I’m not sure everyone saw it coming, but 2019 had been on the verge of being the year we live in since Christmas or so. How quickly these things go.

Anyway, let’s do this 2019 thing!

I’m not going to bore you to death will all kinds of whisky related goodie-two-shoes resolutions in which I want to be nicer to people and respect other people’s tastes more. Sometimes people are just wrong. Sometimes taste isn’t as subjective as it is supposed to be. Some whisky is just shit whisky.

I do have some plans for the year, but that’s more a to-do list than they are New Year’s Resolutions, although I can’t really explain what the difference is. It’s not any of that new year, new me shite.

What I’m going to plan and hopefully do is get a bit more financially sane. So less whisky buying and actually drinking some of the bottles I have amassed over the last decade or so. The same goes for my other hobbies, apart from the fact that I can’t really drink boardgames and cardgames.

Sneaking one resolution in

Spending far less on beer than last year, in which I already spent far less than the year before.

Not because I dislike beer or dislike brewers having my money, but because
a: I have to save money for more important things somewhere.
b: I am getting a bit jaded with the beer industry. Every new brewer thinks they’ve laid the golden egg and ask 3 or 4 euros for a random blond beer or an IPA. When it gets a bit more exclusive with barrel aging, 7 or 8 euros for a bottle.

The collection

Almost three years ago I wrote a piece on being tired of having a ‘whisky collection’ that was completely invisible and unreachable. Things have changed for the better since because I got ‘whisky room 2.0’ back. Everything is crammed into the third to smallest room in the house (as in, it’s slightly bigger than both bogs).

Luckily, I’ve pruned my collection a bit over the years and what’s there is much more to my liking than the utter randomness than what came before. However, I do have too many open bottles and I’m going to fix that. Both by finishing more of these first, and by doing a bit of a ‘yard sale’ of samples from my open bottles.

This can also be read as: I took slightly too large samples for myself over the last year or so, to make bottle-shares happen. Now I’m going to try again with what’s left.

Not in the last place because I can use the money for other things that I’ve got lined up.

This can also be read as: I spend too much money on shit and I want to get some back before the misses gets too mad at me. This might sound like she’s got me under her thumb (not denying that), but in this case she’d be right.

The samples

This plan has been around for as long as I’ve been buying samples: Get through them! It got a bit better last year in which I actually decreased the amount of samples on my shel(f/ves). That’s going to continue in 2019 too.

There’s still some 200 or more, I plan to count them today and make a plan with some steps, much like ‘finish X samples in January’.

Wrapping up

That’s it for the first post in the new year. Happy new year and stuff. Have a good one!

In regards to the whisky industry and any other industry for that matter: Vote with your money. Prefer the whisky with no packaging. Buy beer in cans. Don’t give in to ridiculous price hikes. Try before you buy if possible. Be honest but don’t be a dick about it. Prioritize.