Alcohol as an aid to DIY

I hate DIY. Hate it. It’s not just that I’m shit at it, it’s also that I have absolutely no interest in practicing it, it takes all day (carrying on way beyond the moment you realise you’re incredibly bored and want it to end), it always reveals two more jobs that need doing, it doesn’t seem to look any better when you’re finished and then… it takes about as long to tidy up as it did to do the work in the first place.

So when Mrs Cake raised the idea of decorating our bedroom last weekend, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy but I do realise that sometimes these things need doing. I want to be better, I really do. I just have to try really, really hard… and think of some way to make the whole thing more appealing.

“How about we make it fun?” I said, “Maybe by getting beers in and drinking all day?”

I didn’t quite expect what happened next.

“Yeah!” said Mrs Cake, “and we could have Baileys* in our coffee in the morning, and make nice sandwiches, then for tea we could get a takeaway!”

“Yay!”

“Yay!”

And that is what has earned Mrs Cake and I a reputation amongst our friends for making “things” out of things. I don’t know; we’re just trying to make life more fun. Cos if life isn’t fun… what is it? What’s it for?

We went to the big Tesco on Friday night to get supplies – sandwich fixings, bottled ales for Mrs Cake, Holsten Pils for me and a half bottle of Tesco’s standard blended scotch for a feature that will be coming up an indeterminate amount of time in the future... then it was back home to relax with pizza, beers, grappa and the opening of the Ardbeg 10 (again, more later).

On to Saturday morning. We had the Baileys* in our coffees, prepared the bedroom, grabbed a beer and made a start. Result? The day went relatively smoothly. Sure, there were minor meltdowns like when I got paint on Mrs Cake’s digital radio, and when Mrs Cake was trying to make me throw out things that I haven’t gotten around to using yet (just because I can’t juggle with six balls, it doesn’t mean I only need three of them… one day I might find the time and inclination to practice), but I think some of the stress was brought on by the magnitude of the job ahead of us. The alcohol probably didn’t help out too much at first, but as the day wore on and we made progress, it really helped. The work keeps you busy enough to remain fairly sober, but the alcohol gives you that burst of energy to keep going – and you can use it in a carrot and stick type situation – I’ll just paint the rest of this wall, then have a big swig of beer. Nor does drinking as you go lessen the satisfaction of having a beer at the end because the beer at the end still celebrates finishing the job.

We did the same on Sunday also, culminating with three hours trying to put an Ikea chest of drawers together, but we just powered through – except the part where Mrs Cake had a minor meltdown because we managed to break a bit off. We fixed it with glue though.

Clearly alcohol may not be suited to all kinds of DIY – such as things that require accuracy and sharp or powerful tools – but you might still want to give it a try. There was one moment before lunch where I was struggling to paint the ceiling because I had to be standing up a ladder, looking upwards and manoeuvring a roller back and forth, under the influence, but it didn’t turn out to be too much of a problem, and I took it as a cue to get some food.

Three things to remember then, before I leave you. First, make sure you get all the supplies in that you are likely to need ahead of time. You don’t want to find that you need to make a trip to B&Q, which is a drive away, when you’re already a few pints down – or even more than one pint down really.

Second, don’t underestimate the importance of well-timed food.

Finally, drinking and decorating is merely a case of offsetting something unpleasant with something pleasant – yin and yang; that’s the foundation of the whole universe. It is alco-thusiasm not alcoholism. Alcohol can be your friend, just be responsible and treat it with respect.

And with those wise words, I’ll leave you for another week.

*Carolan’s on this occasion

Hot Toddies: What? It's Medicinal!

Hot toddies: warm alcoholic drinks that are supposed to be beneficial when you’re feeling unwell. That whole concept is a little alien to me. Not so much that alcohol helps with ailments – even my non-drinking dad kept a bottle of vile tasting Indian brandy in the house for those occasions when I was ill growing up – but more the idea of warm alcoholic drinks. I’ve just never had a warm alcoholic drink I thought was particularly nice, or worth the effort.

I maintain that the best remedy for general illness is a joint. It makes you feel all fuzzy, and you can’t tell any longer whether you feel ill, or whether it’s the effects of the drug so you soon forget about it  and enjoy a day off work, watching DVDs. Unfortunately, this blog isn’t about weed (though I’m sure I could write a good one about that), it’s about booze.

So! After waiting what seemed like forever to get ill, I finally did, and I could get to work on investigating the hot toddy. I hoped the ‘hot’ part of any drinks I tried would turn out to be as simple as boiling the kettle. If it’s all about heating pans of milk and adding ingredients after so many minutes, it’s more like cooking. And drinking shouldn’t be like cooking (especially if you’re feeling unwell) – though it can provide a pleasant accompaniment to cooking. As the old adage goes, “I always cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food!” Ha ha. Actually, I quite liked that when I first saw it.

That’s the problem with cocktails. Deciding which one to make is like deciding what to have for dinner. Then you’ve got to make it. And you might find you’ve run out of a vital ingredient. So you have to pick another one. And it turns out you chose badly; you spent 5 minutes making it, and it’s the tiniest drink in the world. Finished. Now what? Have another one? But I can’t be bothered to make another one. That’s probably why I’ve drifted away from cocktail experimentation recently.

Where was I? Oh yes, finally I had gotten ill, and was excited about the opportunity to try some hot alcoholic drinks in the spirit with which they are intended. First though, my mum offered the advice that I should have a brandy and two paracetamol before I went to bed. That’s the kind of doctor’s orders I like!

“Have you got any brandy?” she asked.

“Yeah, but not any particularly nice brandy. Does it have to be brandy, or will anything of that genre do?”

“Whisky doesn’t work.” Though I don’t see why it shouldn’t.

“Oh.”

So cheap brandy it was; the Osborne’s 103 brandy de Jerez that I’d been failing to finish off for several years. Did it help? Well, I had an incredibly deep sleep, but that could have been due to the fact that I scarcely got any sleep at all the night before that.

I had a mad dream too, but dreams are supposed to be mad, aren’t they? When people say, “I had a really weird dream…” Of course you did; it was a dream.

So did it help? I suppose it did.

I tried having a whisky the next night, and I don’t actually recall whether it did me any good – I think I forgot to take the paracetomol. What I did notice was that I couldn’t taste anything, so it was a complete waste of one of my better whiskies. So it transpires that it was a good job I didn’t have any decent brandy, since it would have been a waste to drink that, too.

A particular barrier to enjoying your strong alcohol can be that your nasal passages might be completely blocked. Obviously the senses of smell and taste are connected, so you’re only getting half of the package. On top of that, you don’t get the chance to roll your liquor around and hold it in your mouth because at some point you have to take a breath, and you end up inhaling hot alcohol fumes into your fragile oesophagus. It’s just not as enjoyable. Having said that, you can at least enjoy the alcohol buzz that comes with drinking spirits a bit quicker – and that’s why the cheaper ones are so useful. It is always worth keeping something around for these occasions.

Getting a bit off-topic here, but I did get round to trying some hot toddies – pretty simple ones. First I tried an Irish Coffee, in which I used Whyte and MacKay scotch because I didn’t have any Irish whisky. I completely failed at floating the cream on the top. I’m going to have to learn that skill, one of these days. That’s all aesthetic anyway, since I think you tend to stir the cream into the coffee once it’s served.

The recipe I had said to use one and a half ounces of whisky, but for some reason (I must have been ill), I confused half measures with full measures, so I actually added three ounces of whisky by mistake. I have to say; I wasn’t enjoying it. I also had to add a lot more brown sugar than the single teaspoon recommended. I even had to add a couple of teaspoons of white sugar, too. I like my coffee sweet, but I still wasn’t able to finish the drink.

A better alternative that I discovered much later, is just to make an ordinary coffee (from a coffee maker is best), and make it exactly the way you normally like your coffee, but with the milk replaced by Irish Cream – unless you like your coffee black! What’cha gonna do then? I used the Irish Meadow (14.5% ABV), which is Tesco’s (very cheap) alternative to Baileys, and it went down a treat.

My first attempt though, the Irish Coffee, was something of a failure.

For my second hot toddy I tried Soco Spicy Cocoa, found on the Southern Comfort website. You basically make a cup of cocoa, add one and a half ounces of Southern Comfort and top with a pinch of cayenne pepper. Once again, I got my quantities mixed up, and added three measures of Southern Comfort. I think this drink was a little more successful, but I still failed to finish it. This only seems to confirm what I already suspected: hot toddies aren’t for me. I just don’t get hot alcoholic drinks.

I went on to try inventing a hot toddy  – adding a couple of shots of Tesco Value Brandy to a cup of hot Oxo, with garlic powder and salt and pepper – but I don’t think it’s going to catch on. Maybe I need to use less brandy, but then; what’s the point?

I asked Mrs Cake what the big idea was – why people espouse the merits of hot toddies when they’re feeling unwell. She said it was the process of being drunk, but I said you can do that with cold alcoholic drinks. She said the heat makes people feel cosy. But strong alcohol already does that!

So I guess that’s it – alcohol can make you feel a bit better when you’re sick, but drinking a nice spirit is a bit of a waste, so just put something strong in a hot drink. If you don’t like the taste like me, use it as an opportunity to dip into one of your less favoured bottles.

There is one more hot toddy I’d like to try, because it actually sounds nice. If that doesn’t work though, I’m just going to drink some cheap brandy. Then I can replace it and try a different one.

That's it for this week, then. Join me next week, when I might be returning to the theme of hot toddies, or I might be talking about something else. Either way, it's not to be missed.

Summer has hit the M to the C to the R good and proper today (for like, the first time in 7 years), so I'm sure everyone will be out in the beer gardens and barbequeing (sp?) and all that this weekend. I'll be out and about, and hopefully getting to the Chorlton Beer Festival tomorrow. I didn't even realise it was this weekend. Whatever you're up to, have a good un, and try to stay out of trouble. Also, spare a thought for all the people who are out drinking every weekend, whose peace, quiet and beer gardens you're ruining by turning out now it's nice. All right? Cool.

Booze Tourism Part 3 - Canada

Popular Canadian souvenirs - maple syrup, mountie stuff, smoked salmon.

Being Canadian but living in the UK, my fiancée Brenda has to alternate her Christmases - spending one with me and my family, and the next back in Canada with hers, so this year it was time to go back to Canada, and I had promised to go with her. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d been to Canada, but it would be my first Canadian Christmas, and my first visit since becoming a booze tourist.

On my first visit I’d made sure to bring back a bottle of Wild Turkey, because I wanted to feel like Hunter S. Thompson (some say he drank Chivas Regal, but from reading his books, I remember a lot of Wild Turkey…), but as I said; I wasn’t a booze tourist then.

Canada is a good place to be a booze tourist. They have lots of different varieties of beer, and they are well situated geographically to take advantage of imports of bourbon and Tennessee whiskies from the USA as well as tequila from Mexico and rum from the Caribbean. I like all of those varieties of liquor, but they wouldn’t be on my shopping list this time. I had already decided that I’d be sourcing some Canadian whisky, and I made sure I was fully prepared with some pre-trip internet research.

I’d just like to namecheck a couple of websites here that I found useful. The first is http://www.canadianwhisky.org/. It focuses exclusively on Canadian Whisky and is filled with in depth reviews utilising a simple 5 star scoring system. The second is http://therumhowlerblog.wordpress.com/. This site contains tons of reviews of different kinds of gin, rum, vodka, tequila and of course whisky, as well as having a list of cocktails, and serving suggestions for each spirit reviewed. I have no idea how this guy has had enough time to try all these drinks, but it’s quite a collection, and I can only assume he doesn’t have a wife telling him that he drinks too much. He has a much more complicated rating system than canadianwhisky.org, but it certainly proved very useful for me.

Both these sites are valuable resources if you’re researching purchases for your next trip to Canada, and you’ll probably find the information on them far more useful than anything you’ll find on my blog, so go and check them out once you’ve finished reading this post.

I had tried some Canadian whiskies before, including Highwood and a couple of varieties of Canadian Club (thanks, Brenda!), but this time I was determined to be a bit more choosey. Visiting a liquor store was pretty much the only thing on my to do list for the trip, and I actually visited three or four before we left Calgary. They tended to stock (pretty much) the same stuff, so it was just a matter of finding the most competitive prices.

So where should you be focusing your attention when making purchases during a booze tourism adventure? Set your own rules here (because remember; there are no rules), but I like to look for something local, authentic/traditional, and something I can’t get at home.

I did quite well with my purchases on all those scores, though neither of my choices were local to Alberta (which is where Brenda’s family lives, and where my booze shopping took place) they are specifically Canadian.

Crown Royal is one of the most popular Canadian whiskies, so I decided to go for the Crown Royal Black, with is 5% stronger and a few dollars more expensive (but significantly cheaper than at www.thewhiskyexchange.com) . It is darker in colour than the standard, and the flavour is similar, but a little richer – I know because the future mother-in-law bought me a bottle of the standard Crown Royal for Christmas. That’s a nice whisky too, and probably the pick of all the bottles I have available at the time of writing. Crown Royal also comes in a nifty cloth bag, that I suppose serves to protect your liquor from sunlight if you haven’t got a cupboard to keep it in.

I’d decided to buy a second bottle to bring home with me, and for that one I went with Gibson’s Finest 12 Year Old. Again, this is the next step up from the normal Gibson’s, and it’s only available in Canada – I read that they can’t produce enough of it to export for some reason – maybe the Canadians drink a lot of it. This one has a very mild flavour compared to the Crown Royal. It’s sweet and pleasant, but not full-flavoured enough to dilute with ice.

The Crown Royal comes in a weird crown-shaped bottle, while the Gibson’s comes in a portly one, not dissimilar to the Bailey’s Irish Cream bottle in shape, though it is transparent so you can see how much is left – unlike Bailey’s where you’re always asking, “have I got enough left to make this cocktail?”  

There is one drawback with the Gibson’s – it has a screwcap with such a smooth action that it is almost impossible to resist spinning it off at high velocity. This almost always results in a series of fumbled catches leading to a frenzied chase around the kitchen floor – and if you’re extremely unlucky a foray into the furry depths beneath the fridge, or even having to pull the fridge out. Be warned; go easy on that cap.

Now, you’re only allowed to bring one 1.14l bottle of hard liquor back from Canada – that’s a good deal larger than a standard bottle, but not as big as two bottles, so if you do want to stick to your limits and you want to bring more than one variety home with you, you’re going to need a friend. I bought 75cl bottles. Brenda kindly offered to carry one for me. That still left me with two, but I was able to polish off the Crown Royal Black by New Year’s Day, thanks to a late night cigar/whisky-share deal I was able to arrange with someone we met at the Toronto wedding we’d been invited to on New Year’s Eve – though he was calling it ‘scotch’ for some reason. It seemed inappropriate to correct him.

 I’d opened it a week or so before so that Brenda’s brother Brian could try it (he was familiar with the standard Crown Royal, but likes to mix it with coke – still, it’s nice to share… and have an excuse to open a new bottle) and then I was able to dip into it from time to time in the evenings.

So given that the remaining bottles were 75cl that left us a little under the limit, even with the little Bruichladdich Rocks bottle (20cl) that Brian gave me. So it was a most successful trip. Not that anyone ever checks at Customs, but maybe they will one day.

I finished the Bruichladdich Rocks a couple of months after returning home, having been hanging on to the last drop for a while. I didn’t want to fritter it away willy-nilly because, even though it’s a blend of young single malts (6-8 years old), it had a complex flavour, and was one of the most interesting whiskies I’ve tried so far. It did tend to cause a slight burn on my tongue though, which is something I don’t notice very often, and is supposed to be the reason that real whisky experts add a drop or two of water. I still haven’t tried that, but I have heard that you can tell how aged a whisky is by where on your tongue it burns – young ones at the front, older further to the back.

I tried the standard Bruichladdich 10 year old recently on a recent visit to the Lake District and, while it was nice, I actually prefer the Rocks so far. It can take a few more drinks to really know what to think about a whisky though, and I only had one double. I think I’ll be investing in a full bottle the next time I’m in the market for a single malt - it’s among the contenders, anyway.

Canadian whisky is in nature very different to scotch. In my layman’s terms I’d say it tends to be sweeter and less complex but still enjoyable and worth getting your hands on.

I had been tempted to pick up some ice wine before returning home, but it’s fairly expensive, and my budget was worryingly stretched by that point, so I didn’t even pick up anything else in Duty Free. We get paid early in December, and my November wages was all gone on gifts, so December’s had to last 6 weeks. I don’t usually have to fit a two week holiday (and the necessary booze tourism that comes with it) into that equation, so I had to forego the ice wine.

Ice wine is made by leaving the grapes on the vine until sometime after the first frost, so that they freeze. Then they are pressed, making a sweet, syrupy wine that is very pleasant for sipping. The bottles are only half the size of normal wine bottles, but I recommend you give it a try - they were doing a nice German one in Aldi at a reasonable price a while ago, so there’s no excuse for not seeking one out - unless you’re ashamed to be seen in Aldi.

In Canada they have a huge fondness for beer. I’ve found that people will offer you a beer the moment you arrive at their house – even if it’s 10 in the morning. It seems that the general rule is: if beer is available, then it is acceptable to drink it. Most times 10am is even a little early for me, but it certainly is encouraging – especially when it’s your future mother-in-law. She stocked up on some cans for our stay – some Coors Lite (which isn’t light in alcohol compared to most British lager) and a selection of beers from the local Big Rock brewery, which we’d actually toured during our last visit. That had been the first time I’d ever visited a brewery, and I have to say: I don’t find information about how beer is made very interesting. Just get me to the tasting part, and the part where you can choose any six varieties to take home.

In general your Canadian beer is like a cross between lager and ale, so it’s perfectly drinkable and comes in a staggering number of varieties. It was nice to have my own private stash that I was expected to polish off during my stay – and the quantity was sufficient, so there wasn’t any awkwardness about drinking too much - which is ideal, because I wasn’t drinking too much. Good.

Frankly, to give a full impression of the drinking culture in Canada, I’d probably have to write a PhD, so that ain’t happening. I can tell you we had a pretty terrific time – without going into too many details about what we did (stick to the booze, stick to the booze) and I hope I’ve given you at least a little useful information should you be planning a trip there. Be sure to check out those websites if you do. I’m sure they’ll help you make the most of your Canadian booze tourism experience.

I’ll see you next time for some more general ruminations on booze and booze related products.

Monster Cocktails - part 1: The Cowgirl

Welcome to part one of Monster Cocktails, a new feature about what happens when (potentially good) cocktails go bad.

First up, The Cowgirl. It’s a sexy sounding drink, consisting of peach schnapps and Baileys. Here it is:

 

That’s what it’s supposed to look like, anyway. The layered effect is achieved by pouring the Baileys on to a bar spoon placed over the peach schnapps [perhaps pouring the Schnapps onto the Baileys would make a Reverse Cowgirl?]. I didn’t have a bar spoon (or indeed the exact right kind of glass), but how different can a bar spoon be to a normal teaspoon? Oh.

 

My effort turned out like this. It looks cool as hell; like a brain floating in a jar but… you couldn’t serve that to someone.

I drank it anyway, but I was only getting the schnapps at first – which I actually enjoyed. The Baileys just kept itself to itself, well away from the lip of the glass. You may remember from an earlier story that I can’t drink peach schnapps anymore… well that turned out to be false. It’s just that I hadn’t tried. 

After a while I decided to bring the Baileys into the party, and mixed it up with my finger, but it just kind of congealed into a creamy pink sperm that had to be drunk in lumps and chewed. That killed off any enjoyment, and made me feel perhaps like I was the cowgirl…

I’m including a picture of the recipe for you, so please give this drink a go. Even if it goes wrong, it only costs a little bit of peach schnapps and little bit of Baileys (or Aldi’s Ballycastle) and if you could post the results on here, that would be great.

Booze Snobbery - Drink it how you like it, or drink it how you’re told?

People can be quite snobbish. Especially people who like fine food and good liquor. You know, some people insist that having your steak well done is a travesty. Some tell you that you shouldn’t keep your chocolate in the fridge, and some tell you that you have to put the milk in last when you make a cup of tea. In this feature I’ll be discussing the abhorrent practice of booze snobbery, and encouraging you to drink it how you like it. And that goes for tea, too.

For this first instalment, I’m going to tackle the biggie; the ultimate conundrum: how should you drink scotch whisky? Do you need a specific type of glass? Should you add a little water? Should you be berated for drinking it over ice?

Now, I don’t want to offend anyone with this segment; I know there are a lot of people who know a lot more about this than I do, but the whole point of this blog is to encourage enjoyment of alcohol, not to tell you what you should or shouldn’t think, or what you should and shouldn’t drink. You’re right in the end (unless you’re drinking white spirit). So, if you feel particularly strongly about anything I say in this post, feel free to add a comment, but you know; be cool. It’s not about you, it’s about me. Just kidding: it’s about everyone. And after this one, maybe I can go on to discuss some more fun things, things that aren’t so divisive.

I just wanted to add that little disclaimer there because when I started this blog, I didn’t realise how deeply I would have to get into information, opinion and facts. I was just going to ramble on about stuff, tell you about experiences, make suggestions and comment on stuff. I realised though, that if I was going to ask a question, I was going to have to think about answering it. If I was going to talk about something, I was going to have to find out a little about it. You can’t say, “I don’t know why…” when all the information in the world is at your fingertips. You can’t say, “I don’t have any information about that” when it’s all right there. Because if you do say that, someone’s just going to click on that search button themselves, so why should anyone bother reading your blog?

Equally, I don’t want to come across as some kind of know-it-all. I don’t even want to know it all, and I don’t want anyone to think that my opinion is gospel. Yours is just as valid. And mostly, I just want to enjoy alcohol, and share a bit of that enjoyment. And I don’t want it to get serious. So let’s give it a go, shall we?

The whole need to address this issue arose when I tried to write a short piece about this:

 

It’s Bruichladdich Rocks, a single malt whisky, weighing in at 46%. My future brother-in-law gave me a small bottle (20cl) for Christmas. Let me first say that I’ve been enjoying it enormously. I think it’s very tasty. I’m no expert, and I don’t want to become one of those people who go on about tasting vanilla and cloves and all that stuff, but I found the flavour fascinating; sweet, then sour, then a little smoky. If you want the official version, go here http://www.bruichladdich.com/shop/classic-single-malt-scotch-whisky/classic-bruichladdich/rocks.

I’d done a little research beforehand, and it was suggested that it had been created to be enjoyed with ice. I knew though, that single malt isn’t really supposed to be taken with ice, and having tasted it, I thought it was far too enjoyable and full-flavoured to risk watering it down, so that seemed at odds with the very little I knew and the even less I took seriously about drinking scotch – ice destroys the flavours, right? And why doesn’t the website say anything about ice? Why doesn’t it say so on the bottle?

Nevertheless, as I said in the introduction, I realised I had to look into it a little further if I was going to write about it. And I found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKYNYFhT3wY

in which Jim McEwan, Bruichladdich’s master distiller, confirms that it indeed was conceived to be enjoyed with ice (though in the video he adds water to it instead(?)), and goes on to give instruction on how whisky should be tasted, as well as asserting that young whiskies should be enjoyed early in the evening, while older ones should be enjoyed later... 

He says that all professional tasters add water, and that you should let your own sense of taste decide how much to add – as well as that it depends on the age of the whisky, as different ages react on a different part of the tongue. The science is all very interesting, but he doesn’t say what effect you are trying to achieve – beyond the whisky ‘opening up’. I can see that I’m probably going to have to try it, if I’m going to investigate this properly, but I don’t really want to. I actually enjoy it neat.

Now, I can hardly argue with him though, can I? He clearly knows a thing or two, and he has made at least one very nice whisky (I’m guessing he’s made a few more, too). But a lot of his assertions for me signal the beginning of taking things too far. You don’t want to be thinking, ‘it’s past 10 o’ clock now, and this whisky’s far too young to be up this late’ or ‘my bottled spring water is foreign compared to the spring water that was used to make this whisky, so I don’t want to tarnish the experience by adding this to it…” do you? And I certainly don’t want to have a bottle of water to accompany each whisky in my family…

So I started looking at other websites that have addressed the question of how scotch should be drunk. Before I go on, let me just say that several address the issue, but they all disagree with each other to some degree. So let’s just look at what they say.

This website http://www.whisky-distilleries.info/ArtDeBoire_EN.shtml has a lot of useful information. It does point out that there is no rule, but it does go on to imply that if you follow its directions [they’re a bit like rules], you can enhance the experience of tasting whisky. 

It mentions that there’s an ideal type of glass, and that you should never put ice in whisky [that sounds like a rule]. It also addresses the issue of adding water, saying that it causes a chemical reaction, and that the whisky will “open itself”. I’m just going to have to try that one, and see if I can figure out what it means.

This site http://www.maxriffner.com/parlor/know-how-to-drink-scotch provides very specific instructions on how to develop a liking for single malt scotch, by a progression of degrees. It does however, say that you can drink your single malt with a water chaser, but not mix them together. This disagrees with what I’ve heard previously from several sources, including the revered Jim McEwan. The author also favours the ‘on the rocks’ term for ‘with ice’, implying you’re a moron if you don’t use ‘on the rocks’, but that’s another matter for another time.

The Scotch Whisky Association (http://www.scotch-whisky.org.uk/swa/93.html) says this:

                [how scotch whisky should be drunk]…  depends entirely on your individual taste and on the occasion. Scotch Whisky is a versatile drink. Served on its own, or with a little water, it can also be a refreshing drink with ice and a mixer. Scotch Whisky presents a whole range of flavours which can be extended by the addition of soda or mineral water, lemonade, ginger ale or other mixers. Scotch Whisky is also an excellent cocktail drink.

You’d think an organisation going by that name would know what it was talking about, wouldn’t you? It even presents some cocktail recipes, though I suspect they may be trying to promote sales of scotch whisky by appealing to all markets – something your purists are less concerned about.

This site http://scotchnoob.com/2011/03/09/water-ice-or-neat/ actually seems to me to have the most sensible approach, and conforms more tidily to the Drink it How You Like It philosophy, offering advice and encouragement based on personal experience, and for me – for now – that’s what it’s all about but, you know; it’s up to you. Make your own mind up, and don’t let anyone tell you different.

So, it’s Friday and this brings me to this weekend’s activities. I still have most of that bottle of Bruichladdich Rocks left, so tonight I’ll be trying it as its creator intended – early in the evening with some ice, or ‘with the rocks’ [that’s the right term, isn’t it?]. Tomorrow I might pick up some spring water and try it with water. I may also try my Aberlour with that; it could do with ‘opening up’ a little, I think. So I’ll be letting you know how all this turns out in due course – currently I drink things I’m particularly partial to neat, and anything less so ‘up the rocks’ or whatever that term is – with ice.

Also this weekend, I’ll be starting some research for a new feature on budget brands, by having Brenda do a blind taste test of Bailey’s Irish Cream and Aldi’s budget alternative, Ballycastle. So look out for the results of that; I expect to be putting them up on Monday. Later next  week, I should also be posting the first part of my Booze Tourism feature which, as I mentioned earlier in the week, will focus on Venice.

I’d like to finish here by encouraging you to visit and explore all the sites I used in the making of this post, but mostly I’d like to encourage you to enjoy your booze, and Drink it How You Like it.