The Whiskey Critic Thread
Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2008 2:45 pm
Okay guys...it's quite obvious that we can whip the pants off of a commercial distillery with what we make at home....that's not even an issue. What's more....I'm going to take a liking to my sugar vodka as much because I made it myself as because of any taste considerations. My observation is that most folks here don't give have any truck with commercial beverages, and with good reason. Well....we can learn alot from discussing the characteristics of commercial spirits and if nothing else it can provide a point of reference for taste, an index of sorts.
I'm starting this thread in order to generate discussion on taste comparisons between commercially available stuff and our stuff we make at home, we have to have some accessible benchmark by which to do so. And I'll start with a very specific observation.
Being a fan of the ultra premium Bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle and Bookers, I've often wondered what an aged sugar based spirit would taste like. I've oaked some of my own corn/sugar UJSM type stuff with rather, uh......interesting results, but we all know it doesn't doesn't precisely duplicate the characteristics of barrel aging. On the other hand I'm not sure my pallete could tell the difference anyway!!
I've been investigating Rums lately.....Bacardi seems to be truly miserable stuff....there's nothing right about the taste at all except that caramel/butter flavor in the nose and on the front of the tongue that seems to fade all-too-quickly. On the other hand...it seems to have too much of everything, sometimes I taste too many heads, sometimes too many tails, mostly too many tails, like thin and insipid. Then they cover it up with space and some aging. I do not like Bacardi Gold, so maybe some taste comments on Bacardi are in order.
I tried Myer's Dark Rum. It's supposed to be 100% Jamaican pot-stilled rum, and aged in white oak barrels, it's a dark run. Apparently it's "blended" in a series of mixtures in which some of the blend comes from casks that have aged for over 40 years.......not sure I buy that one.
Well....the oakiness/smokiness on the Myer's Dark definitely slaps you in the face, much like a highly aged Bourbon, like more than 10 years. The distinctive part is how clearly the alchohol taste comes out, unlike the grain smoothness of bourbons, the aged rum still just clearly says...."Hey...here's the pure alchohol part." The in-between is interesting though, kind've leathery, thick, smoky, chocolately, somewhat complex. It's got to be the cask characteristics overshadowing the distillate characteristics because the buttery thing expected in rum is mostly subdued. But I must say that the fuzzy whang of fusels is not nearl as strong. Maybe this stuff really IS pot stilled. I'd like to find some rum that is 100% pot stilled and see what that tasted like.
I'm starting this thread in order to generate discussion on taste comparisons between commercially available stuff and our stuff we make at home, we have to have some accessible benchmark by which to do so. And I'll start with a very specific observation.
Being a fan of the ultra premium Bourbons like Pappy Van Winkle and Bookers, I've often wondered what an aged sugar based spirit would taste like. I've oaked some of my own corn/sugar UJSM type stuff with rather, uh......interesting results, but we all know it doesn't doesn't precisely duplicate the characteristics of barrel aging. On the other hand I'm not sure my pallete could tell the difference anyway!!
I've been investigating Rums lately.....Bacardi seems to be truly miserable stuff....there's nothing right about the taste at all except that caramel/butter flavor in the nose and on the front of the tongue that seems to fade all-too-quickly. On the other hand...it seems to have too much of everything, sometimes I taste too many heads, sometimes too many tails, mostly too many tails, like thin and insipid. Then they cover it up with space and some aging. I do not like Bacardi Gold, so maybe some taste comments on Bacardi are in order.
I tried Myer's Dark Rum. It's supposed to be 100% Jamaican pot-stilled rum, and aged in white oak barrels, it's a dark run. Apparently it's "blended" in a series of mixtures in which some of the blend comes from casks that have aged for over 40 years.......not sure I buy that one.
Well....the oakiness/smokiness on the Myer's Dark definitely slaps you in the face, much like a highly aged Bourbon, like more than 10 years. The distinctive part is how clearly the alchohol taste comes out, unlike the grain smoothness of bourbons, the aged rum still just clearly says...."Hey...here's the pure alchohol part." The in-between is interesting though, kind've leathery, thick, smoky, chocolately, somewhat complex. It's got to be the cask characteristics overshadowing the distillate characteristics because the buttery thing expected in rum is mostly subdued. But I must say that the fuzzy whang of fusels is not nearl as strong. Maybe this stuff really IS pot stilled. I'd like to find some rum that is 100% pot stilled and see what that tasted like.