Malt Fascination

On a recent trip to the Zeewijck liquor shop in IJmuiden to discuss my volunteering at the festival last Saturday, I found some rather interesting beers. Black Scottish Ale matured in Highland Park whisky casks. Quite unexpected, even to me with my not so great experiences with black ales and whisky cask maturation, I bought the 12 and the 40 versions. Both matured in whisky casks that previously held Highland Park 12 and 40.

Ola Dubh 12
A lighter style black ale. When pouring it, I expected heavy and thick stout, but it wasn’t that at all. There is a bit of that roasted malt on the nose and the palate, but not overpowering. There is a slight suggestion of whisky, but that might be exactly that, a suggestion. Liquorice. There is the stout flavour somewhere, and if you look for it, it might even get prominent. Mocha, but nothing thick or creamy. A long finish. (€ 4)

Ola Dubh 40
Smoother and a bit more creamy (in texture) than the 12, not thick or greasy though. A very complex beer, the most complex I’ve tasted. The wood influence is quite prominent and it tames the stout a little bit. Quite some whisky influence, in a very positive way. Very, very good stuff! It even comes boxed for that extra luxurious feeling! (€ 9)

And I don’t mean the one in England, because there is another one in Alameda, California. From the windows you can see San Francisco, and the distillery is located in a hanger in an abandoned naval base. That kind of surprised me when I got there and was driving through the gates.

The distillery is mainly know for their eau-de-vies and their Hanger One vodka, which is rather popular in Las Vegas, if I am correct. Everything they produce is made from natural ingredients and their vodka is made from wheat, instead of potatoes. What made me aware of this club was a little film on www.chow.com, about distilling absinthe.

At the distillery you can do a tour and a tasting for $ 15, and the tasting is extensive. The tour itself is nice, not too much new information, but a new perspective from distilling eau de vie instead of mainly whisk(e)y. Everything comes from their one Holstein still, and they usually distill everything from the fermenter, after which they redistill the fore-shots/heads to clean it up again.

Pear Eau de Vie
Like pear popsicles, (a Dutch thing I guess),but a lot of fruity flavours.

Hanger 1 Vodka
Soft and rather gentle, licorice and more licorice. It builds in power if you let it swim for a few seconds. Good stuff. The first vodka I ever tasted that actually has natural flavours!

Hanger 1 Buddha’s Hand
Buddha’s Hand is a sort of fruit similar to lemon, but looking way cooler. They use the peel and not the pulp to make the infusion. Oily lemon and not too fruity. Not fruity but very citrussy. Kind of a contradiction, but tasting is believing in this case…

Hanger 1 Mandarin Blossom
Massive tangerine on the nose but the flavour is overly sweet. The nose is rather interesting but the palate didn’t do it for me.

Botanivore Gin
Lots of pepper and herbal genever. You get more and more different botanicals if you search for them. Very tasty with a bit of fruit in the background.

Terroir Gin
The terroir gin is made with herbs and spices from local Mount Tam, to represent the part of California just north of San Francisco. Lots of pine notes and crisp ‘northern’ spices. The flavour is a little thin at first and needs some time to loosen up. Dry, peppery and piney mostly.

Firelit Coffee Liqueur
Coffee and booze. I can’t figure out whether this is coffee with a shot in it, or the other way around. Loads of good coffee flavours. I love this stuff!

Raspberry Liqueur
Raspberry syrup on the nose, massive amounts of fruit, very good. The flavour was a bit strange. The nose was a yes for me, the flavour not so much.

Absinthe Verte
A natural absinthe without colorants. That means varying colors from batch to batch, varying from light brown to olive green. Flavourwise it has a massive nose of anise and fennel. Loads of flavours and spices to discover, but this takes a bit more training to get all the nuances. What I can say is that I love this stuff! Long finish.

So, a big tasting with very small sips. I was driving of course. Luckily we could do half the tasting before the tour, and half afterwards. In the end I don’t know if it was a smart thing to try all of these, but I don’t think I had more alcohol than a proper bottle of beer. Most of the half ounce glasses went down the sink.

The absinthe and the Terroir Gin were terrific, the Coffee Liqueur as well. And trying a vodka that you could actually drink for the flavor of it was an eye opener! Great place, great people, great booze and a great view!

Sometime last week I promised to start blogging again with renewed vigor and all that. Thusfar, not much has come from that and that got me thinking.

I love the blog, I love blogging and I love the ‘culture’ around it. However, I have to admit I am getting a bit tired of the random tasting notes I’ve published over the last couple of months. I like publishing tasting notes from Bottle-Shares, Festivals and tastings, but ‘I’ve tried the new Fettercairn Fior’ is not something that I get overly excited about. The same goes for the beer reviews.

Beer and other booze

Considering the beer reviews, I am thinking that since they get lower hits consistently, they’re not that popular. There are some that have incredible scores on the stats, like that post on BrewDog a few months ago (biggest day ever on the blog), but just a wee list of beers I had over the last week doesn’t cut it. Especially since beer drinking has gotten a bit in the way of whisk(e)y drinking, I’ll be cutting down on that a little bit.

I do like trying out new things, though. That means that there might be the occasional post on absinthe, rum, calvados or whatever I can get my hands on. There is some good stuff out there and it would be a waste to not give it some time, since it isn’t whisky… I will, as promised at an earlier point, not do any posts about wine. Too random, too many producers, to limited (to shops, vintages and such) and everybody wins some award.

Tasting notes

So, what to do about it? It’s rather easy actually. Skip the random tasting notes more often. Focus on the cool stuff. I definetly don’t want to become some elitarian (?) blogger that only writes about super premium bottlings of at least 200 euros each, but I do want to focus on more obscure, more rare bottles.

Also, I think I am going to simplefy my scoring system. I keep having issues with the 40 point system I conjured up myself. I prefer the 100 point system the rest of the world is using but I think I find myself working the points too often. During a video cast from ‘Village of the Drammed‘ they talked about it too and their conclusion (with which I fully agree) is that, in the end, you only use the 0 to 5 star ratings.

0 stars: Avoid

1 star: Not good but neither terrible

2 stars: Uninteresting

3 stars: Nice

4 stars: Very good and worth searching out

5 stars: Savour every drop, surprisingly great and such

And keep in mind, these are my findings. Not a group’s or committee’s, but mine. I represent no one and I might get things wrong. I sometimes do, even to myself. Trying a whisky in a different setting might give a different result.

Themes

Also, more themes I guess. 10 Bourbons, a flight of rye whiskies and a week of Japanese whiskies. Stuff like that. Tastings, Festivals, Bottle-Shares and other samples I’ve received.

I am not solely doing this to keep it more interesting for myself, but also to be a bit more timely with my reviews. Over the last few months, even with three weeks off from tasting during my vacation, I have an enormous backlog of tasting notes. Apparently, I just can’t get through them. By focussing more on the cool samples and bottles I’ve managed to taste, I think I can get through that too my notebook more quickly too.

I still think to write up the random whiskies I tasted, but more in a ‘gather’ post. The end of the week, five random tasting notes with somewhat shorter descriptions. I think it feels right.

Other stuff

Apart from changes here on the blog, I’ve noticed something happening that everybody has been talking about. Rising prices. I was more or less shoved into this at last weekend’s Pot Still Festival in Amersfoort at the Gordon & MacPhail stand. I was there with my friend JP, trying some of the new Reserve bottlings and I noticed a difference with last years prices. In my first Bottle-Share I was able to get a 16 year old Bladnoch and a 19 year old Lochside for 60 euros each. This year’s prices state that a 11 or 13 year old Caol Ila should cost around 70 euros per bottle. Apart from the apparent age difference there is also the rarity difference. It is far more common to see Caol Ila popping up with bottlers than either of the other two. This makes the price increase even bigger to me. Apparently, things are getting more expensive. Bummer.

This makes me sad and hopeful at the same time, because I can now hope that bourbon and other American whiskies get a bigger foothold in Europe. There have been increasingly great bottlings coming from that side of the Atlantic, but most whisky drinkers I know still shun them a bit. If you read between the lines, you can easily conclude that I will be focussing a bit more on American whiskey. There are some true gems out there!

I also hope to be able to write some more in depth articles about liquor shops and whisky specialists I know and frequent. Maybe about whisky itself, although I do not consider myself to be an authority on production processes and such. Maybe some pieces about distilleries with data I can more easily research. Of course, there will be book reviews, distillery and brewery visits. If I get around to it, maybe even posts about the results of my home-brewing (which still has to start)…

Another company visited during my travels, this time a brewery. It was more or less an accident we visited this one, since we took a wrong turn on Highway 1 and drove to Boonville instead of following the coastline towards San Francisco. Hard to believe maybe, but still true…

The Anderson Valley Brewing Company is one of those Craft brewers in the USA that has made it from someones shed to a full sized brewery. They are in a more wine focussed country not too far from Napa and Sonoma. The brewery is solar powered, which I find very cool. The only drawback is that they do a tour only once per day, and I missed that of course…

(The Bitch Creek will be reviewed later. The shampoo will not be reviewed)

I did buy a couple of bottles in the shop, where they had more or less everything available at very good prices. I already knew the ‘Hop Ottin IPA’, but I hadn’t reviewed it yet, which I’ll do here as well.

Anderson Valley Poleeka IPA
Light and fresh, a little fizzy even with a gentle touch of bitterness. Not too many hops added I guess. This is a nice beer, but it doesn’t send in me in one direction flavourwise.

Anderson Valley IPA
A bit hard to define at first. A bit crisp and fresh, with a sweet edge like hard candy. Quite a decent IPA with enough hops to be interesting, but that little sweetness does stand out. Barley, green malt, but the balance improves a bit when its in the glass for a couple of minutes.

Anderson Valley Hop Ottin’ IPA
The first scent I get is that of a rather malty whisky. Slightly sweet as well, with lots of malt and wheat, citrussy and still whisky like. The flavour has a hint of singed grains with lots of hops and is a bit dry.

Anderson Valley Brother David Triple Abbey Style Ale
That’s a mouth full. The beer is very yeasty, a bit more so than a real triple from Belgium. Lots of flavour with a slight sweetness and bitterness. Mostly though, a lot of yeast. I have to place a note here that I was drinking this one from the bottle and it wasn’t very cold either.

The Hop Ottin’ I highly recommend, and some of the others were very decent too. I have to admit that I didn’t try the Triple and the Poleeka in the right setting with a proper glass and a refrigerator, though. Some beers are just too flavoursome and complex to be drunk from a bottle, and these beers might just be that.

On my recent travels I also visited some booze induced locations, like Utah’s High West Distillery in Park City. At first I was rather surprised to find a distillery in strictly regulated Utah, but I guess its not as bad as some people say it is, since they don’t seem to have any problems making and selling alcohol in the Mormon state.

High West distillery is located in Park City, one of Utah’s ski resort towns in a beautiful mountainous setting at about 7000 feet above sea level. One of the highest distilleries in the world. They have been bottling (mostly) rye whisky and vodka the last couple of years, but they have only started distilling a few years ago. Everything older than that is bought, blended and bottled. With their curious recipes and lack of fear of the unknown, I consider them to be a bit like the American counterpart to Compass Box.

Unfortunately, the tour guide had a couple of days off when we got there, so I only snapped some pictures of the stills and did a small tasting there, before lunch. The tasting consisted of four of their ‘whiskies’ varying from an oat spirit to a 21 year old rye.

High West Silver Whiskey Western Oat
A smooth and sweet scent with quite some fruit and mountains of cereals and grain. Oatmeal cookies and overripe melon. More spicy than I expected. Its spicy and smooth at the same time. Quite nice, but it might be a bit too simple to enjoy a whole bottle of. I would have loved if they had half bottles of this!

High West Double Rye
John Hansell wrote ‘Perhaps the spiciest American Whiskey I have ever tasted’ and I agree. Its not really pushing the limits of spice, since the pepper I smell and taste is wrapped in a creamy and sweet package. Cornbread and then the spices kick back in. Cinnamon, dark chocolate and quite gin like, in the way of herb flavours. Caramel and vanilla as well.

High West 21 year old Rye
I already tasted this once, and loved it. I didn’t change my opinion but I got some new tasting notes. Floral and sugary sweetness, also some light leaf herbs (basil?). The palate is soft but has the typical rye flavours of some wood spices. The finish is a little dry but very, very good.

High West BouRye
A bourbon and rye whiskey blend, something that hadn’t been done before. Its a 10 year old bourbon (75% corn, 20% rye, 5% barley) and a 16 year old rye (53% rye, 37% corn, 10% barley). The flavours and scents are a bit hard to wrap your tongue around, since they truly are a mix of styles. It has some molasses and caramel with a hint of coconut. I also get some vanilla and cinnamon. The longer you taste this, the stronger the rye impact gets, intensely spicy and quite dry on the finish.

So, highly recommended to go there if you’re in the area. The shop is a bit expensive on the non-booze items, but since the booze is what you came for, nobody really cares! I brought myself a bottle of the Double Rye, for about $40, very affordable.

I’m back! After my short period of not posting and my quite long vacation I’ve got new energy to start posting again and quite a few plans to follow too!

I will try to get some of the tasting notes out of the way in the coming weeks. Of course, during my time off I tasted quite a lot of different things too, mainly beers and other spirits though. Tasting notes will probably follow this week.

This month I will start the set up for a new bottle share. I think it will quite limited in participants, since the last couple editions were quite a bit too much work and hassle, especially the Shackleton share. Many broken bottles (thanks, Dutch mail) and some issues with things not arriving in their destination, people not paying (in time/at all).

Also, I’m planning to take up some home brewing. I’ve been planning it for a while now, but I never got around to it. I already got more and more fascinated by beer (also a malt product…) and that didn’t change during my travels. I tasted some really nice and hoppy IPAs and even some kick-ass Stouts and Weiss beers.

There will be holiday pictures in the next few days too, maybe on Facebook, or maybe on Flickr or something. I’ll let you know!

Some holiday facts:

7875 kilometres driven, 2 distilleries visited, 3 breweries visited, many many beers tasted and a few whiskies, wines, vodkas and even absinthe.

Currently, I am not available for blogging due to some long awaited time off. I am travelling the USA and seeing some really nice things there. Seattle, Yellowstone, the Great Salt Lake and eventually San Francisco.

While I tried writing posts to cover all time off, I just didn’t have enough time due to some really massive work related issues. This week there will be no more posts, probably. After that, on October 3rd I will start again with renewed vigor. There will be posts on what I tasted during my travels, a new bottle-share and reviews of the Potstill Festival in Amersfoort.

Recently I received a new comment on my blog on the review I did on “The world’s best whiskies”. For some reason something went wrong in moderating it, but I would still like to react here.

The comment:

I have no vested interest in this book whatsoever, and could care less how it does commercially. Having said that, you as a blogger lose all credibility in my mind by giving this book 1 star out of five…seriously? 1 star out of 5 is for an e-book that is grammatically incorrect with wrong information in it, and poorly photoshopped pictures of distilleries. This book was picturesque, informative and at the very least entertaining. To give such a scalding review simply because an author’s own subjectivity offended you is utterly ridiculous.

Ryan

Now, about the one star: Usually, when I rate something like this, it didn’t interest me, or I don’t think it is very good. A scalding review would have been zero stars. Apparently I have to comply to someone else’s review system, since my description of ons star is completely different than the one given here.

Second, about the review itself. I think enough has been said about it. Apparently a couple of nice pictures should warrant a book a good or at least average review, regardless of the actual content. My review gives just one star since I don’t believe the credits given to some of the whiskies. They don’t make sense to me. If you carefully read my review you see why.

And lastly, no last name? I have no idea who you are and while that should not really matter one bit, it does strike me as odd, especially since you are apparently at least a little bit upset with me.

I don’t want to start the discussion held at the original post anew, but I didn’t want to have ‘deleted’ this comment without at least some reaction.

I guess this is another first… A whiskey liqueur on my blog. And not a very upmarket one like Drambuie 15 or something exquisite from Master of Malt, but a rather regular one. I have to place one note: I am drinking this one in a motel in Fallon, Nevada. It’s quite warm and there are no glasses in the motel, only a paper cup…

Nose
Well, honey, of course. Quite light and a bit thin. Caramel and doughnuts.

Taste
Also a bit like a desert and like doughnuts and other very sweet pastry. The whisky is rather hard to detect since the honey and pastry notes are definetly overpowering.

Finish
If possible, it gets only sweeter. Quite a long finish, but not one I’d cme back for.

It’s not terrible. It’s not disgusting. It is, however, the last time I tried this one. WAY too sweet, and too much like a doughnut. I like doughnuts, but not in my booze…

Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey, 35%, $2,29 for a 50ml sample. Available at the run down supermarket behind the laundromat next to the Super 8 motel… 😀

Nose: 2
Taste: 1
Finish: 1
Overal experience: 0
Price/quality: 0

Total: 4 points

This would result in 0 stars, but since the iPad version of wordpress won’t let me access my images, there will be no image…