An easy going blog for easy going malts
The Islay Boys is a newish independent bottler of whisky and more recently a brewer of beers. I remember this brand appearing a couple of years ago and then at least online things have been a little quiet. I picked up the blended and malt blend recently cheaply at auction mostly just for this blog […]
So in our mini series around the Distiller’s bottling of Talisker we saw flavour changes over the course of nearly a year. The reason for that I am sure you will have gathered is oxidisation in the bottle as the ratio of air and whisky changes over time. Is this a good or a bad […]
In what has to be the oldest freely available footage from the Isle of Islay I have found 6 YouTube videos from an Ian Maclean. Using 8mm film Ian’s father shot all of these movies using what would be a very expensive camera at the time during family holidays to the island I suspect. What […]
In 1964 Bowmore had delivered a new boiler from Renfrew just outside of Glasgow. The plan was to use the Royal Navy to delivery the boiler and part of a new still to the island from their base in Rhu during a May Bank Holiday. The route was to be as below: A short […]
In this article I will try and explain the differences in how wine and whisky react to being in a bottle. What is the story with wine? Wine is produced from the fermentation of grapes and is bottled after a relatively short period in barrels. The liquid which is bottled is high in sugar so […]
In this article I will attempt to explain as concisely and simply as possible how malt whisky is made in Scotland. Fundamentally, whisky in other countries follows roughly the same idea with the odd tweak here and there. TL;DR Step 1 – Grow some barley The basic raw ingredient of whisky is barley. For most […]
With fifty articles on the blog now I wanted to explain why I made the conscious decision to not end each review with a score. Rather, I end each review with a paragraph or two which relatively concisely rounds up my thoughts. The first thing to get out the way is what is a score? […]
If you are a regular to this blog you will know constantly and consistently I bang the Non Chill Filtered (NCF) drum. Why do I care so much and am I correct to be giving such kudo’s to the lack of a process which is meant to guarantee “quality”. For any product on the market […]
Non Age Statement whiskies or NAS because who not like an acronym are whisky bottles which do not state an age on the label. In 2017 these shy whiskies have a pretty bad reputation with both casual and regular whisky consumers. If that really is the case and whisky producers make cold decisions based on […]
Now Christmas is all but over I wanted to do a recap post of the calendar which provide the initial material for this post. The Concept To get the whisky enthusiast close to you into the Christmas spirit the Drinks by the Dram team have you covered. They sell advent calendars where each day you […]
Malted 