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Glenrothes is a great example. To pick up a 40 year barrel-aged Glenrothes you're looking at paying about €4500 a bottle, and that gets you about 90% evaporati

by hodwik 11y ago

Glenrothes is a great example. To pick up a 40 year barrel-aged Glenrothes you're looking at paying about €4500 a bottle, and that gets you about 90% evaporation. That's only 6% more angel-share than a $70 dollar bottle of BT Antique Collection. If you can afford that, more power to you, but that's not really in the realm of what I'm talking about. The Scottish climate is just inappropriate for the making of proper whiskey in a timely and cost-effective fashion. You said, "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." I've been talking about BT/Pappy, etc. the whole time. Did you read my first comment? "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."

tptacek 11y ago
First: it's weird to me that you qualify bourbon by how much evaporates off. Second: if you're going to talk about "how you make real bourbon", you're probably better off not bringing a Veblen NDP like Pappy into the discussion. Third: there is plenty of amazing bourbon to be had that isn't a Buffalo antique at $120 a bottle, so I object to the "real bourbon" notion you're putting forward. 84% of Weller didn't evaporate, it's not aged 18 years, costs $30, and it's the same juice as Pappy, just handled more competently so it doesn't taste like grass clippings. Fourth: who the hell drinks 40 year old Glenrothes? I'm talking about the Glenrothes you buy at the liquor store. Fifth: once again, what does any of this have to do with whether Scotch is defined by peat flavor? I'm pretty sure you were just wrong about that.
- hodwik 11y ago
  I'm talking evaporation because evaporation is first and foremost what matters in aging. Great whiskey is thick whiskey. Why would you throw around NDP like that's a bad thing? NDPs are no better or worse. Pappy, if you're talking Stitzel-Weller Pappy, is one of the best Bourbons you can/could buy, period. Yes, Weller 12 is great (like Pappy 12). It's not syrupy enough, but that aside, it's a quality Bourbon at a competitive price. Is it as good as a 23 year SW Pappy? You're kidding yourself -- they're in completely different leagues. What's more, with a Weller 12 you're still looking at 42% angel-share. Considerably higher than anything you'll see out of Scotland. I'm sorry my peat comment upset you. Maybe it's a regional thing, by and large when we say Scotch we mean Islay or High-land. Either way, it's a lot of watery garbage, peat or no.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Strong disagree on pretty much all of this. The idea that US whiskey is more viscous than Scotch sounded so batty to me that I just checked, with a Willett, a TH Saz, and a GlenDronach 18; the Dronach is the leggiest of the three. (The Dronach is obviously not the best of those three whiskies.) I think I don't believe you that viscosity is a simple function of evaporation. Think about it: in both US and Scottish whiskey, the spirit going into the barrel is much higher proof than what's in the bottle, or what you should reasonably drink it at if you've got a cask-strength bottle. If "good whiskey" is "thick whiskey", where "thickness" is the amount of water the distillate had lost relative to alcohol, then we'd all just be buying the highest proof spirit; you could treat the ABV like a point score for quality. Both US and Scottish whiskey is diluted to a place the distiller wants it to be at. We also wouldn't need tasting notes describing the legs, because if it's just about evaporation, then it's purely a function of ABV, and that's printed on the bottle! Certainly the idea that one should evaluate a whiskey based solely on its legginess finds support in zero whiskey sources I can find. I don't just think Pappy is overpriced Veblen whiskey that people overpay for because it's the only brand they've heard of --- although people absolutely do that, and secondary market prices, which are the only place you can reliably buy the stuff, make it one of the major rip-offs in all of spirits. I also think Pappy is inferior to Weller. Maybe I've just been given flawed bottles; the 20 literally tastes like grass clippings, and I'd take a FR SB over any of the other Pappies any day. At any rate: Scotch is not "all about the peat". You have to not drink a lot of Scotch to think that. Which is fine! Just moderate your stridency a bit. :)
    - hodwik 11y ago
      You ought not compare a forcibly evaporated Scotch in an overly active cask, to a true SBM that is naturally viscous due to aging in a living breathing cask. It's not just the water loss that matters, but the total evaporation that increases your protein ppm, and the length of time those proteins have had to break down in solution, that provides the complexity to a proper whiskey. You don't detect that by legs, but by mouth-feel -- surface tension and viscosity are not the same thing.
      - 11y ago

by hodwik 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

First: it's weird to me that you qualify bourbon by how much evaporates off. Second: if you're going to talk about "how you make real bourbon", you're probably better off not bringing a Veblen NDP like Pappy into the discussion. Third: there is plenty of amazing bourbon to be had that isn't a Buffalo antique at $120 a bottle, so I object to the "real bourbon" notion you're putting forward. 84% of Weller didn't evaporate, it's not aged 18 years, costs $30, and it's the same juice as Pappy, just handled more competently so it doesn't taste like grass clippings. Fourth: who the hell drinks 40 year old Glenrothes? I'm talking about the Glenrothes you buy at the liquor store. Fifth: once again, what does any of this have to do with whether Scotch is defined by peat flavor? I'm pretty sure you were just wrong about that.

hodwik 11y ago
I'm talking evaporation because evaporation is first and foremost what matters in aging. Great whiskey is thick whiskey. Why would you throw around NDP like that's a bad thing? NDPs are no better or worse. Pappy, if you're talking Stitzel-Weller Pappy, is one of the best Bourbons you can/could buy, period. Yes, Weller 12 is great (like Pappy 12). It's not syrupy enough, but that aside, it's a quality Bourbon at a competitive price. Is it as good as a 23 year SW Pappy? You're kidding yourself -- they're in completely different leagues. What's more, with a Weller 12 you're still looking at 42% angel-share. Considerably higher than anything you'll see out of Scotland. I'm sorry my peat comment upset you. Maybe it's a regional thing, by and large when we say Scotch we mean Islay or High-land. Either way, it's a lot of watery garbage, peat or no.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Strong disagree on pretty much all of this. The idea that US whiskey is more viscous than Scotch sounded so batty to me that I just checked, with a Willett, a TH Saz, and a GlenDronach 18; the Dronach is the leggiest of the three. (The Dronach is obviously not the best of those three whiskies.) I think I don't believe you that viscosity is a simple function of evaporation. Think about it: in both US and Scottish whiskey, the spirit going into the barrel is much higher proof than what's in the bottle, or what you should reasonably drink it at if you've got a cask-strength bottle. If "good whiskey" is "thick whiskey", where "thickness" is the amount of water the distillate had lost relative to alcohol, then we'd all just be buying the highest proof spirit; you could treat the ABV like a point score for quality. Both US and Scottish whiskey is diluted to a place the distiller wants it to be at. We also wouldn't need tasting notes describing the legs, because if it's just about evaporation, then it's purely a function of ABV, and that's printed on the bottle! Certainly the idea that one should evaluate a whiskey based solely on its legginess finds support in zero whiskey sources I can find. I don't just think Pappy is overpriced Veblen whiskey that people overpay for because it's the only brand they've heard of --- although people absolutely do that, and secondary market prices, which are the only place you can reliably buy the stuff, make it one of the major rip-offs in all of spirits. I also think Pappy is inferior to Weller. Maybe I've just been given flawed bottles; the 20 literally tastes like grass clippings, and I'd take a FR SB over any of the other Pappies any day. At any rate: Scotch is not "all about the peat". You have to not drink a lot of Scotch to think that. Which is fine! Just moderate your stridency a bit. :)
  - hodwik 11y ago
    You ought not compare a forcibly evaporated Scotch in an overly active cask, to a true SBM that is naturally viscous due to aging in a living breathing cask. It's not just the water loss that matters, but the total evaporation that increases your protein ppm, and the length of time those proteins have had to break down in solution, that provides the complexity to a proper whiskey. You don't detect that by legs, but by mouth-feel -- surface tension and viscosity are not the same thing.
    - 11y ago