rare bottles and I never thought to ask about online purchases. Are there any good/reputable places that people have used before? There's a good reason for that. It's an incredibly heavily regulated good in the US, and while I won't get into the nuances of the three-tiered alcohol distribution model and the issues online and interstate commerce present, the short answer is that almost everything you can buy a la carte online is grey market at best. See, the government likes to take its cut on alcohol sales —the alcohol tax was the first federal excise tax and the whisky rebellion the justification for having a standing Army— and even well established players in the alochol re-sale field have a nasty proclivity to run afoul of the law. In short, it's not illegal like selling controlled substances, but it's certainly not the "right way" and so a ton of bad actors get away with dumb poo poo, counterfeiting abounds, and you have little recourse for redress if they decide to keep your money and send you something else instead.
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Jan 2, 2024 22:44
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Lyon posted:I think this has changed a bit in the last decade. Lots of brick and mortar shops have an online presence and it’s just a matter if they can legally ship to your state. PA tends to be pretty strict but lots of places will still ship stuff here. I’d double check the reputation and legitimacy of any online shop before you use it and I wouldn’t buy crazy bottles probably but I’ve certainly ordered a lot of bourbon from online retailers. The pandemic especially changed a lot of this, but see my comment about a number of businesses on the up and up who run into problems with the tax man— even if you're trying to do it all above board, you can get tripped up, and if it's interstate, that's subject to change and interpretation by the prevailing body. It's not something you want to put rare bottle money on, is my professional opinion.
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Jan 3, 2024 01:29
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OF is also releasing a 10 year in that historical series, will report back after I get a hold of some. In other news the other day I got lost doing errands, found a middle aged man “biker” bar that is full of 60s nostalgia crap and is very harmlessly weird. Came for a pint, stayed for the hapless bartender who when I asked for an old forester suggested the 100 instead of 86, and then poured me three fingers of the 1920 for about five bucks when I said okay. I added a solid ninety minutes to those errands, tell you what
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Jan 7, 2024 14:49
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Lowness 72 posted:Interesting. Out in the northeast I rarely see it stocked. But also don't hit total wine much. I don't believe it's an allocated item, your local liquor store can probably order it. You'll get a better deal at Total because of their volume, though.
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Jan 18, 2024 19:54
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Klungar posted:Ardbeg 10 and Port Charlotte 10 ended up being greatly appreciated Valentine's Day gifts for my wife, thanks to the thread for the help! Awesome! We love to see the Scotch love spread. The thread may be interested in all these "dusty" bars that are popping up; I finally went to a prominent one since an old friend with a corporate card was in town. We did a Wild Turkey spread— the '23 Generations release (apparently a mix of a 9, 11, and 14 y/o chosen by each Russell and blended), a '97 101 rye, a 94 "cheesy gold foil" 12 year, and a 1980 101 Bourbon. The generations was a little hot at first (120 proof will do that), but it opened up a bit as we got used to drinking everything above 100pf. The rye was the bartender's choice, and a very fine example of a well matured rye from a time when the style was deeply unfashionable. It was excellent, and we won't see its like again outside of Russell's Reserve releases for a while, so if you see one of their ryes, go for it. The cheesy gold foil was interesting, I did in fact get a kind of gorgonzola on the nose (I think cheesy here refers to the packaging and not the notes, but I did get it, so). Definitely a wood profile that you just don't taste as much anymore, probably from the 70s stocks that brushed up against over extraction before being used in younger bottlings. The 1980 was not my favorite, per se, but it is the one I could drink all drat night. As I told my fiancée, it was just a treat to drink something that bypassed my critical thinking skills and just registered as "drat, that's great bourbon". Since it's become an intellectual and aesthetic pursuit for so many of us, it was superb to just sip on something excellent without having to savor every impression or pick it apart. Anyway, 11/10 because it was someone else's money.
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Feb 14, 2024 17:42
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Casu Marzu posted:
Wait, so r/bourbon is sourcing and bottling its own juice, or is someone on reddit buying lots of finished goods, blending them in their house, and shipping out to redditors who venmo them?
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Mar 27, 2024 13:03
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DerekSmartymans posted:That’s got to be the point…expensive Scotch for people that don’t really like Scotch but don’t want to be thought of as “unmasculine.” Well aged blended whiskies are a different beast than single malts, and the popularity of single malts as a category is about forty years old, due to overproduction in the industry post WWII— before the "whiskey loch" oversupply of the 70's, blended Scotch was considered the finer product, as it had depth and complexity from using whiskey from multiple distilleries. Single Malt as a distinct product was a reaction to the oversupply, and successfully rebranded the category. As for whether one is more "masculine" than the other; the gently caress out of here. The best tasters in whisk(e)y I know are women.
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Apr 8, 2024 15:26
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DerekSmartymans posted:I wasn’t saying I agreed, hence the quotation marks. Some (especially younger) guys have it in their head that the only acceptable thing to drink is bourbon or Scotch, even though if they were honest they hate it. I think that’s silly. & I walked back some choice invectives related to bud light and lifted trucks because I thought better of assuming a SA poster of 20 years was gonna up and show their rear end about single malts. Man, also I love me some umbrella drinks. Reminds me I gotta write a quick how-to on that before boating season really kicks up. Problem is whiskey wasn't a big player in that milieu; outside of a monkey gland, I really can't think of much.
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Apr 9, 2024 02:28
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