It's not my job to support your small business, it's your job to make me want to.

I love supporting small businesses. Small independent bookstores? Love them. Local antique stores? Wonderful. A small, hometown restaurant? Perfect. Craft brewers and craft distillers? So much fun. It makes me feel good to help support someone's dream. I was oddly devastated when the local True-Value hardware store and the independent grocery store in the town I live in went out of business and sold out to chains within a month of one another. 

Running a business is hard work. I found that out when I tried to live off of freelance work when I was laid off from a design job about a decade ago. I was passionate. I was good at what I did. I was also back working in an office a couple weeks after the severance package ran out. It didn't matter. I still needed to eat. I never blamed anyone but myself for giving up my business. I was good at designing things, but not good at selling myself. In three months I didn't sign up a single client. That was my failing. 

When I was in college there was a small independent bookstore in town. I once saw some kids come in to ask if he had Harry Potter. He angrily said no, he only carried literature. The next time I walked by I saw a hastily written sign taped to the door that said the same thing. Before I graduated from college, I saw another sign taped to the door blaming Amazon for him going out of business. He was expensive, he didn't offer a product that people wanted and he wasn't nice. So it was Amazon's fault he failed.

I'd say that 80% of the time I visit a craft distillery, I walk away amazed. There are people that built their own stills. People that built the buildings they are doing business in. People that are making an amazing product. They can't compete with the big guys on price, but they make up for that in providing a good experience to go along with a good product.

But sometimes when I visit a craft distillery, I run across people who remind me of that bookstore owner from when I was in college. Sometimes they are convinced that their gimmick holds the secret to aging whiskey in days and claim that the dumb big guys are producing crap in years. Sometimes they build a tiny distillery in a dry county and then get upset if someone doesn't want to pay for a five minute tour. Sometimes they are snobby or rude. And sometimes the product just isn't any good.

I love supporting passion. I love supporting people who are willing to go that extra mile to deliver something a little special. I'm normally willing to pay a little extra to do, so as long as I feel it's an honest trade. My extra money for your superior customer service. Or attention to detail. Or quality. Or experimentation. Or unique recipes. But when the sole benefit you can offer for the extra money is that you are not big? I'm not sure I see a benefit to me there. 

Sazerac: just remove the damn numbers

In my real life, I work in marketing. I’ve spent every day for the last 12 years trying to get people to buy things. Sometimes it was hammers as I did ads for hardware stores. Sometimes it was expensive medical equipment when I worked for an ad agency that specialized in such things.

Marketing gets an often undeserved bad reputation. We are the ones who have studied how to convince people of things. And since those things almost always involve money, we get the blame when we do our job too well. 

As a designer, I’m hyper-aware of the difference between convincing people and tricking them. I skirt the line almost all the time and I get extremely upset when I’m asked to cross it. I never forget that the people I’m convincing are actually people. It’s easy to reduce customers to numbers. To see them as nothing more than a line on a spreadsheet. Especially since when the numbers get bigger, you know that your paycheck is safe for at least a little longer.

So it was with extreme agitation that I noticed a sneaky little trick that the Sazarac company was pulling. I first became aware of it when the Fleischman’s Rye label went from saying “Straight Rye Whiskey” to saying “Mash Rye Whiskey.” I believe it’s supposed to be read as Rye Mash Whiskey, but that’s because the designer was either asked to do it wrong or convinced themselves that the larger rye would draw attention first.

I got angry when I found that I liked the Old Charter: Aged 8 Years and realized it had sneakily been replaced by something labeled: Old Charter: 8. The marketing department had removed the words Aged and Old, but left the 8. They tricked me. I was angry. I decided to to prove that they were sneaking an inferior product into the supply chain and trying to trick the numbers…err…customers into believing that nothing had changed. 

By an odd coincidence, I bought one out of the last batches of Very Old Barton, 100 proof: 6 Year Old before the switch to “Very Old Barton, 100 proof: 6.” So the last time I was in Kentucky I picked up a bottle of the 6. I’ll be very honest I had an agenda. I wanted to prove that these guys were no good liars.

On Sunday, I set up a double blind tasting with the 6 Year Old and the 6. I threw in a pour out of the bottle of 90 proof 6 year I had on hand to confuse the issue even more. Below are the results. 

Disclaimer: I bought all of these bottles. The 90 proof was bought at Binny’s in Bloomington, IL. The 100 proof NAS was purchased at Liquor World in Bardstown. The 100 proof 6 year old..I’m guessing it was at a Liquor Barn, but it was long enough ago that I don’t remember which one. I’m leaving this info out of the notes so as not to tip my hand as to which is which.

Bourbon 1

Nose: Sweet. Bubblegum. Grassy. Dried corn.

Mouth: Hot and sweet. Like a sugar cookie mixed with grain.

Finish: Some warmth. More dried corn. 

Bourbon 2: 

Nose: Predominately a lumber pile. Oak. Under that is some bubblegum.

Mouth: Thin. Dried Corn. A bit of bubblegum. 

Finish: Gentle, but with a lingering bitterness.

Bourbon 3: 

Nose: Vegetal silage. Sweet bubblegum. Oak.

Mouth: Some heat. Bitter oak tannins. Vegetal. 

Finish: Silage. Gentle. A lingering unpleasant bitterness.

Thoughts: Upon finishing my notes, I’m positive I know which are which. I’m guessing the thin mouthfeel of 2 means it is the 90 proof. And because of my bias, I’m pretty sure the vegetal silage one is the NAS and the sweet tasty one was the older version. 

I was correct on the 90 proof. That was indeed number 2. But I had the others completely backward. It turns out, I really disliked the 100 proof age stated version (number 3). It was bitter and tannic. And this isn’t a new phenomenon. I liked the 86 proof much more than the 100 the last time I reviewed them. But the NAS version (number 1)? I liked that one a lot. It was sweeter but still had the burn that let me know the proof was there.

So what does this mean? Well it lends credence to Sazerac’s claim that they wanted to age these to taste not age. If the 6 year is overaged, I’m happy to have one that isn’t. But I’m torn. They are still deceiving people. I hate being tricked almost more than I hate bad whiskey. But I have a solution.

Sazerac: just remove the damn numbers.

Thoughts on the difference between drinking and tasting & a review of Baker's Bourbon

As someone who puts his thoughts about bourbon down in the digital spaces, I could be called some kind of bourbon enthusiast. A bourbon geek, if you will. What makes a geek a geek (of whatever orientation, tech, comics, bourbon, etc) is an almost obsessive fascination with a certain subject. In my case, bourbon. 

One of the side effects of such an obsession is that we tend to want to quantify things. To assign each individual expression a certain worth and to see how it ranks against the others. It could be that first issue where Batman did something or another, a computer with the best specs or a whiskey that has just the right nose or finish to warrant a numerical score. 

If you are obsessed enough to score something you are probably using the “right” equipment to do so. Either a Glencairn or some other nosing glass that will allow the odors to concentrate enough for you to be able to appreciate them fully. This is how I and many others get our tasting notes. And I know it might sound snobby, but in all honesty the glass really does make a difference. 

But here’s the thing, by making a difference it changes what you are doing. You’re tasting the bourbon. You aren’t drinking it. And there is a difference between tasting a bourbon and drinking it. One is for analysis and one is for pleasure. They only have a passing relationship to one another. So does that matter? Not really. If you prefer one or the other, that’s cool. And that isn’t to say that pleasure can’t be had from analysis. It takes all kinds.

All of the above is a preface to my issue tonight. I’ve had plenty of bourbons that I really liked when tasting them. But when it came time to just drink them? They were different. It wasn’t as pleasurable as I would have expected. On the other hand I’ve had bourbons such as Evan Williams Black or a Very Old Barton that are a pleasure to have at hand during a card game, while having a good conversation or while watching a good movie that are perfectly tasty, but get them in a tasting glass and they feel thin or bland. And that isn’t fair because that isn’t their natural environment. They were developed for drinking, not tasting.

This next one is an anomaly though. I was really looking forward to doing the tasting. It was one that I have really liked on numerous occasions in a tumbler with a piece of ice or two. I put it in a nosing glass though and all the things that I thought I liked weren’t there anymore. Instead of warm candy sweetness…well let’s let the notes do the talking for this one.

Baker’s Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

Purchase Info: $41.49 for a 750 mL at Liquor World, Bardstown, KY

Details: 7 years old. 53.5% ABV. Batch B-90-001.

Nose: Sawdust, mint, white sugar, green vegetables.

Mouth: Toffee, black pepper and oak. Sweet, yet somehow also bitter.

Finish: Warm and long with lingering oak.

Thoughts: The tasting glass seems to have brought out more of the bitterness than I would have expected. the nose was more vegetal than I remembered. If I’d only had a small sample and only had it while tasting, I wouldn’t be able to say I liked this. But since I normally drink it with in my favorite rocks glass with an ice cube or two, I can easily say that I like this one a lot.

Advice, sharing & a review: Old Medley 12 year

Some advice: when you meet with other whiskey enthusiasts, don’t overthink it. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here are some of the things I’ve been guilty of in the past.

I was at a whiskey bar in Louisville and saw they had a few special (expensive) pours on the menu. I really wanted to try one, but didn’t because I didn’t want to come across as a douchebag who “only drinks the good stuff” even though it was just that I hadn’t had it before. Don’t overthink it.

I was at another whiskey bar where the bartender really seemed to know his stuff. Even though I tend toward fanboyishness for Four Roses and really wanted it, I bought a pour of Old GrandDad 114 so that he would know that I knew how to find an overlooked gem too. I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice. Don’t overthink it.

I met a whiskey writer that I admire for the first time and we had a taste of an amazing old Rye from before I was born. Even though I was hungry, and the food was right in front of me, I had to be talked into having some along with the whiskey. I didn’t want to be seen as disrespecting something that was amazingly rare and special. Don’t overthink it.

I was at a tasting in a local liquor store and saw that many others were nosing by hovering just above the lip of their nosing glasses. I adjusted my deep dive to match their shallow one even though I have allergies and need to get all the way in so I can pick anything up. I didn’t actually end up smelling anything that night. Don’t overthink it.

Social anxiety has been something that I’ve struggled with my entire life. I tend to come across as a gregarious person. It’s a persona that I, eventually, had adopted for so long that I thought it was who I actually was. But deep down, that crippling shyness never really went away. It just chose odd times to really show up. But here’s the thing, when I finally stopped worrying about if others were judging how I enjoyed my whiskey, I ended up enjoying my whiskey much more.

Ok here’s one more: I was in a liquor store in St. Louis to meet up with a local blogger. We ended up doing a little shopping. I was, once again, in danger of overthinking the bottle I was buying. I saw some that I knew I couldn’t get at home but was straying over to those that the other geeks prefer. It took my wife quietly taking me to task to make me realize what I was doing. In the end I ended up picking up a bottle of Old Medley 12 year. I’d heard of it, knew it was sourced but little else. I also knew I couldn’t get it at home and that even if it turned out that it wasn’t good, it would at least be something new. I didn’t over think it. I just bought it. And eventually I just drank it.

Old Medley 12 Year Old

Purchase Info: ~$45 for a 750 mL at the Wine and Cheese Place, St. Louis, MO

Details: 43.4% ABV. Distilled in Kentucky, bottled in California.

Nose: This whiskey cannot make up its mind if it wants to be sweet with spicy cinnamon or sharp with vegetal oak on the nose. It’s never both, but switches back and forth.

Mouth: Slightly syrupy mouthfeel with mint, clove and oak tannins.

Finish: Harsh but short with a lingering bitter mineral note.

Thoughts: I would probably like this much more if I hadn’t paid so much for it. It reminds me a lot of an older, woodier version of Ezra Brooks. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with it, but there isn’t much to recommend it at $40+ unless you really like an over-oaked bourbon.

Blog about a blogger who's blogging whiskey: Josh Feldman

I first ran across Coop (Josh Feldman of CopperedTot.com) a couple years ago as I was starting to scope out the whisky blogs before I started my own. I was (and am) obviously interested in the topic and wanted to get other points of view. What I didn’t realize as I clicked on that link for the first time was that I was also going to gain a friend. We started talking on twitter. He and my wife started talking on twitter. We commiserated about the awfulness of watching someone we love suffer through cancer. He helped me get through it and helped my wife as well. Then, all of a sudden, one day he was gone from twitter. In a massive outpouring of goodbyes, I realized that my new friend was everyone’s new friend. And that he was a pretty special guy on top of that.

Fast forward a few years and Coop has been back on twitter for a while. He’s blogging again and though it isn’t with the frequency he had at first, the posts are longer, more thought out and more interesting. He hits topics dealing with whisky history, the treatment of women in whisky advertising, old dusty whiskies, and local New York whisky coverage. And he’s still a great guy. 

Hey Josh, thanks for agreeing to be the second guinea pig for this series. First things first: who are you, anyway?

Hi Eric. I'm a dilettante - a person with many many passions and interests but who has lacked the ability to make a truly deep study of any of them. The downside of this is that I lack any advanced degrees, work in IT without being a master in any particular area, and partake in many subjects, ranging from whisky, climate science, jewelry making and design, astronomy, climate science, evolution and genetics, history and literature - all without an demonstrable expertise. The upside of my scattered (more generously, "Renaissance Man") approach is that I'm something of a polymath. My knowledge of many different areas allows me to make connections between areas that don't often get connected. When I encounter other writers and researchers doing that it really excites and inspires me. Examples include Adrienne Mayor's "The First Fossil Hunters" which is about how ancient myths of chimera creatures and the remains of giants actually represents how ancient peoples studied fossil remains of extinct giant mammals and reptiles. Another example is Stuart Kauffman's "Reinventing the Sacred" which is a fusion of philosophical commentary about the schism between religion and science in Western civilization and how the science of Emergence provides a way to knit up that schism because of the inherent mysticism in the science. A final example is Fred Minnick's "Whiskey Women" which fuses history and social commentary about the evolution of whiskey culture. Books like these can really expand your world view. That's what excites me and, I hope, is the silver lining my butterfly approach to my studies of things. I want to write like that. Recently I've found a voice on my whisky blog that brings some of this to bear.

I know you are a whiskey fan, you're active in the comments section of a ton of blogs, write your own, keep a Facebook group, etc. How'd you get into it?

When I was in college in New York I drank copious quantities of beer and bourbon like most of my peers. Having come from Berkeley's epicurean scene I knew a little about gourmet beer and undertook to taste ALL of the world's beers. I tasted hundreds and kept notes in a small binder - sadly now lost. After a while I realized the futility of the endeavor but along the way I explored, extensively, Scottish, English, and Irish ales, porters, stouts, and lagers, German wheat beers and lagers, Czech pilsners, Belgian Trappist ales, and so on. It was an object lesson in the creativity of diversity of the way brewers approach the craft of making alcohol. A few years later (late 1980s) I noticed that new single malts were being imported. I picked up a few: Glenfiddich Special Reserve (NAS), Macallan 12, Bowmore 12, Bruichladdich 12, and the Diageo Classic Malts Collection which in those days was Talisker 10, Lagavulin 16, Dalwhinnie 15, Oban 14, and Glenkinchie 12. I fell in love with Talisker right off the bat (how many times have heard that?) I was on my way. I didn't pursue Bourbon, however. I had drunk too much of it at a weekly card game where we made a point of killing a bottle before leaving the table as a display of macho stupidity. We were doing shots of what I now know was very good National Distillers Old Grand Dad, Stizel-Weller Cabin Still, Jim Beam White, 90 proof Jack Daniels and the like. In doing shots I missed the flavors. In getting drunk I established adversity. I didn't rediscover Bourbon until an event at Keen's steak house in 2006 when Paul Pacult had Wild Turkey take us through the line. Kentucky Spirit and Rare Breed were a revelation when properly aired, nosed, and sipped in a glencairn. I fell in love and my exploration of Bourbon began shortly thereafter. If only I had known what was coming I would explored the high end of Bourbon and the dusty world more vigorously in those days. So many things were available then which are absolutely gone (or insanely expensive) now.

You write about whiskey at CooperedTot.com. What's the history of The Coopered Tot? 

In the late 2000s I was a fierce Amazon reviewer. At my peak I made it into the top 50 ranking briefly. I reviewed a lot of different things, but also reviewed whisky. This was a frustrating enterprise as Amazon didn't actually sell whisky in the USA (as it does in the UK). They hosted listings from liquor stores and I put my reviews on those. These listings frequently expired and were deleted, and my reviews along with them (Amazon stopped listing hard spirits entirely in the US in 2012). To save my reviews I started a blog on blogger and just dumped the major portion of my Amazon reviews as blog posts. This is why I have a hundred or so reviews in my first few months of blogging. I wasn't expecting the social connection that the blog opened. Soon I was interacting on Twitter and Facebook with whisky people from all over the world. This led to a wealth of connections, learning, and great drinking. It has only built from there. This is the golden lining of Internet addiction.

You've recently transitioned from straight reviews to taking more of a historical bent. You've recently covered advertising, sexism, historical bourbons, etc. As these are my favorite posts, I have to ask, what's the cause of the switch?

I don't have time to write and do tasting notes on a regular basis. There a large number of great blogs out there doing tasting notes far more comprehensively and better than I can. I thought about what really interested me - and it's the history and the social context of whisky, distilling, and the culture of drinking. When I look into these back stories I find I'm able to make novel connections and really say something of value that's new. This excites me tremendously. I feel like I've found my voice as a whisky writer with these topics. I have a ton more in this vein in the works. Upcoming pieces include a riff on a 1994 academic paper by Adrienne Mayor about the iconography of the female body in Western art related to alcohol. I studied the topic and found I was able to extend her thesis (which begin in medieval European art) back to the ancient Greeks and forward through belle-epoque France and into the modern era in a host of areas ranging from fine art to stripper's dance acts. I've also indulged my obsession with the topic of how whisky expressions have changed over time by assembling a number of flights of certain brands that span many decades. I have bottles and samples of Old Overholt from Prohibition through the modern era. I have similar flights for brands ranging from White Horse, Teachers, Johnnie Walker Red and Black, Old Forester, Jim Beam, Old Grand Dad, etc... Some of these flights have big gaps (please send me samples of your dustys!) I'm a big fan of the bloggers who have done similar work - in particular Tim Read of Scotch and Ice Cream, Steve Ury of Sku's Recent Eats, Oliver Klimek's Dramming, and Serge Valentin's Whisky Fun. I'm also studying the pre-Prohibition and Prohibition era of American whisky. Important blogs for me in this area include John and Linda Lipman's Ellenjaye, and Jack Sullivan's Those Pre-Pro Whiskey Men! I hope to eventually be able to contribute something new and important in the history of American whiskey space - particularly in the area of rye. There's a whole lot of stories left to tell. 

As a guy who follows this stuff, what's your take on the state of the bourbon industry right now? What would you like to see happen? 

It's an incredibly exciting time for Bourbon and American whiskey as a whole. Rapid growth has produced a mess, with Bourbon producers cutting age statement expressions and (related or not) a reduction in quality in many expressions. At the same time the explosion in American craft distilling is producing some fabulous new creative whiskies (Balcones, Westland, MacKenzie, Koval, St. George, and Charbay come immediately to mind - among many others). While, at the same time NDP producers threaten to confuse consumers and muddy the waters for the people legitimately doing the hard work of creating whiskey. The backlash against NDPs threatens collateral damage against rectifying houses that are doing real valuable and creative work (such as High West, Smooth Ambler, Angel's Envy, and Big Bottom). Chuck Cowdery, in particular, has been attempting to light a fire under regulators to enforce laws that make the State of distillation known on the label. I'd love a law that required the name(s) of the actual distilleries where the whiskies were sourced from to be listed. Marketing that makes confusion is obviously adaptive in the short term for building market share but is ultimately unhealthy for the American whiskey market over all. Object lessons include Michter's, who bottled amazing whiskies on the way to setting up their own distilling operation while generating ill-will from the Bourbon enthusiast community which is a shame, given the excellent stuff that they have out there. Other examples are Widow Jane, Whistlepig, Templeton, Calumet, just to name a few. Some of these places are actually making whisky, but have hopelessly muddled their names up with dishonesty about what their whiskies actually are. The one distillery that seems to have negotiated these perilous waters in an exemplary way is Willett's/Kentucky Bourbon Distillers - who have played all the roles, from broker, rectifier, blender, NDP, and distiller of their own stuff - in a fairly open and straightforward way. It doesn't hurt that the Kulsveens have excellent palates and have bottled a bunch of great bourbons and ryes. In the end the market will shake out of its own accord, but in the absence of clear intelligible laws and any kind of consistent regulatory enforcement, consumers and enthusiasts have been confused and misled and a lot of unnecessary anger has been produced. If you want to feel some of that anger, I highly recommend reading Bourbon Truth.

Hypothetical question: A new bourbon magazine comes calling and offers you a column. Would you be interested and what beat would you choose to cover?

This would be a dream come true for me. I'd absolutely love it and would do it if I could. I would love to write about American whiskey history, the whisky blogosphere beat, whisky in a wider cultural perspective, or, heck, tasting notes! I'm in love with all of it.

Plug time: where can people find you online and is there anything else you'd like to plug?

My blog is The Coopered Tot I have a bunch of great content on the blog (and don't miss checking out the blog roll on the left) - but I also have a ton of additional content related to tastings and my thinking and the accumulation of ideas for future posts on various other social media sites:

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/cooperedtot/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCooperedTot

Instagram: http://instagram.com/cooperedtot

I help administer a closed Facebook group for whisky bloggers, vloggers, journalists and writers called "Whisky Bloggers". Any bloggers on Facebook who aren't members should consider joining. A URL is required, however, so if you don't have one, don't bother to apply.

A great open Facebook group for whisky bloggers to link their latest posts is "Whiskey Blogroll". I encourage everyone to check that out and join.

I would like to thank Coop for taking the time to answer a few questions and encourage everyone to check those out. I can honestly say, he’s one of my favorite people I’ve never met in real life.

Finding an I.W. Harper dusty while antiquing

It was a Sunday afternoon in early April. My wife had recently purchased an old Beam decanter for me. Something about it had made me excited to see what else was out there and it was easy for her to talk me into going with her when she decided to visit a few antique stores. I like the consignment style stores. The ones where a person rents a space and fills it full of their old crap. I don’t find many bargains that way, but I do see more things that I remember from my own childhood. And that’s fun.

As I wandered around this particular store, I saw some cool things. I saw a couple Ezra Brooks decanters from the 60s. A bear and a Native American. I didn’t pull the trigger on either since the labels were peeling off and in that condition I didn’t feel like paying that much for what was just a curiosity to me. I saw a NDP decanter of an old Minnesota Gopher mascot in a football helmet. It was probably from about the same time. And since I’m a huge Gopher football fan, I was tempted…until I saw it was over $100. That made me much less excited even though it looked as if it may have still been sealed.

Sealed and full of bourbon most likely contaminated by high levels of lead. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t buy it, I would probably have given myself lead poisoning since I doubt I’d have had the willpower to leave it sealed. I’m more curious than that fabled cat. 

But one thing did catch my eye. It was just about halfway down the center aisle, all the way down on the bottom shelf. It was a tax stamp on a mini bottle. Even though my knees hate it when I do this, I got down and took a look. It was a bottle of Canadian Club and it said 1962 on the tax stamp. Even better it was full and the seal hadn’t been broken. There were other bottles down there too. The other sealed one was a miniature of IW Harper. It was missing the tax stamp, but the seal was unbroken and the bottle was full. And best of all, both were under five dollars each. So I grabbed them. I wandered around for a little bit but didn’t see anything else I felt like buying, paid my bill and wandered out.

I wondered a bit at the legality of selling them. I doubted the antique store had a liquor license. Plus it was a Sunday and there are no spirits sales on a Sunday. But since I got something cool and I didn’t see a boatload of cops standing there, I decided to tamp down the curiosity and think about things that were a little more important. Like how long it would take to get home and crack it open.

But I waited a bit. The next week was the season premiere of Mad Men and since Don’s favorite drink is Canadian Club and since it was from just about the right time period, I decided to drink that during the premiere. It was good, though it was so floral that I found it a bit like drinking perfume. The IW Harper though, sat on my shelf for a while. I wanted to look into it a little bit and see if I could find out anymore about it. Specifically: “What is this?” and “how old is this thing?”

The first thing I learned is that currently IW Harper is owned by Diageo and isn’t sold in the US anymore. And hasn’t been for a while. Ok so, at least the 80s. Cool. No bar code and no metric units so that pushed the youngest it could be back into the mid to late 70s. I did a bunch of searching of old ads and the earliest I could find that label used was in a 1970 ad. The next oldest ad I could find was from 1965 and had a slightly different label featured. So roughly early to mid-1970s. At that time it was owned by Schenley. That was close enough for my curiosity now I just needed to open it. 

But I waited. And waited. It got shoved behind some other samples I had and so I forgot about it. Until I found it this weekend, decided that enough was enough, and cracked it open.

IW Harper Gold Medal Bourbon (roughly mid 1970s)

Purchase info: an antique store $3.99 for a 1/10th pint

Details: 6 years old and 86 proof (no ABV listed so I deviate from my standard even though I know it would be 43%)

Nose: Started out very floral. Dark brown sugar, baking apples, allspice, cardamom and a sharp wood note. After sitting a bit it settled into a general fruity candy.

Mouth: Nice thick mouthfeel. Floral again with more dark brown sugar. Spicy with allspice and cinnamon. Oak and caramel as it moves back in the mouth. 

Finish: Long and warm with lingering floral hints.

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Thoughts: I just wish there were more. Sweet, spicy, rich and floral sum this up nicely. The color is even beautiful. It is a joy to look at, smell and taste. Just yum.

Book Review: Craft Cocktails at Home

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How much is a "dash" of bitters? What can I do to turn my tap water into "Magical Alpine Fairy-Water?" A cream whipper is just for making whipped cream, right? These are just a few of the questions that are answered in Craft Cocktails at Home by Kevin Liu. 

I originally picked up this book to answer that very first question above. I was trying to test out various bitters to see which I preferred. I do that. Head-to-head testing seems to be my favorite way to find these things out. But in order for the experiment to make sense, I needed to be consistent in my measures. A quick Google search led me to the Amazon listing forCraft Cocktails at Home. Before I knew it, it was ordered and on its way.

I figured if it could answer that one simple question, there were probably quite a few more that it could answer as well. And though I will probably never find myself making cranberry bubbles to put on top of a cocktail, the fact that I now have a reference as to how to go about doing it fills me with joy.

But the book doesn't just cover how to make drinks to impress your friends. It also covers topics that might make it less likely for you to kill them as well. Things such as shelf-life and preservation. There are also entire sections dedicated to filtering, carbonating, foaming, smoking and, yes, even something as "basic" as building a balanced drink.

I would say that the section on the science of flavor is probably my favorite. Or maybe it's the hacking together useful gadgets sections. Or maybe the part on bitters…

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To say that I enjoyed this book is an understatement. It hit the geeky science side of my personality perfectly and followed it up with some fun DIY hacking. And all in the service of making a fun cocktail. What's not to love?

Purchase Info: $7.88, Amazon.com

Consistency: Is it a misplaced goal?

I was reminded yesterday of an argument I had with a friend of mine a while back. He is the owner of a brand of craft spirit. You see, yesterday he posted on his brand’s Facebook page about consistency. It is his position that batch to batch consistency is, in and of itself, not a goal. 

As far as that goes, he’s correct. Every barrel of bourbon tastes a bit different. It doesn’t matter if the the same mash bill was put into the barrel on the same day and they were aged in a similar location. They will all taste different. This is to be expected. Barrels are made from trees. They are natural products. The trees will have been subject to different nutrients, amounts of sunlight, stresses, etc. It is to be expected that the levels of certain chemicals in each may be slightly different. It is also to be expected that environmental factors will come to play during the time the spirit is sitting in the barrel. Hot spots in the warehouse, access to better breezes, atmospheric pressure differences from season to season are all probable. Bourbon is a natural product.

So how does every one of the bottles of Jim Beam taste exactly the same? The short answer is they do not. But they taste close enough that no one, possibly not even those trained to do so notices. And because of this things change slightly over time. If you get your hands on a bottle from 15-20 years ago odds are there will be slight differences. While there are many possible reasons for this (15-20 years ago there may have been more older whiskey blended in, the bottle may have been subjected to extreme heat or light, bottle maturation, recipe changes, etc), I posit that subtle shifts are inevitable even if “nothing has changed” and conditions were perfect after bottling. 

But if you got a bottle of Jim Beam that was produced this year and compared it to one produced last year, I doubt you’d notice a difference. So how do they get it so similar. The major reason is that they make a lot of bourbon. And they mix a lot of it together until they get the flavor profile they are looking for. They are good at what they do and have a lot of stocks to chose from in order to get it just right.

But why do they do it? Why do they work so hard to make an admittedly inconsistent product so consistent? In a word: consumers. The big brands know that the everyday consumer has been trained to expect that one box of Cheerios® will taste just like the next box. And that Toasted Oat Circles will taste different. And they know that the same consumer will expect a bottle of Jim Beam to taste like the one next to it and not like Knob Creek.

And yes, there are geeks in the world who know more than the average consumer. We know that there is variation from barrel to barrel. We know that this batch might taste better than the next batch. This is why those same companies market single barrel products to us. We are interested in the minute variations. Plus we know that the companies are going to be choosing the best barrels they can find. The ones that won’t need to have the edges averaged off.

So with all of that, should consistency be a goal in, and of, itself? My friend, from the beginning of the post, says the goal should be consistency within an acceptable range. He states craft products should not be held to the same standards as the big guys. All of this is correct, in a manner of speaking. Due to the nature of an actual small batch product using natural ingredients and processes, there will be batch variation. This is fine and may even be admirable. 

This year’s infusion may taste different than last year’s because this year’s strawberries or plums may taste different than last year’s. Why should Batch 1 be the flavor standard bearer if Batch 2 can improve on it? 

It probably shouldn’t. But if you don’t tell the consumer that, they will expect it to. Remember, we live in the world of artificial flavorings where one batch of strawberry flavored yogurt tastes the same as the next. 

Consistency should not be a goal. But letting your customers know what they are buying should be. And consistency is just one way of doing that. It’s up to producers to tell us when they are playing by a different set of rules. Whether it is batch numbers on bottles of Booker’s or vintages on bottles of wine, if you give consumers a hint that something might be different, they’ll play along. They might even want to try more than one. But if you don’t, and they notice, you may have lost the next sale.