Irish Cream Three-Way: Carolan's vs Bailey's vs Ballycastle Premium

For many people, Irish Cream is a staple requirement around Christmas time. That’s why the main supermarkets start a bit of a price war, one that this year led to Baileys being available in Asda for £9. Yes, that’s more than you’d pay for Aldi’s Ballycastle Premium, but as I keep saying, Baileys is the undisputed king, and that’s a pretty good discount (about £5).

For me, Irish Cream is a staple all the time, though particularly in my coffee of a Sunday morning. I’ve been trying other brands, but I’d actually started to think I might never get around to buying a bottle of actual Baileys again, you see it’s hard to justify the usual price tag when the Ballycastle Premium is so damn good. At £9 though, I’d be letting you down if I didn’t give it a shot – especially since all the Carolan’s would soon be gone so, not only did I need a new bottle, but if there was ever going to be a chance to compare two premium Irish Cream brands, this was going to be it.

don't know why I can't rotate this...

Asda actually had a choice of Baileys flavours on offer, but I haven’t gotten around to those yet. It’s the Original I’m interested in at this point. Mrs Cake agreed to join me in a comparative tasting later that afternoon.

Statistics first though; I paid an outrageous £14.50 for the Carolan’s, which equates to £1 per percent of ABV. The Baileys, which is usually pricey, as I said was £9, but here you’re getting a cockle-warming 17%.

In terms of packaging, they are not dissimilar, though Baileys seem to have streamlined their bottle a little, which I actually prefer to the standard Irish Cream receptacle. Baileys has some fun text on the back that says something along the lines of… we like cream and we like spirits. But both together, they said? We just smiled…

So, one comparative tasting with the missus coming up…

Method

The main use we have for Irish Cream is over ice, so that would be where the winner would be decided. I would also try the Baileys in coffee, but that would be just additional to the main experiment. I poured a glass of each product for Mrs Cake and I and repaired to the living room to watch a bit of telly and draw some conclusions.

Visuals

I couldn't tell any difference. Both look creamy and good, neither show the kind of wateriness you might expect from cheaper brands. Neither are cheap, so all is as it should be. Mrs Cake called them out by sight, but I forgot to ask her what gave it away.

Tasting

I don’t drink Irish Cream in the same way I drink spirits so nosing doesn’t really come into it. I started with a couple of sips of Carolan’s, and enjoyed it as I had been doing up to now. When I went for a sip of the Bailey’s though, the nose leaps out at you… it’s just so creamy… like good ice cream. And the flavour… is just superb, not a note out of place. Carolan’s is nice, in fact Mrs Cake said she prefers Carolan’s for its unique flavour, but for me, while I enjoy the Carolan’s, moving back to the Baileys makes me exclaim – out loud, things like ‘it’s like chocolate truffles!’. It achieves the ultimate accolade – a drink that is worth savouring every drop so for me, at this point it is still the king.

When it comes to coffee, I already stated in an earlier post that Carolan’s doesn’t go too well. There’s just something a bit weird about it. None of that with Baileys… in fact no other Irish Cream has failed to excel with coffee so far, so that has to be a mark against Carolan’s.

Well, we know now who is the Irish Cream champion among the higher priced category, but we need to know who is really the king though. I had to get a Ballycastle Premium in, didn’t I? Oh yes. So I did.

It has featured on this blog before, but just as a reminder, Ballycastle Premium is the premium expression of Aldi’s flagship own brand. For ABV it matches Baileys with 17% and my latest bottle cost £6.49 – that’s an increase of 50p on last time, though it still represents great value.

There’s no need to go too deeply into this one, so let’s cut to the chase; is it as good as Bailey’s? Well, not quite, but it’s very close. Mrs Cake reckons she prefers the normal Ballycastle to both, but for me the Bailey’s is just slightly more luxurious, slightly better balanced, more creamy, less milky but… you have to remember that pricetag. If you can pick up a Bailey’s consistently for £9 I’d recommend that you do but if you can’t… or if the pounds are a little hard to come by one month… Ballycastle Premium makes an able deputy.

I think… it’s time to start heading out into all the different supermarkets and seeing what alternative brands they have. Keep an eye out for further updates.

That's me for this week. The post is a bit early as I'm going to the Bearded Theory festival tomorrow to stand about in the rain and drink 24 cans of Holsten Pils along with whatever spirits I can handle and hopefully a liberal quantity of Thornbridge Ales. Then next week I'll be in the depths of despair once more. Join me once the horrors have subsided for another post. And enjoy yer bank holiday.

Budget brands: Ballycastle Premium

It had gotten to be quite a while between first laying eyes upon Aldi’s premium Ballycastle Irish Cream and actually getting around to buying it. The only problem was that I’d been so skint that whenever I’ve been in Aldi I hadn’t been able to justify even the paltry £5.99 it costs to indulge my curiosity.

there must be a scientific reason ALL Irish Cream bottles are this shape

 Well, I finally seized my chance. We were doing a snack run, prior to our marathon jaunt to Vietnam, and it was just after pay day – the only time to make willy-nilly booze purchases these days. I took it home, then went on holiday and promptly forgot all about it. It was a nice surprise to see it sitting atop the booze cupboard on my return home, and it certainly made the discovery that we had no cold water in the kitchen easier to take.

We’d already been awake thirty odd hours, and it was only 8 in the morning, so we figured we’d need to stay up at least another 12 hours if we were going to get all compus mentus-like in time for going back to work. Fresh coffee with a drop of Ballycastle was on the cards.

Awesome.

A few days later I went back to it, to try it over ice. I can’t really fault Irish Cream. You like booze? You like ice cream? There’s a good chance you’re going to like Irish Cream. I have tried to find a place for it in my regular drink itinerary, and at the moment, that place is early on a Sunday afternoon, when you’ve got nowhere to go, you’ve already decided you aren’t doing any jobs, and the car can damn well stay where it is.

Now, the good thing about Ballycastle is that it is cheap, but it’s still good. If you go back in time a little, you’ll see that I did a comparative tasting of your standard Ballycastle with the undisputed (and original) Irish Cream king, Baileys way back at the beginning of this blog, and while Baileys was richer, and the Ballycastle somewhat watery by comparison, you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t drinking them side by side. Even if you were… you could still enjoy the Ballycastle which back then was retailing at a tramp friendly £3.99 – not that I’d ever expect to see a tramp drinking Irish cream. I think it’s gone up about 30p since then, and it’s only 14.5% ABV, compared to Baileys’ 17%, but with Baileys costing £12 or more, you have to wonder whether it’s worth the additional outlay.

Well, when it comes to the verdict on the Ballycastle Premium edition, I’ll have you know; you are getting your money’s worth for that extra £1.70 or so. It’s thicker, richer, more luxurious [than the normal Ballycastle] – I just want to be able to compare it alongside Baileys now, but I can’t imagine wanting to spend £12 on a bottle when I can get this for £5.99. It’s that good.

There must be plenty more brands of Irish Cream on the market, and frankly, it’s time I tried them all so we can see who really is the king. Perhaps then I can issue a really prestigious award.

I hate every ape I see, from Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee!

Many years ago (try 10 or so) I came across a website that provided instructions on ‘finding your inner monkey’.  The gist was that you could find your inner monkey if you took time to drink a bottle of spirits on your own, with no distractions. 

As I remember it, it actually sounded like fun. Of course, nothing would happen for the first five or so drinks, but then something would awaken in you, something that would be unique to everyone. 

I never tried it for a number of reasons. Not only does it sound like one of the steps along the road to alcoholism, but I always had friends around and there was a Playstation… and I’d probably get bored before reaching the 5^th drink anyway. 

Frankly, it’s the same now. Brenda’s always around, and if she isn’t I arrange to go out with friends, or I stay in and play on the Xbox – I’ve always got a new game that I’m itching to play – and it still sounds like one of the steps along the road to alcoholism. What comes after that – having Baileys on your corn flakes? [That’s one to try.] I might have a couple of drinks on my own, but not enough to find any kind of monkey.

No, if this is ever going to happen, I’m going to have to find myself alone, miles from anywhere, no TV, nothing to do… with a bottle of booze. Kind of like going to a conference, then. I just can’t see it ever happening – I work in finance, and we don’t have conferences; if we left the numbers unsupervised they might escape, and there’s no telling what they’d get up to. You never know, but it looks more likely that I’m going to have to rely on you to try it. Have you looked for, or even found your inner monkey?  If so, if anything of note happened, and if you can remember it let me know. If not; you’re not doing anything this weekend are you? Get on it. Just remember to drink responsibly.

I’ve actually found that article once again; here it is http://www.drunkard.com/issues/03_03/03-03_zen_drinking_alone.htm. The source of that article is Drunkard.com, the website of Modern Drunkard Magazine. It openly celebrates drunkenness and alcoholic excess in a slightly self-righteous way, but it’s a well-presented and creative diversion, if a bit more rule-oriented than Drink it How You Like it, in that it has 86 rules. 86! That’s 8.6 times more than God!

My blog isn’t about being drunk, it’s about enjoying alcohol, though by its very nature, being drunk sometimes figures in the narrative… or results from the investigation.

So go check out the Modern Drunkard, and think about seeking out your own inner monkey. I’ll see you next week for another post or two.

Budget Brands, and what I did at the weekend

I stated in a previous post that it isn’t necessary to stock up on all the best or prestige brands. If you’re making cocktails you really don’t want to waste the good stuff, so a good standard brand or even a decent supermarket’s own brand will suffice in most cases. If you’re lucky, you might even find a cheap bottle that you can drink on its own.

 

The king of budget brands for me is Aldi’s 8 year old blended scotch, Highland Black. There’s also a non-aged variety called Highland Earl, but I haven’t tried that one. At £11.99, Highland Black is an affordable alternative when you’re out of ‘the good stuff’ and don’t have £20-£30 to be spending on a (cheap) single malt. It’s probably not one of those ‘savour every drop’ sippers, but add a bit of ice and all you’re missing is a nice cigar.

 

I have read somewhere online that Highland Black isn’t actually scotch, and that it’s made in Australia. However, the cap says, “product of Scotland” and the label says, “distilled, blended and bottled in Scotland”. So, seriously; I’m going to have to accept that it is scotch. Frankly, the source of the controversy isn’t reliable – an anonymous customer review that I can’t find now, having just had another cursory scan…

 

For an affordable, entry level blend that you can keep returning to, I recommend it.

Having gotten a little carried away with the idea of testing budget brands for their drinkability, I trialled a glass of Tesco’s attractive ‘Budget’ brandy, while watching an episode of An Idiot Abroad 2 recently. I seem to remember buying it at least 4 years ago for £7.99, for use in cooking. Haven’t even done much cooking with it… but yeah,  it’s drinkable… if you’re desperate, I suppose.

Another one I tried was Tesco’s Imperial vodka. That one has the merit of having a more authentic looking bottle (than the Value brandy), not being named after a Russian literary figure, and being cheaper than your standard Smirnoff… which I’m coming to think of more and more as a mixer drink only.

A full investigation into vodka and its uses will be necessary in the future, but for now I just want to say that I wondered whether the Imperial vodka was drinkable in its own right. So I stuck it in the freezer for an hour or so, and poured a measure into one of the ‘vodka glasses’ (pictured below) that I’d bought in the Habitat closing down sale.  And you know what? It was all right. It’s been a while since I’ve drunk vodka seriously, so I don’t really have any field of reference, but if it’s drinkable neat, it’s got to be ok, right? 

I used to be particularly fond of Stolichnaya, and I’ve been itching to get hold of another bottle for a while, so I’ll have to make that happen pretty soon.

Now, it’s time to move onto the fallout from the weekend’s events. You might remember that Friday night’s plan involved my fiancée Brenda taking part in a blind taste test, pitting the king of Irish Creams, Bailey’s against Aldi’s cheap pretender, Ballycastle.

Brenda had read my Friday post before leaving work, and she arrived home quite excited about the prospect, so we wasted little time in pouring two drinks over ice, which was how Brenda wanted it. You’ll notice from the booze porn that the Bailey’s was a miniature bottle. It had been hanging around a while, and I can’t remember where we got it from. The Ballycastle has been hanging around longer than the bottle says you should keep it too, but it doesn’t seem any different to me. You’ll just have to excuse the lack of scientific accuracy in our experiment.

I think some people keep their Irish cream in the fridge. Ours hasn’t moved from the top of our kitchen cupboard, but I think that’s fine – I’ve just seen on tesco.com that you need to store it at between 7 and 25 degrees Celsius; Manchester rarely gets warmer than that anyway.

I’m afraid I’ve neglected to compare the ingredients, but I remember reading recently that a lot of budget Irish creams are made without whisky, and that Ballycastle does contain whisky. Unfortunately that’s all I can say on that matter, so we’re just going to have to let it be.

 

In terms of alcohol content Bailey’s clocks in at 17% while Ballycastle only manages 14.5%.

This being our first blind taste test, no precedents had been set beforehand. I decided that first Brenda should see if she could determine which was which by looking at them. Then she would taste them and decide which she preferred, before guessing which was the Bailey’s.

She was able to tell, just by looking, which was which, and it was fairly obvious. The Bailey’s is noticeably thicker and more luxurious looking. I didn’t reveal the true identities at this point, but nevertheless Brenda decided she preferred the Ballycastle, though she rightly surmised that it was Ballycastle that she preferred.

I had a little taste, too and I think I prefer the Bailey’s. I’m not up to date on current prices, but I think an equivalent sized bottle of Ballycastle would save you around £7 on the Bailey’s. I can’t really say the Bailey’s is £7 better; just a bit better. So when you come to weigh up pros and cons, the Ballycastle is an acceptable alternative, in my opinion. Do I want to pay Bailey’s prices? No. Do I want a bottle of Irish cream to occasionally make cocktails with and perhaps drink over ice? Yes. So while Brenda prefers the Ballycastle, I don’t but would still buy it. As ever, it’s up to you.

The other thing I said I was going to do at the weekend was try my Bruichladdich Rocks as its creator intended it – over ice, early in the evening. So this is just a brief note to say that I did, and that it was very satisfactory but I still think it’s nice enough to drink neat,and I only have a small bottle, so I don't really want to waste it.

I didn’t get around to buying any spring water to add to my scotch, but I will another time.

Finally, I didn’t mention it before but it was my birthday at the weekend, and Brenda pulled out all the stops to make sure it was memorable. So big thanks to her. Included in her gifts was a book of ‘101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die’, which I’m sure I’ll be dipping into for research purposes fairly frequently and this:

This is the single malt, Jura Superstition (43%), one step up from the standard Jura, and it appears in the 101 Whiskies book, which was nice because it turns out Brenda bought the bottle a while ago unguided… or rather, guided by a hefty discount in Tesco. What was also fortuitous was that the book states it’s a good one, but all the other Jura’s aren’t. So she did well there. I think I’ve tried the standard Jura, and I don’t think I was overly impressed. I’ll let you know a bit more about this one as I make it further down the bottle. I now have 6 bottles of whisky on the go, and I’m thinking that may be too many… though I’m sure my official birthday bash in a couple of weeks will help sort that problem out…How many bottles is too many?

That’s it for now. Later in the week I’ll be posting a feature about booze tourism in Venice, and there may be one or two more posts too, so please come back soon and feel free to leave your comments and suggestions. In the meantime... enjoy yer booze.