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Vox Nihili posted:It's supposed to be $10. It's $15 around here too. The most drinkable thing for $10 I can find is Old Crow.
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Jun 16, 2018 03:41
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I randomly picked up a couple of nips of Ezra Brooks and Duggan's Dew while on vacation. The former has a portion of the same weird wet cardboard taste that Fleischmann does, while the latter doesn't taste like much of anything. This makes me realize, I think I've been somewhat lucky so far with my purchases. The only truly bad thing I've tasted was the Fleischmann's, and that was intentional and partially ended up down the drain where it would never hurt anyone ever again.
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Jun 16, 2018 04:08
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Vox Nihili posted:It's supposed to be $10. And in a mixed drink 🍹.
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Jun 16, 2018 04:54
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Weltlich posted:I think that's the biggest thing. Whiskey prices have been inflating over the past decade, and to find a $15 bottle that isn't absolute rotgut is honestly pretty astonishing. I've had $40, 375ml bottles of super-small-batch-ultra-special-micro-distillery-exclusive whiskies that were just as pedestrian and inoffensive as Mellow Corn. It's a bottle I never feel bad about mixing, or pouring some into a marinade, or pouring a finger for myself while I'm waiting to flip the steaks. Jefferson Presidential 17yr it's not, but it's passable and versatile. Seriously. In 2012 I would get Buffalo Trace for $20-21 and WT101 for $22. Now Buffalo Trace is $30. WL Weller was $15 and frequently on sale to $13. I bought a fifth of the Evan Williams BiB last night, seems decent so far. Didn’t have much since all the glasses are packed up, there will probably be some tonight.
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Jun 16, 2018 14:18
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Is there a beer equivalent of mellow corn?
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Jun 16, 2018 19:38
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Mandalay posted:Is there a beer equivalent of mellow corn? Depends on what you're looking for. If you're just concerned about something that's super cheap and doesn't outright taste bad, a boring macrolager like PBR. If you're talking something tasty but easily available everywhere for a relatively low price, probably stuff like Blue Moon, Sam Adams, and Fat Tire. It's harder to find a true analogue with beer because most craft beers are a similar price per bottle. You only start seeing high prices with really rare poo poo like Westvleteren 12 or discontinued one-off batches that a store still has in stock for double price.
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Jun 16, 2018 20:15
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Mandalay posted:Is there a beer equivalent of mellow corn? Not really, but something like Yuengling probably gets close. Cheap, independently-made product that's just been pretty solid for decades. Beer is sort of the opposite of whiskey in a lot of ways. Craft breweries are largely making the highest quality beer, but oldschool distilleries like Heaven Hill are still making the best whiskey (and most, but certainly not all, craft whiskey is bad).
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Jun 17, 2018 03:36
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I got some mellow corn for 12 bucks and it isnt bad at all its almost certainly the best 12 dollar booze ive ever had. I'm starting to see a bunch of Kavalan stuff around here for the first time, I think its all 100 bucks +, is it really worth that much? I'm a really big fan of sherried whiskey and I saw they have a sherry finished one. Is it worth getting instead of say, more Glenfarclas? hakimashou fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Jun 17, 2018 |
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Jun 17, 2018 03:58
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Vox Nihili posted:Not really, but something like Yuengling probably gets close. Cheap, independently-made product that's just been pretty solid for decades. I think beer is also much cheaper to produce when it comes to good beer compared to good whiskey. There's no expectation that you're going to age the beer for 15 or 20 years before selling it, requiring you to spend money maintaining a warehouse full of unsold product for a decade or more. I imagine a lot of the money you spend on high quality whiskey goes into paying for the aging process rather than the raw materials and distillation process.
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Jun 17, 2018 04:28
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chitoryu12 posted:I think beer is also much cheaper to produce when it comes to good beer compared to good whiskey. There's no expectation that you're going to age the beer for 15 or 20 years before selling it, requiring you to spend money maintaining a warehouse full of unsold product for a decade or more. I imagine a lot of the money you spend on high quality whiskey goes into paying for the aging process rather than the raw materials and distillation process. Vox Nihili posted:Not really, but something like Yuengling probably gets close. Cheap, independently-made product that's just been pretty solid for decades. This is more or less it. When you're buying an old whiskey, you're basically buying the rent it paid to sit in a barrel for however long it was - and at present the established distilleries are the ones able to put out well aged product. Unfortunately there's been a trend in craft whiskey to push things out before they're really ready, and/or use sketchy labeling to call rebottled MGP whiskey "artisan." The small barrel trend is also contributing to the problem. Somewhere along the line, it became common wisdom that the smaller barrel they put whiskey in, the faster it ages. Unfortunately the only thing that ages whiskey* is time. If you put it in a smaller barrel, it picks up oak flavors faster, but a lot of the volatile organic compounds that need to break down to make a whiskey "mature" only decompose given a long enough timeline. So if it's being done right, then it's just going to have to sit for years. *Note that while small barrel aging is not optimal for whiskey, it's pretty effective for some other spirits, like rum. This is because a good rum is pretty much ready to drink right off of the still - aging and barreling is primarily to enhance flavor, not to remove flaws. The opposite is true for brandy, where proper age time is doubly important.
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Jun 17, 2018 05:21
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Weltlich posted:This is more or less it. When you're buying an old whiskey, you're basically buying the rent it paid to sit in a barrel for however long it was - Excellent point and please allow me to add to that. The angels' share is quite significant. You lose on average 2% of the liquid volume each year due to evaporation. (This number differs per cask, location in the warehouse, climate, etc. In Kentucky it'll be more because it's much hotter than Scotland. ) This means that after 10 years you'll only have about 80% of the volume left that you filled the cask with. After 15 years it's 75%, after 20 years it's 66% and so on. Not only that, but also alcohol evaporates much more than the water does, meaning that the percentage of alcohol drops over time. Usually casks are filled at around 60-65% ABV. Whisky must be bottled at a minimum of 40% ABV. When whisky is bottled they use water to bring the alcohol level it comes out of the cask with down to the level they bottle it at. (Which can be anything between 40% and what it comes out of the cask at.) If your whisky is very old then not only did you lose a lot of volume from evaporation, you now cannot even water it down as much as younger whisky because you need to maintain at least 40%. Even if the whisky naturally lost alcohol and went below 40% you can no longer sell it as whisky. So you can imagine why the older whisky gets, it becomes much more expensive to make. It's not just marketing.
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Jun 17, 2018 08:20
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hakimashou posted:I got some mellow corn for 12 bucks and it isnt bad at all its almost certainly the best 12 dollar booze ive ever had. It's decent/good whisky, especially the Solist series, but not at that price point imo. It's young whisky and whatever the quality young whisky is not worth that much money imo. Get more glenfarclas. Something with an age statement.
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Jun 17, 2018 08:27
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spankmeister posted:
Aged spirits proof-up under the right hot and dry conditions. Bourbon can be barreled no higher than 125 proof, but obviously many bourbons like Stagg end up way higher than that.
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Jun 17, 2018 09:13
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TobinHatesYou posted:Aged spirits proof-up under the right hot and dry conditions. Bourbon can be barreled no higher than 125 proof, but obviously many bourbons like Stagg end up way higher than that. Yeah you're right I neglected to mention that.
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Jun 17, 2018 10:06
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Small barrels can work in some cases, like Laphroaig Quarter Cask. You get more cask influence, without losing the phenolic attack. That's obviously a special case, though. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Jun 18, 2018 |
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Jun 17, 2018 16:17
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Gave my dad a bottle of ogd for Father's day because it's tasty and I was feeling ironic. (He's got six grandkids now!)
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Jun 17, 2018 16:23
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silvergoose posted:Gave my dad a bottle of ogd for Father's day because it's tasty and I was feeling ironic. (He's got six grandkids now!) Is Old Grandad still on its old mash bill? I heard that Jim Beam didn't switch it over to their own recipe like they did for Old Crow.
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Jun 17, 2018 16:25
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chitoryu12 posted:Is Old Grandad still on its old mash bill? I heard that Jim Beam didn't switch it over to their own recipe like they did for Old Crow. Yup still higher rye mash bill.
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Jun 17, 2018 16:56
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KozmoNaut posted:Small Bartels can work in some cases, like Laphroaig Quarter Cask. You get more cask influence, without losing the phenolic attack. Yeah, there are situations where a smaller cask is desirable, but usually as a secondary adjunct to a larger barrel. In the case of Quarter Cask, the smaller barrels are used for finishing. After a primary aging time in old bourbon barrels, the whiskey is racked out into the smaller casks to add depth of character and flavor. Balvenie does something similar with their rum cask 14, and Glenmorangie is notorious for pushing the SWA's buttons by bending the rules with all sorts of port, lasanta, and other wine barrels. At present, the current industry wisdom says that a 30 gallon barrel is the happy medium for US based craft distilleries that are looking to get their whiskey program running. They're big enough that they don't readily over-oak the spirit before it's mature, and they're small enough that the quality of the cooperage can really shine through if the distillery is doing some fancy barrel work. But a US distiller should still expect to sit on a whiskey for a minimum of 2 years. I run into very few "straight" craft whiskies, and that's both a shame and telling.
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Jun 17, 2018 19:00
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It's also hard to start up a whiskey distillery because of the need for aging. Anyone can start a craft brewery and start pushing out beers the same year, but distilleries usually need to start producing unaged spirits like rum, gin, and vodka while waiting for their whiskeys to age. I did a tour of Widow Jane in Brooklyn and a lot of the whiskey they sell is provided by an anonymous distillery in Kentucky because they're only 6 years old, so they just recently surpassed the 4-year limit for selling straight bourbon without an age statement on the label. They started out by selling rum and mixing whiskey from Kentucky with their preferred water supply to change the taste, so stuff like their 10-year bourbon is still from that Kentucky batch. They also make a small number of semi-experimental blended whiskeys every year, like they have a Widow Jane Dregs made by mixing the dregs of every 100 barrels into an intentionally hot-tasting product with upside-down labels that's meant to imitate stuff from the early and mid 20th century.
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Jun 17, 2018 19:53
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Hopefully, kavalan gets cheaper at some point as they grow. They showed up in costco recently, although it wasn't there when I went today. I think their basic + solist bourbon cask can be found for 80-90, which is more expensive than any bottle that I have aside from a cask-strength highland park. I'd like to try it some time since my parents are from taiwan which means I can pretty easily have them pick it up from duty free shops. Also holy poo poo, the ex-bourbon cask at total wine is more than double the duty-free shop price I just looked up
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Jun 17, 2018 22:20
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I see Crown has a mesquite and bourbon barrel limited editions. Anyone tried them?
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Jun 18, 2018 20:41
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wormil posted:I see Crown has a mesquite and bourbon barrel limited editions. Anyone tried them? No, but they had to discontinue the "bourbon" offering because its label violates the law, so this is the only run of that particular product (or at least that particular name). Doubt we'll be missing much.
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Jun 19, 2018 00:58
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 Oops.
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Jun 19, 2018 03:21
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If you're anything like me, you have 500 cork backups. What use are all those corks, says my wife all the time.
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Jun 19, 2018 06:25
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chitoryu12 posted:
This is a war crime, please notify The Hague immediately.
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Jun 19, 2018 18:54
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Weltlich posted:This is a war crime, please notify The Hague immediately. Yes I am from The Hague I have notified the proper authorities.
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Jun 19, 2018 19:03
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Weltlich posted:This is a war crime, please notify The Hague immediately. Agreed, Widow Jane is a crime: http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2014/09/death-by-list.html?m=1 http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2014/09/wherein-we-mine-more-facts-about-widow.html?m=1 And that cork situation isn't looking too hot either!
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Jun 19, 2018 21:03
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I got a bottle of Wild Turkey Rye not too long ago that had a bad cork. It had partially broken apart and dropped a bunch of fine particles into the liquor. I replaced the cork, but I wasn't sure what to do about the particles, so I ended up pouring it through a couple coffee filters, which seemed to remove most of the "dust." Was this safe to do? Is there a better method for filtering liquor?
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Jun 20, 2018 05:20
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Juaguocio posted:I got a bottle of Wild Turkey Rye not too long ago that had a bad cork. It had partially broken apart and dropped a bunch of fine particles into the liquor. I replaced the cork, but I wasn't sure what to do about the particles, so I ended up pouring it through a couple coffee filters, which seemed to remove most of the "dust." Was this safe to do? Is there a better method for filtering liquor? I would have taken it back to the store and/or notified WT.
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Jun 20, 2018 05:49
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Eh, I wouldn’t think that a broken cork would be such a big deal. Things happen. I had a High West cork break off inside the neck of the bottle. I put a screw into it and it was fine. In other news, this is my latest find. Got both at the same shop on the same day for retail. 
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Jun 20, 2018 14:19
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very stable genius posted:Eh, I wouldn’t think that a broken cork would be such a big deal. Things happen. I had a High West cork break off inside the neck of the bottle. I put a screw into it and it was fine. I view broken/substandard corks as a sort of contemptuous aggression. The cost difference between a cork that can break off (as seen in the pic of the Widow Jane) and one that is injection molded into the cap in such a way to prevent breakage is literally $0.05. If a distillery can't be arsed to spend an extra nickel per bottle, and they want me to pay $40 to $50+, then I take that as sort of a slap in the face as a consumer. It would be one thing if it was just isolated incidents and they didn't know about it, but it's a well documented in the industry.
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Jun 20, 2018 18:09
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Weltlich posted:I view broken/substandard corks as a sort of contemptuous aggression. The cost difference between a cork that can break off (as seen in the pic of the Widow Jane) and one that is injection molded into the cap in such a way to prevent breakage is literally $0.05. If a distillery can't be arsed to spend an extra nickel per bottle, and they want me to pay $40 to $50+, then I take that as sort of a slap in the face as a consumer. It would be one thing if it was just isolated incidents and they didn't know about it, but it's a well documented in the industry. The Widow Jane break is just cheap design, but even quality corks can break (usually the natural cork itself tears rather than the material attaching the cork to the cap). This is pretty common with older bottles, where the cork has had time to dry out and become brittle. Artificial corks like the one posted should pretty much never break barring some serious abuse, but I'm not terribly surprised that an "artisinal" bourbon "from" Brooklyn would have this sort of problem. Vox Nihili fucked around with this message at 19:12 on Jun 20, 2018 |
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Jun 20, 2018 19:09
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wormil posted:I would have taken it back to the store and/or notified WT. I would have done that too, but I opened it and had a drink before noticing the sediment in the bottom.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:20
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edit oops, I was typing when you were posting. I've never had a bad cork but unless it was something rare or I was already a few sheets in the wind, I wouldn't bother straining whiskey or dealing with bad corks, just take it back. And call the distiller, might get some swag.
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Jun 20, 2018 19:22
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Just ordered some Four Roses SB Amazon Primed to me before the prices are hiked tomorrow, cheers Don! https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...m-a8408566.html
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Jun 21, 2018 13:31
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Picked up some new friends. Total damage before tax: $97. The Woodinville is a huge gamble at $40, but I'm excited to try a decently aged, 100% rye whiskey that isn't from the treacherous northern wastes. Vox Nihili fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Jun 22, 2018 |
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Jun 22, 2018 03:08
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Does it actually say it's distilled in Washington though?
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Jun 22, 2018 14:24
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spankmeister posted:Does it actually say it's distilled in Washington though? It's distilled in Washington, yes. The distillery opened in 2010 and is just beginning to release their first 4+ year straight rye and straight bourbon outside the Washington market. "This 100% rye starts with pure, traditionally-grown rye cultivated exclusively for us on the Omlin family farm in Quincy, Washington. The grain is mashed, distilled & barreled in our Woodinville distillery – then trucked back over the Cascade Mountains to our private barrel houses, where Central Washington’s extreme temperature cycles promote the extraction of natural flavors from the oak."
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Jun 22, 2018 18:30
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So half of a rickhouse at the Barton/1792 distillery collapsed today. Enough bourbon was lost that there are concerns the nearby river will be polluted by it. 
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Jun 22, 2018 21:21
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