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Try a Buffalo Trace antique collection and you'll see why bourbon is a respected spirit among connoisseurs. The problem is, making real bourbon is very difficu

by hodwik 11y ago

Try a Buffalo Trace antique collection and you'll see why bourbon is a respected spirit among connoisseurs. The problem is, making real bourbon is very difficult because you have to let so much evaporate off that producers lose a lot of product. E.g. 84% of the Buffalo Trace 2015 George T. Stagg evaporated off. That's a lot of lost product -- so they're opening these 53 gallon barrels and pulling out about 8 gallons of product. Producers don't like those numbers, but that's how you make real bourbon. So it leaves most people thinking they dislike Bourbon before ever having drank a real classic bourbon. By comparison, Scotch is a very simple, cloying beverage. Scotch's complexity all comes from the peat, it's all show. If you pour enough peat in any whiskey it will taste roughly like Lagavulin. Bourbon is a more honest beverage, you're not covering anything up, which means a bad Bourbon is very bad and a good Bourbon is very, very good. Scotch is the IPA of whiskey. It's criminal if you ask me.

tptacek 11y ago
Scotch's complexity all comes from the peat, it's all show This isn't even close to true; the entire Speyside region (which produces more Scotch, and more popular Scotch, than any other region) refutes it --- most Speysides have little if any peat.
- tedunangst 11y ago
  No True Scotch has only a little peat.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    The guidelines don't prohibit that horrible pun, but I'm going to lobby to see that they do in the future, so none of us will have to suffer like this again.
    - rsync 11y ago
      Some folks advocate for a collapse-comments feature on HN. I would like to advocate for a explode-to-frontpage comments feature ... so we could have a new front page item for "that great scotch vs. bourbon argument we had in the TPP comments". It's why I come here.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Oh yes. I second that strongly. Some of the best things I ever saw on HN, and that I sometimes bookmark, are those random off-topic subthreads that spawn in the middle of another discussion. A way to cross-link comment threads like this would be really useful. 'dang, any thoughts?
        corin_ 11y ago
        Well you could always just make a new submission linking to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512999 and see if it got upvoted enough - but maybe would be better if the new submission could incorporate the previous comments rather than just link to them
      - waspleg 11y ago
        I agree. I don't know anything about either of these but this has been interesting to read.
- hodwik 11y ago
  The Speysides are artificially evaporated because the North Scottish climate doesn't allow the barrels to adequately breathe -- it kills the whiskey. By comparison, the heavy temperature swings in Kentucky open and close the barrels every season, so you see a much larger angel's share, and thus a much more complex whiskey. Drinking an 18 year Bourbon is like drinking a 40 year barrel-aged Speyside. Sure, if you can get your hands on a 40 year old barrel-aged Speyside Scotch, I misspoke. But that's rather outside the budget of even the most die-hard Whiskey fans. As a result, most Speysides fall roughly into that same category as the shite bourbons. Once you stop covering up their failings, you're left with a boring, watery, lifeless whiskey. It's like if we were talking beer and I said "Americans just cover up their beer with flavorants so you don't realize they're watery garbage. German and Belgian beers are superior." and you fired back "That's not true! Coors Lite doesn't do that!" No, you're right, Coors Lite doesn't do that.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I am having trouble with the idea that a bourbon-casked Glenrothes, with no peat and practically no other flavors other than the malt, has been "covered up" with flavoring, while a "serious" Scotch like Laphroiag, which has so much peat it tastes like unsweetened cough medicine filtered through a swamp bog, is standing on the true quality of the whiskey itself. Is there more crappy Speyside than crappy Islay? Yes, of course: there is more Speyside period, the world's most popular Scotch whiskey comes from Speyside, and most blended Scotch is built from Speyside distilleries. What any of this has to do with the idea that Scotch is all about peat is past me. Once again: the most popular Scotch in the world has minimal peat, and lots of Speysides have no peat at all. Ergo: it cannot be the case that Scotch is simply peat-flavored whiskey. People who talk enthusiastically about American beer don't generally think about Coors Lite, let alone talk about it. The age comment you made about bourbon and Scotch is also weird, since most bourbon is aged less than 12 years to begin with. At 18 years, you're asking me to compare a cask-strength Pappy or Buffalo antique --- bourbons that were built to be aged past the point where most bourbon would suffer for it --- to Scotch. That's a pretty apples/oranges comparison.
    - hodwik 11y ago

by hodwik 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

Scotch's complexity all comes from the peat, it's all show This isn't even close to true; the entire Speyside region (which produces more Scotch, and more popular Scotch, than any other region) refutes it --- most Speysides have little if any peat.

tedunangst 11y ago
No True Scotch has only a little peat.
- tptacek 11y ago
  The guidelines don't prohibit that horrible pun, but I'm going to lobby to see that they do in the future, so none of us will have to suffer like this again.
  - rsync 11y ago
    Some folks advocate for a collapse-comments feature on HN. I would like to advocate for a explode-to-frontpage comments feature ... so we could have a new front page item for "that great scotch vs. bourbon argument we had in the TPP comments". It's why I come here.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Oh yes. I second that strongly. Some of the best things I ever saw on HN, and that I sometimes bookmark, are those random off-topic subthreads that spawn in the middle of another discussion. A way to cross-link comment threads like this would be really useful. 'dang, any thoughts?
      - corin_ 11y ago
        Well you could always just make a new submission linking to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10512999 and see if it got upvoted enough - but maybe would be better if the new submission could incorporate the previous comments rather than just link to them
    - waspleg 11y ago
      I agree. I don't know anything about either of these but this has been interesting to read.
hodwik 11y ago
The Speysides are artificially evaporated because the North Scottish climate doesn't allow the barrels to adequately breathe -- it kills the whiskey. By comparison, the heavy temperature swings in Kentucky open and close the barrels every season, so you see a much larger angel's share, and thus a much more complex whiskey. Drinking an 18 year Bourbon is like drinking a 40 year barrel-aged Speyside. Sure, if you can get your hands on a 40 year old barrel-aged Speyside Scotch, I misspoke. But that's rather outside the budget of even the most die-hard Whiskey fans. As a result, most Speysides fall roughly into that same category as the shite bourbons. Once you stop covering up their failings, you're left with a boring, watery, lifeless whiskey. It's like if we were talking beer and I said "Americans just cover up their beer with flavorants so you don't realize they're watery garbage. German and Belgian beers are superior." and you fired back "That's not true! Coors Lite doesn't do that!" No, you're right, Coors Lite doesn't do that.
- tptacek 11y ago
  I am having trouble with the idea that a bourbon-casked Glenrothes, with no peat and practically no other flavors other than the malt, has been "covered up" with flavoring, while a "serious" Scotch like Laphroiag, which has so much peat it tastes like unsweetened cough medicine filtered through a swamp bog, is standing on the true quality of the whiskey itself. Is there more crappy Speyside than crappy Islay? Yes, of course: there is more Speyside period, the world's most popular Scotch whiskey comes from Speyside, and most blended Scotch is built from Speyside distilleries. What any of this has to do with the idea that Scotch is all about peat is past me. Once again: the most popular Scotch in the world has minimal peat, and lots of Speysides have no peat at all. Ergo: it cannot be the case that Scotch is simply peat-flavored whiskey. People who talk enthusiastically about American beer don't generally think about Coors Lite, let alone talk about it. The age comment you made about bourbon and Scotch is also weird, since most bourbon is aged less than 12 years to begin with. At 18 years, you're asking me to compare a cask-strength Pappy or Buffalo antique --- bourbons that were built to be aged past the point where most bourbon would suffer for it --- to Scotch. That's a pretty apples/oranges comparison.
  - hodwik 11y ago