id imagine that would work better with non-peaty whiskies? I might try that! Vanilla would be cool as well

haha wonder if they did sponsor it tho- they finished the whole bottle pretty quick lol

Vince Gilligan said in a podcast that they weren't paid for it. They tried to minimize how much they showed the label (the way they held the bottle etc.), but he said he used it just because it's his favorite rye whiskey, not because of a sponsorship.

Whiskey fans,

Here's some great/ridiculous packaging:


Saw this at Cask this weekend. Sounds very good: http://www.coolhunting.com/food-drin...hor-whisky.php

~$200.

Also recently in stock there:

Willett 11yo Bourbon - $75
Bruichladdich Black Art - $178
Willett 21yo Bourbon - $195
Samaroli Evolution 2011 - $335

Need to decide which one(s) to splurge on.

LA4,

Read the thread for tons of recommendations.

Haha, yeh it is pretty much the nuts. I still prefer it neat though so I usually use something else for Manhattans. +1 On being all but done with orderthem at bars anymore. Almost always disappointing and really expensive. Usually too heavy on the vermouth and bitters and I always have to explain that I like it shaken but in a rocks glass not a Martini glass and a twist instead of cherry and for some reason this all takes forever and breaks brains.

Just tasted the batch, filtered it this morning. Considerably less burn than the Bulleit with water, small apple taste. Not bad.

I've been doing a little testing on whisky blends and infusions a lot like that apple article. My uncle's got a small still in Portland and I had some of his homemade while I was out there which got me thinking.

I don't want to tard up a thread about whisky brands with my experiments though if people aren't interested. If so, I'll probably start a few recipes in the next week or two and give updates.

Tone,

Interested.

+1

Very nice collection. I just wanted to make a comment: You should store your opened bottles of vermouth in the fridge so they keep longer. This is even more important when it comes to sweet vermouth.

I use Vyo dry vermouth for my martinis and really like it. I need to buy a bottle of the sweet vermouth too.

Oh thanks I had never heard that.

bumping this quote to see if anyone has tried it? The article refers to bourbons, I have a bottle of Glenmorangie up in the cupboard and was wondering whether there'd be any practical differences in attempting it with a single malt whiskey.

Curiosity got the better of me and I embarked on my first attempt with four Granny Smith apples. I will let you know how it turns out in five days time.

Anyone ever try something from Jon, Mark and Robbo? Was talking with someone on Saturday who had tried it while in Scotland and recommended it.

Been drinking quite a bit of these lately

Noah's Mill



Black Maple Hill



I typically drink whisky neat, but have found that with the strength of the Noah's Mill, I prefer one ice cube and a twist of orange zest. I do the BMH with just zest.

I was a purist for a long time, but after reading Julian Van Winkle's Old Fashioned recipe (sugar cube, 3 dashes of orange bitters on the cube, muddle with flesh of a thick slice of orange, add ice and 4 oz burbon and serve), I began to appreciate a very subtle hint of orange. Give it a shot.

Snipe,

Two v solid bourbons.

For old fashioneds I really dislike the muddled fruit. And I prefer a little ango and a little orange for the bitters. Instead of the muddling I like a flamed orange zest at the end.

Flamed as in w a torch?

very cool ty for link

Nice. Ill have to give that a try tonight.

Hey El Diablo,
Have you been to Bourbon and Branch in SF? They do(did?) a drink there called a Revolver which is a high quality Manhattan with a flamed orange zest dropped in at the end. Extremely delicious and dangerous! Haven't been there in a while so I'm not sure if it's still on the menu.

I'll have to try that if I'm ever in there again.

I'll tell you the SF drink that I miss - the Black Cross from the Burritt Room. That place used to be the greatest secret date spot and that drink was fantastic. The executive mixologist had some falling out with management though, and took his drinks and his people with him. I should find out where they went. Found this though.

BLACK CROSS
Use a mixing glass
two parts black tea infused jamaican rum; three quarters pear liquor; three quarters lemon; dash of angostura bitters; small lemon peel. Fill mixing glass with ice, stir and strain into chilled martini glass.

Here is round 1 of whiskey infusions. All of these recipes came from the internet or a "home distilling" book I found that's really flavoring, not distilling.

My ultimate end goal is to find the perfect honey mint bourbon recipe that will basically be the perfect thing in the world for mint juleps or just drinking in the hot Georgia weather. However, I'd like to quote this sentence from the Gizmodo link findingneema posted:

What I'm going for here are smooth and subtle flavors.

Round 1 is 3 recipes. The smooth apple whiskey from that Gizmodo article. A cherry whiskey. And a blueberry bourbon.

First, the ingredients:


For the whiskey I went with Redemption Rye. It's 95% rye, and says aged less than 4 years. I would guess it's aged less the 2 years or else why would they skip out on calling it "straight rye whiskey" on the bottle.

It's very very dry and peppery, but has a smooth finish. The smokey flavor of the oak barrels is definitely apparent and the smell is slightly sweeter than the taste. The flavor may be slightly less complex because I don't believe it's aged super long.


The bourbon is Bulleit Bourbon Frontier Whiskey. It's a pretty standard bourbon, nice and sweet. It almost has a syrup-y flavor profile, which sounds a lot worse than it is and is probably just a function of me being bad describing it.

These two bottles combined cost me $51.15, so they're both very affordable. I didn't want something crazy to experiment on, but wanted something a little more flavorful than the Jim Beams of the world.

Also, I'm making all of these in half-bottle portions. No reason to go crazy if I'm not sure what I'm doing yet.

Recipes:

Smooth Apple Whiskey
350 mL Redemption Rye
2 Granny Smith apples

Like the Gizmodo article and libertyhaze, I couldn't find crabapples at the farmer's market so I went with granny smiths. Since I'm only doing half a bottle I did 2 apples, chopped up and making sure not to get any of the core.

I went with a rye instead of a bourbon because he listed that as the inspiration for his attempt.

Cherry Whiskey
350 mL Redemption Rye
4 cups of cherries, pitted and stemmed

Have you ever seen 4 cups of cherries? It's a lot of cherries. First thought at this point..."hmmmmm, how is this going to turn out?"



And have you ever pitted 4 cups of cherries? It looks like you killed something.




Blueberry Bourbon
350 mL Bulleit Bourbon
1/3 cup of blueberries, muddled

The instructions here were to "muddle the blueberries, breaking the skin but keeping them whole." I may be a terrible muddler, but that's easier said than done. It ended with me basically doing one blueberry at a time after the first couple attempts were a little messy.

And here is everything in their glasses to head off into the cabinet.

And you actually get more because I did all that last night!! I shook the bottles this morning, and again this afternoon to make sure all the fruit was getting soaked.

Day 1



Smooth Apple Whiskey
It's already significantly smoother than the original rye. I kept about 50mL of the rye to keep tasting against to see how the flavor is changing. However, it's also already starting to take on some apple flavor. Now, I'm no communist who hates apples, but that's not really what I was going for.

Since it's smooth I may filter it out tomorrow. I don't expect to have crab apples when it's time to do this in a full bottle run, so I'm going to try to search out dried granny smith apples instead, and probably do a slightly smaller volume. Of course, the flavor could completely change once I filter it back into a new bottle, so who knows.

Cherry Whiskey
Whoaaaaa. Very cherryful, and also surprisingly smooth. This is going to be my girlfriend's whiskey.

Not to say it's bad, just more fruity than I would've hoped for. It'll be interesting to try this in Manhattans. Maybe with less sweet vermouth to balance out the flavor.

Blueberry Bourbon
Slight flavor of blueberry starting to show up. Still not sure that I muddled these well, but it's nice to not have a pulpy fruit blend that's not super flavorful after 1 day. This is probably also due in large part to the smaller amount of ingredients, which is probably due to how much sweeter bourbon already is than whiskey. This one is likely to go on for more days so it'll be fun to watch it change.