Boozeblogger

What do you do with a peaty Scotch who’s entire purpose in existing is to beat the hell out of every other High-Peat Scotch? What do you measure it against? How do you approach it? Very carefully. Because at any moment it could transform into:

“Everyone knew Optimus Prime was a lush. But at least he had good taste. “

There’s really no reason to beat around the bush. If you don’t like a lot of peat flavor in your scotch you’re not going to be able to handle this as it truly is the peatiest Scotch in the world right now. The nice people from Bruichladdich in Scotland sent me this sample as well as two others to show of the kind of diversity their distillery produces and their willingness to take risks with their Scotch has made them my favorite distillery. Octomore Orpheus is one of their experiments and it’s really something special.

If you’re not ready for it, the peat in this Scotch can really knock you on your ass. Then again if you’re drinking a Scotch with a name like OCTOMORE ORPHEUS (Pretty sure this translates to: Giant Bad-Ass Squid) I’m betting you already know what you’re getting into. At 140 ppm it beats out previous “peatiest” scotches like Ardberg Supernova by a mile. But the cool thing is that Bruichladdich didn’t want this to be JUST the “peatiest scotch in the world” they really wanted to make a great scotch that could stand on it’s own. So they finished it in Chateau Petrus Bordeaux wine casks for several months before bottling.

I have to be honest. The peat overwhelmed me at first. It was all I could taste. I like peat, it reminds me of riding my bike around the neighborhood in the fall and smelling all the leaves that my neighbors were burning. So a nice peaty scotch evokes warm memories in me every time. But if you stick with it you really do start to pick up the depth of this scotch and the fruitiness that comes from the Bordeaux barrels. If nothing else this really is an experience.

Our Rating *** (Recommended) If you LOVE peat I’d say this is four stars easy but due to the “learning curve” some people might have trouble with this one. Price: $109 online. Find it at the Laddie Shop!

HAVE YOU tasted Octomore Orpheus? What are your thoughts on peat? Does it draw you to a scotch or does even a bit too much send you running? Leave us a comment and let us know.

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It’s not often that I get to rave about a product. But this is one of my favorite dessert wines and, as we all head into the weekend and try to forget about monday, I thought I’d share it with you and do a little raving.

This is the one fruit wine that I’ve been able to find in smaller stores that is made with 100% of the fruit on the bottle and won’t break your wallet into a thousand pieces. Most other “fruity’ wines are cheap and made with a mixture of some kind of grapes and a bit of fruit and oftentimes “natural” flavors, which to me just sounds like cheating. If you’re going to make a fruit wine USE THE FRUIT! Tomasello uses only the fruit on the bottle to make their wines and it SHOWS.

Here’s why this wine is so great: It actually tastes like raspberries. Stay with me now…I’m not high. This wine tastes like something you might make in your basement if you had a master wine-maker for a best friend. If you went to the store and bought a gazillion raspberries (spell check does not catch “gazillion”…good to know) and then under the watchful eye of your wine-ninja friend you fermented some kick-ass wine from only the freshest raspberries (not the crappy ones that come in every box either… THE GOOD ONES) this is what you’d have.

The other thing I like that Tomasello does is sell slightly smaller bottles (500ml). This means you can get them cheap (About $10-$12 a bottle where I buy it) and try new flavors without worrying that you’re going to blow a bunch of cash on a crappy wine. All in all I think they’ve got 6 flavors now, all made with 100% of whatever fruit is on the bottle, including pomegranate, blueberry, and cherry. Take a chance on this one, you won’t be disappointed.

Grade: **** (Highly Recommended) Price: $10-12

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My kind of Myspace photo….yes, I’m in my bathroom again.

THE SAGA CONTINUES!

But first…

THANK YOU! To everyone who tuned-in last week to see what we were up to and commented on our first post I just wanted to say: thanks a lot. It makes blogging worthwhile to be able to connect with so many people who are just as interested as you are in the world of spirits.

BECAUSE we got so many great responses I think we came up with something close to an authentic whiskey mash distillate…it may never TRULY live up to that magical elixer our favorite distillers lay down into new oak barrels every year but I’m HOPING that its at least similar. Here’s what we’re working with:

Primordial Whiskey-stuff…ready for EVOLUTION!

Here’s what I was thinking with the “mash.” Since distillers of Bourbon are, by law, required to use at least 51% corn in their mash I went with a mostly corn base  (750ml to be exact) of Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey. As near as I’ve been able to figure out this a a lower-proof version of what people call “moonshine” which has been diluted to 40% abv. I gave it a taste and its slightly sweet and actually somewhat reminiscent of Bourbon already; so I think that’s a good sign. To that I added 200ml of Everclear…

A word about Everclear:

If there IS a booze that can make you go blind/kill you, its Everclear. The full strength version (95% abv.) is banned in 15 States.  Do-not drink this stuff straight…or at least, if you’re dumb enough to try, make a video-recording so the rest of us can laugh at you when you burn your esophagus to hell. Seriously….DON’T DO IT!

My reasoning behind adding such a potent ingredient was twofold. First due to a comment from our friend Scott over at In With Bacchus who brought up that a higher alcohol content would draw-out flavor faster from the oak barrel and also because of comments from some of the guys from homedistiller.org who mentioned repeatedly that evaporation can be a major issue with these little barrels. What I’m thinking is that I want this stuff to age as quickly as possible so I’ll loose as little as possible. The last little tip we got came from commenter LWTCS who confirmed that higher-proof aging was better and mentioned that He adds just a tablespoon of real maple syrup to his stuff to bring out the sweetness and the nose of the final product.

The Recipe:

1 tablespoon REAL Maple Syrup

It’s imperative that you lick the spoon when you’re done…just trust me.

750 ml Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey

200 ml Everclear

Just watch your eyes…

Fill to the brim with Shakers (Wheat) Vodka (About 4 0z for me)

Here’s the full recipe and before you get up up-in-arms about it, I KNOW this shouldn’t fit in a 1 liter barrel…

Boozeblogger’s Bourbon Whiskey Recipe:

750 ml (40% abv.) Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey

200 ml (95 % abv.) Everclear

1 tbsp (15 ml) Maple Syrup

118 ml (40% abv.) [about 4 oz.] Shakers Vodka (American Wheat variety)

(1.083 liters total)

If ANYONE OUT THERE has the brain to figure out what the resulting ABV of this mixture is I would be eternally grateful! When I try I just end up sounding like this guy:

Shakers vodka was not an afterthought for this recipe. Before we got all those great comments I was planning on using a 3-vodka mixture including Tito’s and Shakers’ Wheat and Rye varieties. Putting in the maple syrup before anything else was also purposeful because I wanted to make sure it didn’t just sit at the top or float to the bottom.

I’m really hoping this lives up to the dreams I have of home-aged Bourbon, but what I’m trying to keep in mind is that this is really just a first test. I’ve got a lot to learn about this stuff and I’m really just excited to get a shot at making my very own bourbon. If you haven’t checked it out yet head on over to Oak Barrels LTD and consider picking up one of these little starter barrels for yourself. The owner, Cinda, is obsessed with great customer service and I know you won’t be disappointed with her products. If you’d REALLY like to get in depth with making your own bourbon check out homedistiller.org‘s forums where there are active discussions going on about all of this stuff.

A few final questions for the comments section:

How long should I wait before trying this stuff? (how long could YOU wait?)

What do you think of this recipe/how would you make it better?

What are you wearing?

And now the HORRIBLE WAITING begins…

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According to their website, Shakers vodka is hot-stuff. Apparently their Wheat variety received a grade of 100 from Wine Enthusiast Magazine – the only vodka ever to achieve such an honor from the enthusiasts of wine. The Rye variety won a Double Gold Medal at the San Francisco World Spirits competition (This means ALL the judges gave it a Gold Medal rating). So I guess we can just pack it in and go home cause Shakers Vodka is obviously pretty damn cool, right? NOT SO FAST SHAKERS! You and your swanky little bottles still have to pass…

So, Shakers Vodka’s are distilled from either Wheat or Rye and one would expect quite a bit of difference between the two varieties. But is there REALLY that much difference between ANY vodka? Well, that’s what I set out to discover. Here’s what I did. I wrote a small “R” and a small “W” on the bottom of each of my snifters and then filled each with an equal amount of either the Rye or Wheat variety from Shakers. As for objectivity…you would be AMAZED how easy it is to forget which vodka is in which container when they both look EXACTLY the same.

I can TOTALLY tell the difference…can’t YOU?

So, I’ve got to be honest here. Even with the “semi-scientific-almost-double-blind-taste-test” I couldn’t tell a difference between these two vodkas. Now maybe that’s my in-experience as a vodka-taster. But If the differences between these vodkas is anything but VERY subtle – I can’t taste it. They ARE distilled from different grains but I think the idea with these was smoothness and purity first, flavor second. Shakers even has a proprietary method for removing impurities in their vodka because these days not just ANY smoothness will do. Distillers are going for smoothness right up to the edge of tasting like purified water. It’s as if, these days, vodka companies are playing chicken: with flavor. “WHO CAN GET CLOSER TO PURE ETHANOL WITHOUT MAKING EVER-CLEAR!!!”

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Ok, let me try to explain what these jack-offs are doing. They’re playing a little game called “I’m a hipster, fuck you!” The game consists almost entirely of wearing, doing, and saying things “normal people” think are odd in order to draw attention to yourself. The more you can convince the world that you know better than to do whatever-the-hell-fucked-up-thing you are currently trying to make people look at, the more points you get in “IAHFY!”. This self-absorbed game, and the megalomaniacal need for attention which underlies it, comes mostly from the fact that our generation has absolutely nothing to fight for or to define it. Hipster commandment #1 reads: “We have nothing to give a shit about, therefore we shall be ironic. Amen.“ Drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon isn’t the latest trend that these MASTERS of individuality have begun but at 1-plus year of “in-ness” its one of the most enduring.

This is what a REAL PBR drinker looks like. It's ok, I TOO am mesmerized by his man-boobs.

Here’s what pisses me off about the PBR hipsters…their THING is irony and that’s what drinking PBR is to them. Their “I-just-robbed-a-Goodwill-wardrobe” and quasi-intellectual drivel (laced with carefully chosen words they think you won’t know the definition of) is a pretense meant to convey to whomever might be watching or listening that they KNOW what cool is. They also know that Pabst Blue Ribbon is (or was) the antithesis of cool because it’s cheap, mass-produced, and has an out-dated Americana label. This is why they drink it: to show YOU that they are so very cool they can do what is considered uncool and therefore make it cool. Cool…

GRUMBLE!

This is a man is drinking Pabst. He drinks Pabst because he likes Pabst. He’s been drinking it his whole life. When he goes to the store he doesn’t even look at the micro-brews. He just walks in every week and buys a case because this is his beer. This man and poor frat boys are the bread and butter of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Not that PBR isn’t happy to see the slight sales bump they get from the Hipster Crowd’s latest trend (it’s currently at #3 in the top 10 hipster things to do – just behind trying to look like Tom-fucking-Sawyer: LOST IN THE FUTURE!); I’m sure they’re ecstatic. But when the hipster crowd moves on to whatever the hive-mind tells them to love next, Pabst isn’t going to miss them THAT much.

In all honesty, I just want people to do what they like because they actually like it. Not because their friends think it’s cool or because they look around and notice that it’s the new “in thing to do.” If you really like Pabst, if you just can’t stop drinking that golden nectar of the grumpy-old-man, then fine – do it. But, I’m willing to bet that once that once it becomes a little too trendy, 90% percent of the hoard will put it down and pick up the next cool, cheap, ironic thing. That’s fine, I can’t play full time-hipster police, there’s already a website just for that. Just don’t let me catch you walking around with a bottle of Stella Artois because it’s suddenly MORE-IRONIC for you to be a snobbish, consumer whore.

END.

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The halo around the Cherry Heering appeared spontaneously. I expect the Vatican will canonize me as "Patron Saint of Booze" any day now.

HOLY SHIT! It’s a cocktail on boozeblogger! Yes, yes we suck at keeping you updated on our cocktail creations. Now that I have a working camera AND card reader we should be able to pick up where we left off. Which means in order to hit 365 I’m going to have to do about 4 cocktails a day for the rest of the year (and then promptly check myself  into rehab on January 1st).

I’m not sure, but I think I may have committed another booze-sin with this one. Not sure the Snobby Ding Dongs out there will approve of this one or not but I like it because it tastes like fruit punch and that’s just plain awesome.

Cherry Beertail

12oz Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat

1/2 oz Cointreau (or a similar orange liqueur)

1/2 oz Cherry Heering liqueur

Garnish with a cherry or three.

Poor it in and stir it up is about all you have to do with this one. Play with the proportions if you like but this is pretty well balanced even if its a bit on the sweet side of the drink-spectrum. Cheers.

"Forgive me, father Robert Hess. For I have sinned against yee in thought, word, and drink."

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