Nuanced. - 135. Matthew James - A Beginners Guide to Drinking Whisky

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

Have you ever wondered what makes whiskey so distinct and unique? Let me take you on a trip down the whiskey lane with none other than Matthew James of Whiskey on the West Coast. This episode, packed with insights and intriguing facts, peels back the layers on the world of whiskey, starting from the stories behind Matthew's successful YouTube channel.As we journey through the rich history of whiskey, we uncover the intricate differences between bourbon and whiskey, Canadian whiskey, and the complexities of rye whiskey varieties. We delve into whiskey production practices and how they influence the taste of this timeless drink. From discussing whiskey filtration to tasting various brands, the episode holds a wealth of information for both seasoned whiskey enthusiasts and novice sippers. Matthew enlightens us about the regulations around Canadian whiskey and how the process of chill filtering impacts the quality of the drink.The latter half of the conversation focuses on the influence of marketing on whiskey and the importance of not judging a whiskey by its label. Does the soil type where the whiskey is grown affect its flavor? Can celebrity endorsements sway perceptions? As we mull over these questions, Matthew provides a hands-on guide on how to properly taste and enjoy whiskey. We also debate the concept of terroir in whiskey, testing its validity. Whether you're a whiskey aficionado or a curious beginner, this episode takes you one step closer to becoming a true whiskey connoisseur. So, pour yourself a glass and join us. Cheers!Send us a textThe "What's Going On?" PodcastThink casual, relatable discussions like you'd overhear in a barbershop....Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

Welcome back to another episode of the Bigger Than Me podcast. Here is your host, Aaron. One theme that I'm always looking to highlight is the importance of chasing your passion. I believe that many of the freedoms and rights we have today are designed to specifically support people in chasing their passion. Whether it's just a hobby or you're trying to turn that hobby into a career, I think it's vital that we highlight individuals who are doing that. That's my guest today. He is the host of Whiskey on the West Coast. My guest today is Matthew James.

Matthew, since last we spoke, October 24th, 2023, you were thinking about starting a YouTube channel. You started that on November 13th, which was just under a month later. You created an email address. You released your first video on December 9th, 2022. You are at 1.37,000 subscribers. You have over 100,000 channel views and 75 videos. Can you remind people who you are? My name is Matthew James, and I am the content producer of whiskey on the West Coast.

I drink whiskey, and I hopefully know a few things. Perfect. Can you tell us about what happened kind of transpired after that interview? Because it just looks like you just got to work. Yeah, no, I took that that inertia, that startup inertia that kick in the butt you gave me. And I said, you got to do something with this. I said, you know what, you're right. I should give this a shot.

And so we started at making the channel, picked a name. Whiskey on the West Coast, picked a way of presenting that information, YouTube. And then we started on the logo. Kyla made a fantastic logo inspired by Mount Cheam and Lady Peak and the Vedder River. And it all kind of unfolded from there. We made our first three videos. We released them, like you said, very well-researched December 9th. And then here we are, yeah, 100,000 views.

That is wild to think about. How did it feel to finally put all of this knowledge, all of this passion out there into the world? It was scary at first, for sure, that we have a little video that we've largely kept to ourselves where I'm pushing the button on the publish and I'm drinking it to Morton's coffee. And I take one more swig just for good luck, for some bravery, and then put it on. And immediately, I'm like, all right, let's take it down. but you know as soon as the comments started rolling in as soon as people started engaging it was way too much fun it's definitely addictive you get that dopamine rush that kick and

my particular community like the whiskey community um it's just so positive there's so much positivity everyone wants to like join in everyone wants to encourage you and reinforce it i've had barely any negative negative feedback so most of the negative feedback's been on my hat to be personally honest um what advice do you have for other people seeing that you were there a year ago kind of interested in I know you wanted to but you hadn't dipped your toe in yet what advice do you have for those people who are right there with their idea or they have this private passion that they don't share with others what advice do you have start talking about it because the people around you

are going to start encouraging you they're going to tell you whether you're not earnestly it's a good idea that's the first thing second thing I'd say is um take take a shot take some dry runs. Like if you're thinking about like doing YouTube videos, practice some YouTube videos, start putting something together. And if you're feeling like you're onto something, like you've got something that's connecting that you yourself would watch, then I think you go forward with it. And finally, the big thing I think really helped us is not releasing until you've got your ducks in a row. Like you're never a perfect time, obviously, to start something other than right away, just start right away. But for us having three videos to release

all at the same time, gave people some back catalog to dig into. It gave us some depth of catalog. There was a list in there, a Christmas gift list. There was some reviews. If I put out one video, I think the channel easily could have been one of those that like has a good first video and the next one kind of falls a little flat. I think that really helped us a lot. So just being prepared with enough content to kind of satiate people's desire for that. You say us, can you talk about doing this with your partner? I think it's so admirable. Some people, they go off and they have their own interest,

whether it's golf and then they're away from their partner and they get all these negative mindsets. You've been able to do this with the support of your partner. She's helping in the back. What has that been like? It's been amazing. I don't think we would be like a quarter of the way to where we are without Kyla. Kyla is the one behind, you know, the editing.

She's the one behind the look of the channel, making sure I actually look put together during the videos. Yeah, she does all the editing. The logo, as I mentioned, she's really like a workhorse, a full-on engine for the channel. And so it's been really great. It's been something that's brought us together. It's been this like passion project that we can kind of work towards as a goal. So that's been really fun too. But yeah, I couldn't.

I couldn't. I can't imagine what the channel would look like without her. It would just be a sad state of affairs. It really would. Well, part of the thing that we're excited to do is do some recommendations, tips for people who are getting started on the whiskey. I am a connoisseur, but not well versed in the area. Would you mind walking us through how to drink whiskey,

how to enjoy it, and how to get a lot of flavor out of the experience? Yeah, for sure. So I do have tips for actually what you want to do if you're actually drinking whiskey. And we can go into that here. The first thing I would suggest, I brought some notes just to keep me all on topic here. It's not as intimidating as it may seem, like actually going ahead and drinking it. Like, you think you have to pull out a million flavors. You have to go ahead and, you know, pick out everything.

But really, you just need to slow down. You have to slow down and just take time with the whiskey and ask yourself, what are you tasting? What are you smelling? what experience are you having here and really take your time don't rush go slow this isn't a race this isn't something where you're trying to get to the destination first so so if you rush it if you glug it if you shoot it you're not going to enjoy it it's going to burn it's going to be harsh a good way to measure it is one minute in the glass every year in the cask for sitting in a glass so say you're drinking a 12 year old whiskey you probably want to just let that

sit for 12 minutes because as soon as you pour all those alcohol vapors, they're all agitated. So if you were going to go and nose it, like we're nose deities right now, they've settled. They're, they're calm. But if you're to do it right away, you're going to get harsh alcohol vapors. You're not going to enjoy it. So you've got to just take your time. Definitely smell at first. If you're just drinking it right away, you're only getting half the experience. Really, sometimes the most enjoyable thing about a whiskey is the smell. So you want to make sure you're going ahead and taking the time to nose it as well. That's what we call it, just nosing it, just lifting it to your nose and smelling.

The other thing that you'll see people do, we can pick up a glass here, is they'll shake it and swirl it. I don't suggest doing that. Okay. It's okay to do with like a low-strength whiskey. Is it a wine thing? It's a wine thing. You're dead on. Yeah. And that's because it's low in alcohol percentage. So you don't have those alcohol papers that are going to be agitated and straight up at your nose. So what you can do is you can go ahead and just.

coat the outside of the glass and you'll see it'll cling to the outside of glass and if you watch it you can see it's quite oily and you'll see these big thick drops of whiskey start tumbling down those are the legs and the legs can tell you a lot of things about how much oak impact it's had oftentimes how old it is sometimes how high in alcohol percentage it is but after doing that if you go ahead and nose it you'll get a lot more aromas right and you're not going to have all those alcohol vapors just attacking your nose like a punch fair to say with recommendation one that it's also good advice for life slow down experience enjoy connect yeah yeah 100% absolutely absolutely do that so what we're smelling right now is actually

a bourbon this is eagle rare 10 year old it's a Kentucky straight bourbon and it is a Kentucky Strait Bourbon is basically a whiskey that's made with corn, at least 51% corn, and then other grains. So wheat, rye, or barley are the most commonly used ones. And so they'll have lower proportions of those. And Kentucky Strait Bourbon has to be aged in freshly charred virgin oak barrels. So it has been used before. And it has to be at minimum two years old. So if you ever see Kentucky Strait bourbon on a label, that's what that means.

This is one of the most popular ones. It's from the Buffalo Trace Distillery. And you've heard of Buffalo Trace? Yeah, I have a bottle. You have a Buffalo Trace. Yeah. So it's the same mash bill. It's actually called, I believe it's the low rye mashbill.

So it's actually the same recipe. It's just it's older whiskey. Like mashbow. Yeah, so it's like the recipe. So when we're talking the amount of corn in it, I think it's about 90% corn or 85. Yeah, that's the grain that they use. I don't know what's going on. There's corn in with.

Yeah, yeah. And bourbon. Okay. Well, maybe we'll backtrack and talk about bourbon and what bourbon is. Okay. So the first thing I'll say is if you're drinking whiskey, the best whiskey for you is the whiskey you like the way you like to drink it. That's the starting point.

And if you watch the whiskey tribe, whiskey vault, they'll talk about that. That's their line. And what they're trying to say is, if you like the whiskey and you like the way you're drinking it, don't listen to other people who are telling you otherwise to do it a certain way, do it the way you enjoy it. So that's the first thing. You can drink it neat like we have in these glasses here. You can drink it with a couple drops of water.

You could drink it on the rocks and a tumbler like this here. That's a common way. I don't particularly prefer that way, but that's my choice. It's your choice to use a tumbler if you like. I just find the nose is a lot tougher to get if you're using a tumbler. You can use a kind of a modification between the two. It's here. And you can see it's got this tulip shape at the top.

It's got this big bulb at the bottom. You can also use that for that. I like nosing glasses like this Glenn Cairn. And this is what I use for sipping's neat. It's what we have largely here is many Glenn Cairns. And this is great for nosing, bringing it up and being able to get it without having the alcohol vapors. They kind of stay further down with that tulip shape. You can drink in a cocktail, like an old fashion.

Ever had an old fashioned? Yes. Yeah. They're delicious. Yeah. That's how honestly I drink a lot of my bourbon. I don't usually drink bourbons. right. I'm more of a single moment guy. On top of that, yeah, I just think it's really important

not to get caught in the whole, like, fanciness of this. Like, oh, is this, like, rare, exclusive, is this, oh, you're doing it wrong, or you're not putting water in it, you are putting water in it. People get caught up in their mind. So the way you want to drink it, that's the way you enjoy it. That's the perfect whiskey for you. Good advice for life as well. Yeah, exactly. The way you like it and the way to life. Whiskey is wisdom. There you are. Okay, perfect. So I guess the other thing is, like, what even is whiskey? Because you're talking about the, you know, there's corn in whiskey.

It depends on the whiskey. So wiskaba is the Gaelic word for whiskey. It means water of life. In Latin, aqua vita, again, water of life. There's a great YouTube channel by Roy Duff named aquavite. And he plays off that theme quite a bit. But in his most stripped down form, whiskey is simply, it's water, its grains, and it's yeast, and it's time in oak barrels. That's what it is, or wood barrels, not always oak, depending on the country.

Now, whiskey is, it's really born of a people, of a place. It represents entire culture sometimes with something like Scotch. Scotch is probably the most identifiable export of the Scottish people, other than their people themselves, I'd say. So it really, especially with something like an Ila single malt scotch whiskey, that whiskey is representative of that island, of that coastal atmosphere, of the peat, blows in the wind from people burning the peat moss as basically firewood or for heating their homes. All those sorts of things. The coastal maritime influence, all of it is all encapsulated

in that whiskey and also how it's made and by the people who make it. So I really believe that whiskey has a special ability to transport people to a place, to a culture. And also, I believe it has this ability to take something that can be like mundane just a regular night and make it into something special. Say you're just hanging up with friends, but you have this absolutely mind-blowing whiskey that transports you to the other side of the world. It has that ability. So I really get excited about it in that way. So if we're looking at whiskey as in grain, water, and yeast, and then time in woodcasts, well, there's a bit more to that too, because whiskey isn't just whiskey. For instance, bourbon is whiskey, but not all whiskey is bourbon. If you follow that. So if we're talking about

Bourbon even. Whiskey, the word, is even spelled differently in different countries. Ireland, Japan, and the United States spell it with an E between the K and the Y. Scotland and Canada, we don't, we spell it without an E. So it's kind of strange that way and that has historic roots. But for bourbon, again, it has to be 51% corn. So that's the primary grain in it. And then the other grains are going to be rye, wheat, or barley, typically. And so that buffalo trace product,

as we mentioned, same mash bill, same recipe, but just comes from a different place in the warehouse, a different Rick, and also it just has more age to it. Right. So if we smell this, do you have any recollection of what Buffalo Trace smells and tastes like? Do you have it at home? No. No? Like caramel, right?

Yeah, caramel is definitely a note on there. caramel and oak and oh I almost get like a chocolate you know it off of it too like a bitter dark chocolate but I get bitterness off of wood oftentimes but this is a very popular whiskey we have access to it in British Columbia for a really reasonable price

there's places in the United States where it goes for three times as much as what we pay in BC just because it's so hard for them to get it's an allocated product and so people people will do crazy things to get their hands on a bottle of Eagle Rare.

We're lucky to have it just sitting on our shelves available to us. Right. So, yeah, I really appreciate this. This is my go-to bourbon to pour out home. It's Eagle Rare of 10. Okay. Well, let's take this up.

Let's do it. Cheers. Cheers. What are you getting into that? Oh, caramel, butterscotch. butter scotch that's a good one yeah butter scotch

oak again it's heavy on the oak 10 years in virgin oak in a hot climate like Kentucky we'll do that smoky very smoky it's very sweet there's a lot of sweet dessert flavors on it that's the corn corn whiskey is often very very sweet if you're getting smoke on that

that might be coming from those charred barrels those charred casks because they literally they will torch them to different degrees before putting the wood in. And mainly that's charcoal is used as a filtering agent. So when the cast cycle between seasons, it will draw whiskey in. And those seasons, it'll push whiskey out of the wood grain. That charcoal kind of acts as a filtering agent. That's cool. Yeah. But if you're getting that little bit of char, that smoke, that could be coming off the char. Yeah, it's like with the heat

in your mouth. That's the only way I can think to describe it. Yeah. Now, this whiskey is 45% ABV. With whiskey, the legal minimum is 40% alcohol. And that has some roots in history. But in Canada, in the United States, in Scotland, Ireland, Japan, that's the legal minimum. If it's bottled under 40%, they're not legally able to call it whiskey. So in this case, you're getting a little bit extra in this bottle. It's 45%. And I really appreciate that. That's actually where I start with my bourbons. I don't typically look at bourbons under 45% ABV. yeah yeah super classic profile for bourbon that's that's really great stuff and uh yeah that's my go-to if i want to sit down with a bourbon i would recommend it yeah you enjoy that nice

nice blanket on a fall day yeah yeah yeah absolutely harry potter in the background harry potter are you a harry potter person of course you are yeah okay i'm more of like star wars right and lower the rings that sort of thing yeah so um Other whiskey types, we've talked about bourbon with corn, with rye, with wheat and malted grains. Scotch, there's many different types of like monocers for scotch. You've got obviously like you hear about single malts, blended malt, blended scotch, all these different. They're all different types of scotch, but they are all scotch and they're all whiskey. And so if you're looking at a single malt, that just means it comes from one distillery and that they only use malted barley to make that whiskey.

So it can get a little confusing, but a blended malt is legitimately as simple as a blend of malt whiskeys, so using malted barley again, from different distilleries. That's all blended malt means. All the people like to look down on blends because they think they're inferior to a single malt. I think blends can be even better than single malts because you can take the best character from the best distilleries, put them all together, and create something that with the sum of its parts is better than just. a single distilleries output. Like a burger. You put everything together in a burger and it's way better than just a piece of meat. I'd say so.

If I had a piece of meat and a piece of lettuce and a pickle, yeah. No, I don't think I'd be enjoying it as much as a full-on burger. Yeah, exactly. That's a great analogy. So that's something there. And it gets even more into a minutia with blended scotch, having grain whiskeys in it, like corn whiskeys mixed in with the mults. But we won't get too much into the weeds there.

Canada. Have you ever heard the phrase rye? Rye whiskey? Yeah. Okay. Rye whiskey in this country is a term that's misused a lot because a lot of people use it just to refer to any whiskey. You'll have a rye in ginger, a rye in Coke, or, you know, give me a rye on the rocks. And they're meaning just a whiskey, but a lot of whiskeys that have been either labeled rye in Canada or we commonly refer to as rye won't have a single speck of rye grain in the actual whiskey.

Oh, wow. It comes from just our history. You know, we did use rye for distilling a lot of different whiskeys and making them. But at some point, we got away from that and we just started calling everything rye. Agree or disagree that the name rye is just really awful. It's not fun to, I don't enjoy it. Whiskey sounds good. Rye sounds like something that the sun puts on to you or something.

Yeah, yeah. It's not my favorite, that's for sure. Rye whiskey in Canada, if you're looking for an actual rye whiskey, you want to find something that actually states it's like 90% rye or even 100% rye. There's a lot of 100% rye products that are great in Canada. And actually, the best whiskey in Canada last year actually came from a small distillery, a small craft distillery in Vancouver, sons of Vancouver. And it was a 100% rye whiskey. So it can be fantastic, award-winning stuff. But you want to actually make sure you're actually have a rye if you're talking or drinking.

So there's a lot of confusion about that. And Canadian whiskey, and we'll move on to our second whiskey with this. Canadian whiskey is really confusing because we have something called the 11th's rule, where the whiskey, about 91% or I guess 1011th, it has to be whiskey. So distilled grains, water, and yeast, all that, in wood, yada, yada. So whiskey. The other 9% can be any type of like fortified wine. It can be other liquors.

They can put whatever in there, and they don't have to disclose it. They don't have to tell you what they're putting in there. Why do they like this? That's actually a historical approach. That's something that Canadian whiskey has almost always done, is my understanding. No justification? No, just say, hey, we wanted to add these extra flavors. I actually believe that it's both its greatest strength and greatest weakness,

because you have whiskey snobs like myself, I'll admit it. I'm a whiskey snob. I'm terrible for it. But you'll have people like me going, well, I don't know what's in that. Is it actually whiskey? Yeah. But then you have the fact. that you can have so many other flavors.

You have so many other options for making a whiskey. It gives you a lot of extra tools. You can instead of using a sherry cask, which Scotch uses a lot, it's a fortified wine cask to age your whiskey in. They're pulling sherry out of the wood grain. Well, in Canada, we just say, oh, we're just going to dump straight sherry in there. That's what we did with the next whiskey.

So the next whiskey is actually called Rifle Rye. It is a rye made in Alberta by Alberta Distillers. Okay. And it is aged next bourbon casks and virgin old casks. And it is 42% alcohol. It's 90% rye, over 90% right. I believe it's 91%. But then it is 6% old granddad bourbon.

So the first thing we drank bourbon, they put 6% of bourbon in there, and they put 3% sherry fortified wine. That would be from Spain, from the Jerez region. This reminds me of Dr. Pepper. Just throwing everything in. there 23 flavors they're not going to explain to you what they are they're just going to give you this i love it this one is very calm like it doesn't have like a strong smell so this is a 3% less abv than the eagle rare and i do find that alcohol it not only obviously is it have an intoxicating

impact of course but it carries flavor it carries aroma and the lower you go the more subtle a whiskey you're going to be a more quiet and the less it's going to do on your palate when you take a sip. So this is a bit quieter, I'd agree, at 42% as well. I think the statistics would dictate that. But this is made, yeah, by Alberta distillers. It's the same people that make Alberta premium if you ever had Alberta premium. No. No, okay.

Very common mass marketed whiskey. They make some good rye whiskey, 100% rye at cast strength. The big difference with this is pot still distilled rye. And so much like what Scotch uses to make their. single malt they use a pot still big copper pot that they heat up and then the vapors go to the top and they cool down that becomes the whiskey they use the same thing to make this it's very sweet again but i think you get the um you definitely get the wine influence there's like some like berries or something on the nose

It's much more flavorful. It's got different flavors. You get that spiciness from the rye. It's like some like baking spice, like cinnamon, maybe like nutmeg or a touch of ginger is what I'm picking up right now. Right. And usually I get like a dill pickle note oftentimes. Right.

Or even like a dill like the actual herb off a rye. I don't get that off this. It might be covered up by the sweetness of that bourbon and that sherry. But it's very sweet. This is like a dessert and a glass. It really is. Agreed. I could have this after dinner, maybe after that hamburger.

Right. Would you choose that over dessert? What are we doing here? Not this whiskey. Like a cheesecake or this? Which one are you doing? Oh, I'm probably going for the cheesecake, if I'm honest. Yeah.

If it was another whiskey on this table, it might be a different answer. Okay, okay. Yeah. So this is a rather inexpensive whiskey in the grand scheme of things. It usually runs about like $40 or $50. You can catch it on sale. And it's a relatively recent product. a historic recipe is what they're claiming.

And it's an ode to someone's old recipe that they used in Canada long ago. You talked about this before, but the fact that it doesn't drip down immediately. Yeah. So those are the legs. And so what we're looking for with that is the more it clings to the glass and the thicker the beads and the slower they move down. Oftentimes, that can be an indication of age, of viscosity, of wood impact, these sorts of things. Not always. Sometimes they'll go down really quickly because it's super high alcohol percentage.

Like if it's 60%, it'll fly down the glass regardless of age. But, yeah, I actually enjoy this more than I enjoy a lot of these sort of traditional Canadian whiskeys. What's interesting with Canadian whiskeys is they also typically distill all the grains separately, unlike bourbon. Bourbon, they'll distill them all one in like that recipe, that mash bill I talked about. Instead, with Canadian whiskey, they will go ahead and they will. they'll distill them separately. So you'll have your corn whiskey in one cask, your wheat whiskey, and another, your rye and your malt whiskey. And then they'll take all those and they'll blend them after the fact.

So the role of a blender in Canadian whiskey is actually super important. And we have a really high profile blender at actually North America's largest distillery in Ontario, the here in Walker distillery that makes WISERS, Dr. Don Livermore. He's kind of a superstar in the whiskey. That's what he, right? liver more I get it so he that's his one of his many jobs

is to go ahead and find the right blending ratio for these whiskeys to give us something would you ever do that job I'd be terrible at it but I'd do it

yeah yeah why do you think you'd be terrible at it what do you need for this job I think it's an apprenticeship it is a true craft

you need time you need experience you need someone to study under and and to learn that and given time yeah I might be able to do it, but I'm not even sure if my palate and my nose is good enough to be able to put together

whiskeys like he does, like people who do that job, master blenders. Let's stop this negative self-top. What are we doing here? Fair enough, fair enough. So next thing I think we would be a great way to talk about whiskey and understanding whiskey and what beginners should probably know about whiskey is that not all whiskey is treated the same. It isn't all respected the same way by the people who make it. You think they put so much hard work, so much effort into making whiskey, they'd want to make something at the very best that they can. And they make some decisions that I think run counterintuitive to that thought process. So were you aware that a lot of whiskey actually has caramel colorant, like E150A caramel colorant?

I think you've said that the last time. I did. I probably did. And so an example of this is this Dewar's 18 blended scotch. And they won't necessarily tell us, except for certain countries, require that to be disclosed. So Germany is one of those. And so if you look on the back, it'll say at the bottom with DE for Deutscheland, Mitzfarbstaff, which means it has coloring in it. Wow.

And so my big thing about that is what are you trying to hide? Like, why are you trying to misrepresent your whiskey? Because some of the palest, like, absolutely lightest color whiskey. is the absolute best. Right. It seems like they've really bought into this idea that we eat with or drink with our eyes first. If you see a darker colored whiskey that looks richer

that looks fuller and taste, that's the one you're going to buy. And so even though they're not using casts that are good enough to give you that color or leaving in the cask long enough to do that, they at least don't believe in their whiskey enough to let it stand on its own two feet and represent itself.

Call it out. Well, what else is it? I don't know. If I put on a shirt that makes me look good, Yeah. Like, is that okay? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you want to look like to feel good.

They just did, right? Yeah, but you're also not trying to tell people that, you know, it isn't you underneath that. Right. I don't know. It feels disingenuous. Agreed. Yeah. And especially when they market these things as natural craft, artisan, you know, products that are super premium expensive, all these other things.

I feel like they're really trying to pull the wool over us and fleece us on that. And there you are. So a lot of whiskeys will do that. Even like Lagavool and 16, if you ever heard of that one, really expensive whiskeys. I love how these things just roll off. You're talking Lagenvool and stuff. Gaelic's a fun language. Yeah.

But some of these really super premium whiskeys, they have this coloring added to it. I think there can be a small difference in flavor. It can kind of dampen the flavor a tiny bit. You won't really taste it, in my opinion. At least, I don't believe I can. But I definitely have a bias against it. So it's not a hard rule for me not to buy whiskeys that have coloring in it, but it definitely is like a knock against a whiskey if I'm considering purchasing it.

Low proof. I talked about the floor of whiskey being 40% alcohol. And how they get there is they actually water down the whiskey. So when they take it out of the cask, if it's, say, a 12-year-old whiskey, oftentimes it could be around like 58 to 60% alcohol. So what do they do to get it down to 40%? well, they dump a bunch of water in it. And so if you're at almost 60%,

that's a high proportion of what you're being sold as whiskey in the bottle that is just water that they added to it after the fact. Now, that's not always a bad thing because sometimes whiskeys drink better at different strengths. For instance, one of my favorite strengths to drink a whiskey at is like 47.5 to 48.5%. That's my preferred drinking strength for whiskeys. If I have a cast-drink whiskey natural pulled straight from the oak cast,

hasn't been fussed with. I will oftentimes add a bit of water with a water dropper like this to bring it down to that strength. And I'll do that slowly over time. Because when you add a bunch of water to a whiskey, it can shock the whiskey. It has to kind of reconstitute itself. It has to kind of form up again. It needs time. And if you rush it, you're just going to have a disjointed mess of a flavor experience. That happens as well when you're bottling whiskey. A lot of really good whiskey makers will slowly add water before bottling. Do it over time, over process time. They'll even do that when they're putting casks together because most whiskey releases are a vatting of hundreds of casks. They'll slowly add all those casks together to make sure they actually marry well and that they

work well and then they'll go ahead and bottle it. So when I see something at 40%, I'm deeply suspicious of its quality. I'm suspicious as to why it's at 40%. Are they just trying to maximize profit. Bring it right down to the ground floor to sell something for as much as they can while giving you as little whiskey as possible. I don't like that. So you'll commonly see 40%, 43%, 46% these things. Forty-six percent is a really important one for single malt whiskey because that is the point where you don't have to chill filter. No, you're probably wondering what the heck chill filtering is. I'd want to go back a little bit. Sure, yeah. Stop me and interject. You said 47 to 48.5%.

Yeah. How did you get to that specific number? I got to that number by reading and then experience. So that's actually a historic proof point that's used by a lot of the blenders and merchants that were bottling whiskey back in the day in Scotland. And so that 48% was kind of the point. Others, like there's an independent bottler named Carnmore. Bottles oftentimes at 47.5. There's another one called Whiskey sponge, a bottles at 48.5. And they're targeting that area because historically that was kind of like the Goldilocks zone of.

drinking strength. That's where you wanted to have your whiskey at. So that's what put me onto that. And I started kind of trying to get in and around that when I'm adding water because I'm not a creative math. I'm not adding exactly enough water to bring it down to that. But I'm trying to like kind of get it in that area. And typically that is where I enjoy the whiskey's the most. So chill filtered back to you. So chill filtering, yes. So that is another way they fuss about with the whiskey. And it's all for looks, much like adding the color. They will, um, some whiskey, brands, we'll go ahead and they will filter the whiskey because there's lots of charcoal chunks.

There's a whole bunch of other things in a whiskey. If it's, you know, ex-burbon cask, what we talked about earlier with those casts that have been charred on the inside, they've used blow torches to make this charcoal. That charcoal falls off. It goes into the whiskey. So when I was on Isla in Scotland this past year, when we were pulling whiskey straight from the barrel, if you got too close to the bottom, you'd pull out chunks of charcoal. You don't really want to drink charcoal bits.

I mean, it's kind of chewy. It's a whole new thing to like chewing your whiskey, not what I want to do. However, there's different levels of filtration. A simple barrier filter will remove most of that charcoal, and you might just get a fine residue at the bottom of a bottle. That's how I prefer my whiskey, but chill filtration is when they lower the temperature of the whiskey, so a fairly cold temperature, and then they go ahead and they force that whiskey through basically like cardboard plates lined up in the machine. And what they're trying to do is by chilling in. you have the lipids and the fats kind of clot a bit, and it makes it easier for these

cardboard filters as an easy way to describe them. They catch those fats, those lipids, strip them from the whiskey. And then by doing that, if a whiskey is added to ice and it gets watered down, it remains clear. If you don't do that, the whiskey can go cloudy. And to some people, that's a hallmark of lack of quality. They don't like the whiskey looking like that. Even if the whiskey goes cold below 46%, if it's not chill filtered, it will go cloudy.

That's a good thing. That's a homework of quality in my books because those fats, those lipids, they carry a lot of flavor. I don't know about you, but I eat way too much fatty food because it's delicious. They are something that adds a lot of texture, a lot of volume and robustness, a lot of like chew factor. As I just mentioned, I'm chewing on whiskey. It's because the creamy and velvety texture of it, it's just very enjoyable. And when you remove those things, you get a thin, watery whiskey oftentimes, something I don't like to see. Okay.

So this Dewar's 18 that I have here, that is also chill filtered. Yeah. So it's 18 years old. They're just slacking on everything. They are. They just, they make other good whiskeys. Craig Allerkey 13 is a fantastic whiskey, one of my favorite. But, you know, they treat that one with a little more respect than they do.

their 18-year-old flagship brand here. What would you rank this one? Out of 10. Out of 10? Out of 10. Four. Okay. Four out of 10.

And for our first, our bourbon? Yeah. As bourbons go, I'd give it probably a six, like 6.5. Okay. And then? Yeah, five. Five? Just average.

Okay. Yeah. Above average for Eagle Rare. Average for rifle. Nothing, nothing bad. Okay. If we're going to go to our next whiskey here, this is a perfect time. This is a whiskey.

from a distillery. I visited on Ila this year. This is a single malt scotch whiskey. It has a little lid. I call them, or we call them Petit Chappos at home. I feel pretty with this. So this is for whiskey? Yeah. So it looks like a sugar bowl. Sugar. You can use there that. There's some sugar in there, I'm sure. So I use these little lids on my, on my glasses, just to trap the aromas. So if I have a wave, that's a bit more subtle, and I want to get a better idea of what it smells like. I'll put that on for a little while, especially if we're sitting here talking for a long time. So why did you say that this one was good for, like, was there a reason you chose this specific whiskey for this specific glass?

I chose the lid for this whiskey because this can be a more subtle whiskey. Okay. Now, I chose this whiskey for this particular topic because Brooke Laddie is just one of these distilleries that's, doing everything right, at least in my books. They closed down in 1994. They reopened in 2000 and started making whiskey once again, 2000 or 2001. And when they did so, they kind of brought an ethos that they wanted to make something, again, that's fully of the place where they are on the west coast of Scotland, in the Hebrides. A place that, in my recollection, was referred to as the Isles of the Blessed.

It's a place where my family actually emigrated from to come to Canada to Nova Scotia back in the day. So I have some personal family connections to that place. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it was wonderful to go back there. Now, Broklahti, they don't color their whiskey. It's all natural color. They don't chill filter that whiskey. They just do a simple barrier filter to remove charcoal.

And this particular whiskey, this is the brookladi, Isla, Barley, 2013. It's Isla Singletalalbasket whiskey. It is made 100% from barley that they've grown on the Isle of Isla. So they actually have recruited local farmers into growing barley on Isla, and they're using just that barley to make this whiskey. That's a tough thing to do on Isla because it's a really rugged coastal atmosphere, really windy. There's lots of storms that come by. And that is not the best environment for barley to grow. There was very few people in my understanding in recent history who were growing barley on Isla.

historically there was tons, but lately there wasn't, and they've been instrumental in bringing that back to the island by actually saying, no matter what happens to your crop, we're going to buy it from you. We want to support our farmers here who are supporting us. So that is a really cool thing. So we get so much information from this whiskey. We get the year that it was distilled. I think if you dig into it, you get the year the barley was harvested. You get the name of the seven farms and the locations on Isla where it came from. They're giving you all the information you ever wanted to know. It's first fill American oak casks. So American whiskey or bourbon casks. That's 75% of the cast makeup. It's also 25% refill French oak, which would typically

be French wine casks. They're giving us all the information we'd ever want to know about this whiskey. Makes me really excited because I nerd out on it. Real hard, as you can tell. But I also love Broccoli because not only are they doing everything right with the whiskey, they're treating their employees, right? They're B-Corps certified. And so that means that they are, actually committed to not only paying their employees a living wage, but actually having them gainfully employed. So they actually, I believe, the largest private employer on Isla, an island that I think has like 11, 12 distilleries soon.

There's more and more announced every day, it seems. They are just doing everything, right? They're also very environmentally conscious. They just re-release their blue bottle. I think we have it on the shelf up here. They've re-released a new design that's actually using recycled glass as opposed to these ones I guess they weren't before like they're trying to make decisions that are more

environmentally conscious I love that I love that ethos I love trying to do better for the people who work for you and for the people in your community with the farmers as well as well just the environment and the planet in general and then the customers are right exactly

so if we take a nose on this you can see why I put the lid on it because it's a very shy nose But this is 50% alcohol. This is the strongest whiskey so far. Really? Really pretty nose.

Really subtle, floral. Some like seabreys coastal elements. I love that. Some lemon citrus, malt sweetness. This one might be the best one. Yeah? So far? So far.

This is really good. It's one of my favorites. Yeah. Absolutely is. Yeah. You're right. It has like a flower smell. Hmm.

It's so wonderfully pretty. Yeah. It's a delicate whiskey. This is a whiskey I typically add water to because water will release aromas. If you add drops of water, you'll get an even more expressive nose on a whiskey. And it'll also give it oftentimes a more velvety and creamy milk feel. So right now, I'm getting a bit of pepper on it. So it's a little harsh for my take right now.

So I would typically add a little water. That would bring it down if I added some water. Maybe I'd bring it down to that 48% I was talking about from that 50. But this is a beautiful whiskey. I appreciate what Brooke Laddie does. Now, if I put this in front of you, this glass right here is that blue bottle we were just talking about. That is their standard release. That is their classic Laddie.

Now, this Isla Barley is nine years old. That one is non-age statement. They don't tell us how old it is. If you smell those, I'm wondering if you'll actually find if there's a difference between them. Weirdly, I find this one smells stronger than this one. Yeah. They're exact same alcohol percentage. Okay.

That one is older, but that one's made with the Isla Barley. I do find Isla Barley gives, again, a more full-melf feel. I really like what it does in that. But this all could be just me looking for things that are different, right? But I really like that they're really playing into this idea of terroir. so I think it's this idea of what terroir so did you just say that word just thinking that that was just talking to get a question yeah I totally did I'm that person apparently I work sometimes they call me mr. big words because I just use words and they're like what are you saying yeah I'm bad for that so terwar I believe it's the French word for just like dirt earth and what that's representing I feel you're talking about in wine is a concept from wine basically where the type of soil that the vines are growing in impacts how the grapes are going to taste and how the wine's going to taste. Man, I just interviewed a guy who's breaking down literally that flowers go in and their roots

will send out carbohydrates asking for basically certain types of bugs to come eat and then excrete. So it can take up like the boron from the excretion of that bacteria in order to make it healthier. Because I was like, what's the difference between organic and like non-organic? And he was like, well, they shut off. Like, if you give it certain fertilizer, it will shut off some of these sensors that it will send out to try and get certain nutrients back from the bugs and the bacteria and the stuff moving in the soil in order for it to grow. And so it gets certain trace elements in order to become healthy, which makes it like when you eat an apple and it feels like it's filled with flavor versus eating an apple with no flavor. It's those teeny tiny little sensors that it's doing. So I believe in your tar war, Mr. Sir.

That is unbelievably fascinating. That is really cool. Yeah. So the idea of that was actually brought basically from someone in the wine industry to Brooke Lattie. Mark Rennier, he was one of the owners. And again, he had this wine background. So he wanted to explore tarwar and whiskey. And a lot of people will claim there's no such thing as tarwar and whiskey because when you distill it,

you strip those elements out of it unlike wine where you aren't distilling it. I'm not so certain because routinely I try Kelowman's 100% isla barley, rich, viscous, got those coastal elements to it. Same with Octamore Isla Barley's Port Charlotte Isla Barley's. This Brocolati Islaherly Barley, I see this common theme where Isla barley anyways is super mineralic. I feel like you can pick up some of that, that soil, that rock, almost like a flintiness, but you also pick up, again, this extra viscosity. I think there is something to terroir in whiskey, but it's something that's heavily debated. There's people who will stomp their feet and say absolutely not full stop. The answer is probably seeking you shall find.

Because if you're willing to open your mind to it and look for it, then you're probably going to find it. If you're going to say that it doesn't exist, then you're going to avoid anything that would suggest that. I'd say you're right. All right. Happens every once in a while. So one of the other tips I'd have for beginners is when you're when you're looking at whiskey, especially if you're like shopping for whiskey, don't judge a whiskey by its cover. Don't judge it by its looks. Looks can be deceiving.

Preconceived notions can make you think that a whiskey that's just had caramel colorant added to it and dumped in is super rich and just such a like decadent palette. And you can bring it home and realize you just been. bamboozled, and you've been lied to. Fair to say, though, that we do, in fact, judge books buy their covers. Oh, of course. Of course. Okay. And I'm not immune to this.

Like, one of the bottles up there, that McAllen, a night on earth in Scotland, I bought that because it had a flipping cool box. Yeah. Yeah, it had a really cool box. That one was the one that, like, opens up, like, what did you call it? A Russian nesting doll. Exactly. Yeah.

It was like a box within a box within a box. I also think it looks pretty. It is, yeah. It was like Whiskey Inception, that box. It was great. But the whiskey was incredibly disappointing. It was terribly disappointing. It was, it's actually, I've banned that bottle on the whiskey on the West Coast YouTube channel now.

I've used it for examples of bad whiskey in so many videos. That was like, I can bring it here because it's not banned on the bigger than me podcast. You banned it for yourself. Yes. To yourself. I'm not allowed to talk about it anymore on my channel. But yeah, fancy boxes, fancy bottles. like really cool labels

just be wary of them Compass Box is a blending house that makes really amazing blended whiskeys and they have the most amazing beautiful labels and they make amazing whiskey so it's not like hard and fast if something like looks cool it doesn't mean it's bad

but just make sure you're not only buying on looks alone the other thing that you see a lot of is like product placement so the McCallin there did you watch suits yeah suits I think I remember you talking about that. Yeah, it's huge on suits. Huge. Also, James Bond. James Bond drinks

McCallin. I think Les Chiefer like shoots, shoots someone with a glass of whiskey on their head at one point. And it was a super old and rare McAllen. John Wick. There was a bottle of Blantins and John Wick. Blantins is a super premium bourbon whiskey at the time. It sold for like $35, $40 a bottle. Now it's going for sometimes hundreds of dollars a bottle. Product placement works. I find Blantin's completely disappointing as a bourbon. It's not something I really enjoy. However, there's good whiskeys that are placed in movies as well. Glendronic.

I really enjoy Glenn Dronik. It was in the Kingsman movies. They actually had a Kingsman whiskey. They released with it. And then you have celebrity endorsement whiskeys, much like we've seen a lot with tequila lately, with like Dwayne Johnson and a whole bunch of others. George Clooney has this Casamigos tequila.

There was the Brothers Bond, which I think you have a bottle of, right? We drank it all, yeah. Yeah, he did. Did you enjoy it? Yeah, it was good. It was very vanilla-ish. Yeah. So were they from the Vampire Diaries?

Of course. Yeah. Okay, I didn't watch the show, sadly. Well, get it together, man. It is October. It is October. Yeah. So, and then there's also one, there's blackened that's done by Metallica.

And there's one in particular I've noticed recently called Red Bank Whiskey. And that's by Kiefer Sutherland from the show 24 and other shows. And his is particularly egregious for like what it, how it describes the whiskey. Yeah. And how it's just a bunch of flannel as another YouTuber, Ralphie would say. It's just, it's garbage. Wow. It's, the whiskey might not be garbage.

The whiskey could taste fine. The way they're describing it does not let me trust them at all. Did you ever try Connor McGregor's? Oh, proper, proper 12. Yeah. Proper number 12? I didn't. No.

I didn't, and that's probably because I'm a snob. Yeah. But it was also, I'm like, okay, so you're putting 12 on there because you think people are going to see the number 12 and assume it's 12 years old when it's three-year-old sourced whiskey from the Jamison distillery. So I could go buy Jamison probably for cheaper and not expect that it's actually 12 years old. Like, it just felt disingenuous. And it wasn't a real whiskey, right? It was whiskey. Yeah, it was Irish whiskey, but I remember there was a liquor store local to here who put the picket

the picture of that for that posting online as a dumpster fire instead of the bottle. It got a lot of hate when it was first released. And maybe I should give it a chance. But I've heard other people go back to it recently and say, it's better, but still not good. Right. But if you want to dive into a case study on bad advertising with buzzwords, Red Bank whiskey, Canadian whiskey from Keith or Sutherland, it's not good. No, it makes all the marketing sins as far as I can tell.

Okay. But yeah, the other thing I'd mention as non-judging whiskey is age. Don't judge it by age. So one of my favorite whiskeys out there is called Octomore, also by Bracladi. And it's the most heavily peated whiskey in the world. Okay. And you might see it on the shelf behind us here. Okay.

That might come up later. That's the super tall one there in that gray, gray 10. Okay. Octamore. That whiskey is only five years old. and five years old is super young in single malt scotch whiskey typically we're used to seeing at least

10 or 12 year age statements and oftentimes distiller's get super shy about anything younger and they won't even put an age statement on it it'll be something that we call NAS non-age stated whiskey and that's because they're ashamed of how young it is they don't think you're going to buy it if you know how young it is

so maybe they think it's good whiskey but they don't want to tell you what it is because maybe you'll judge it on how young it is don't judge it. It's on the best whiskies are young whiskeys. Premiumization with older whiskeys, charging more for older whiskeys, is actually a relatively recent phenomenon.

It kind of happened once we had a glut of stock of older whiskey and the marketers were trying like, well, how can we move this whiskey? How can we use this to make more for us? And so, in doing so, they trained us to believe that older whiskey is always better. Not always the case. It can be over-oaked. It can be very, very subtle. It can lack flavor, but over-oak, it can be just super-bittery.

You can just taste like wood, wood juice. Like, oftentimes I find older whiskeys are better. Right. But again, not always. They have to be treated right. So, yeah, don't buy into that sort of belief. Young whiskey can still be great. Sounds good.

Yeah. So what I would suggest here as well, when I first started buying whiskey back in university, I always thought, or how I bought whiskey was I looked at the date that the distillery was founded. I was like, oh, this one was found in like 1815. This must be good. And I'd look at one. It's like, oh, this is from 1967. That can't be good.

I'm not going to pay for that. That was a silly thing for me to do. I don't know what I was thinking. And I wanted to talk about actually probably the best new distillery to open in Scotland. And so that would be our next whiskey. Okay. And that would be from the Ardenamerican distillery. Ardermurcan.

Bang on. You got it. You're lying. Ardenegurkin. Ardnaker. Ardenamerican. Organ American, okay. So this distillery opened in 2014.

It's not even 10 years old yet, the actual distillery. Right. This is the Arden American 80-01-2121, which is a big name with lots of numbers, just to say that it was made in January of 2021. That's when it was a bottle. That's the batch. It was the first batch from that year. 46.8% alcohol. This is not chill filtered, as we talked about earlier.

This doesn't have any color added. It's a young whiskey. I think it's only about six years old. Yeah, it looks more like the color of a beer. Yeah, yeah. I think that's like a really like light, crisp like logger or Pildner or something, right? But this whiskey, when you know, I think it's as expressive as anything we've had so far. I would agree with you.

Right away, I'm getting like lemon citrus. I don't know how you do that. We have different noses. I'm definitely getting a coastal influence, like sea breeze for me. Yes, I would agree with that. Super mineralic whiskey. mineralic man like where am I

Colston notes like I have heard others say like oyster shells like by the sea and this is from the western highlands of Scotland this is up in the absolute boonies it's one of the most remote distilleries in Scotland did you go there I did not go there

I went near there I went to the Isle of Mall which is across the the sound of mall from Arden American do you own an encyclopedia I know I just want to know how you come up with these words I'm probably misusing all of them too

I probably am you never know you say it with confidence you get to go there you go fake it till you make it I guess now if we're talking about types of casks they're used cast type is important in whiskey in this case

different casks are going to give you different flavors this uses ex-burbin cast so that first whiskey we tried say if they emptied that cask they can't use it again because they can only use virgin Oaks. They have to sell it to somebody. Oftentimes they get sold to Scotland. Scotland buys them and they age their single mults in them because they want whiskey barrels that don't have as much oak influence because they want to age their whiskey for longer. And with too much oak influence, it won't taste as good. So this is 65% ex-Burban barrels and it's 35% sherry casks. So Oloroso, Pedro Jimenez, they're different types of sherry. They use different types of grapes and there's different ways of making them. But fortified red wine. Just think of it that way. So extra strong red wine casks are used in this as well. Yeah, that's more peaty.

There's a touch of peat. And not like if you put me in a drink. No, no, I don't believe you're in here. If you were, I'd be very concerned. Yeah. So that peat, you identified right away. Yeah. And so Pete is an earthy moss that traditionally,

was cut from bogs and then used to dry barley after they soaked it to malt it to germinate. Now they had to use this because there's not many trees in Scotland and trees are a finite resource or something that are pretty cherished over there. They don't want to use them all. That's why

you actually rarely see a Scottish oak cask used to mature whiskey. And so that smoke, that that peatiness is coming from the way they dried the barley to make the whiskey. And so this is actually a fairly lightly peated whiskey. I think it's somewhere in around like 10 or 11 final parts per million. If you're

familiar with something like Lagovulin, ever seen Lagovillan, Ron Swanson drinks it on parks and recreation, that one's about 35. And that's what people usually refer to as like a really smoky whiskey. So about one third of the strength of that for smokiness. This is really good. I like this one. You're enjoying this one? Yeah, yeah. Okay, because I remember last time you didn't really enjoy the smoky flavors. Intimidating for sure. Yeah, but you're getting on it. I've grown in this year, You've grown, so have I. I hope it's showing. Also, I'm really excited that you enjoy this because that opens up a world of flavors.

And personally, this is my preferred flavor profile. Lightly to moderately peated, I think is great because that peat isn't the whole focal point, as we'll see later with something else. It doesn't steal the show. It's like a seasoning that's adding to the whole dish. And so you have the influence of the cast. You have the influence of the place where it's aging and it's. made. And you also have that peat all working together with those grains to make something really beautiful. Right. Are we able to try? You said that there was one that's like the most

peated? That's the last one in the lineup here. And if we have that anywhere before any of these, we will not taste anything else the rest of the day. Okay. So we'll move on here. But that's one of my favorites. Again, that's six years old. That's one of the youngest whiskeys you can buy on the market. And yet that's your favorite so far, eh? It's close with the other one you just show. Brokladi? Yeah. Okay. Both of those were really good.

They're just different. Yeah. They're just, it's like a beer versus a wine. Like, I wouldn't put them in the same lane. Totally. So, yeah, that's a really great introduction to some of the things you don't want to judge it by. Again, I mentioned earlier. You don't want to judge a single mold as being better than a blended mall.

Just because it's a single mole, that's fancier. Now, again, you putting them all together in skillful hands, a blended mall can be better. So if you're looking at a blended mall on a shelf, don't write it all. off just because it's a blend. Okay. It could be an amazing thing. I won't. So we talked earlier about slowing down with whiskey, taking your time to nose it, to let it sit in the glass, a minute in the glass or a year in the cask, that sort of thing.

What we want to do once we've smelled it, once we've gotten, you know, to know it a little bit, maybe have some ideas of what we're expecting on the nose. We can actually even start nosing this here. You can already have some preconceived notions of what this might taste like. Agreed. It's stronger. Stronger. More rich. Fruitier.

Maybe like Christmas cake. Um, dried fruits, like raisin. Like, I definitely get like a stewed raisin on that. Do you have a different nose than me? Like, where did you get your nose from, Matt? I think it's just spending enough time obsessing over it and you start to pick out the differences. So once you've taken some, some, uh, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, some, time with the nose. You can go ahead and you can start taking a sip.

Now, I suggest taking small sips. Okay. I think a small sip, you'll get more out of a whiskey than a big sip. Big sip can overwhelm the palate. You can be attacked by sharp alcohol, harshness. It'll taste really peppery. You'll get a tingly sensation all over your tongue. Smaller sip.

It really helps to actually handle that and not be overwhelmed by it. And then you're able to go ahead and assess what flavors you're picking up in a whiskey. Again, really good advice for even eating food. I'm guilty of just like, I'm just going to. swallow this whole burger in the first bite and then it's like did you taste it no no it passed you by yeah yeah now i i also suggest um if you're looking to try and find flavors in a whiskey a great rule of thumb is um to to chew on the whiskey a little bit and just let it sit on your palate uh again maybe one second for every year it was aged this here is a 12 year old whiskey

we'll talk about which one it is um but maybe letting it sit for 12 seconds on your palate and then swallowing and see what you come up with. This one stays on your tongue in a different way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's still on my tongue.

Yeah. Interesting. Fascinating. Is that not what should be happening? No, no, absolutely. You are your own personal whiskey expert. There's no better expert in the whiskey that you enjoy other than you. I trust you more.

So, well, that's on you. But if it's, if it's staying on your palate, longer. I think that's a great thing because you can go longer in between sips. That whiskey is going to last you a lot longer. Sometimes I sit with a single glass of whiskey for an hour and a half and I'll take some notes and I'll just slowly take it all in. You savor the whiskey. And as you savor the whiskey, you also can go ahead and you can savor the finish too. Because the whiskey doesn't stop talking to you once you've swallowed. There's a whole other chapter after that. If you're taking a breath out, but you'll still be tasting the whiskey. You just might be tasting

different things you're right so i it's a it's a whole it's a whole experience it's not just stiff or glug or chug and gone seems like a good mindfulness exercise yeah okay it's like meditation can we do the last one sure you ready for it sure that is the so this one before we um pass by this is the buna havin 12 year old if we had like uh oh the the one we just did yeah okay the next one we should have like uh if we had sound effects it would be like uh Drum roll? Yeah, I think so, because you can kind of akin this to something extreme in whiskey. Yeah. And so this is the Bricklotti, Octamore, 12.2. This is a version of the most heavily peated whiskey in the world. So when we're talking peat, again, we're talking smoke.

Yeah. That smells extreme. Like extreme barbecue. Yeah. So five years old, really young whiskey, that is to help emphasize how smoky it is, how peted it is. Right. all right um if over time as it ages it loses some of that that smokiness a 30 year old lefroig isn't going to taste particularly peaty those flavors turn into something else this is bottled young to emphasize how smoky it is if we didn't cover this up we probably would have been smelling it the entire time as we're trying to know as other whiskeys Alex so we have our photographer here

Alex come smell this is this not the craziest thing you've ever smelled that was one of the craziest things I've ever smoked that is amazing so this is ex-burbon barrels as we talked about earlier and then a French fortified wine type white fortified wine called So Turin's cast which gives it a lot of sweetness

So Tim come out here This is also Come smell this We're going to get the timbits in here A timbitt I like that I like that legendary have everybody smell it recognize how crazy this smell is so this is 57.3% nearly 60% alcohol so it's cast strength they haven't come out here Rebecca do you

think Rebecca would come smell it I don't know if she's in the back it's it's unreal eh so cast strength this is by far the strongest whiskey on the table typically is she in there does kaila know the smell oh yes yeah yeah she does so when i talked about a heavily peted whiskey 35 was heavy this is 129.7 oh my god this is four times what would be considered a heavily peted whiskey is it a high now you said 59% alcohol 57.3 57.3 yeah all right okay Ready? Fottoms up.

Cheers. Thank you again for coming back on. Thanks for having me, Aaron. I really appreciate it. All my favorite. No. Smells fun. That is the sourest thing.

It tastes like eating licorice that was run over by a rubber tire. I love it. There you go. I'm getting that energy now because I'm holding my taste buds off. Rubber, tire, and licorice. I could see both those notes in it, especially licorice. But it's like sweet barbecue for me. And I really love it.

Right. Yeah. Well, I'm going to ask if you are able to tell people how they can follow you. Yeah. So if you're wanting to hear more about whiskey, about all things whiskey, you can find me on YouTube under Whiskey on the West Coast. I also have an Instagram that I post on, which is also under name Whiskey on the West Coast. And we just this week started a Patreon page, Whiskey on the West Coast with extra whiskey reviews, some extra content and some other perks and benefits.

So yeah, look for me, especially on YouTube. That's where we mainly post. I'm so proud of you for chasing this. I think that it's so valuable when people are able to find their voice. When we talk about freedom of expression, when we talk about these ideas, They can sound so disconnected, but the idea of what I believe people fought for in World War II was that people could reach their full potential and share the gifts with the world. And that's exactly what I think you're doing. So I'm so grateful that you took the steps and that you started this.

I know that your page is so successful and that you're getting so much support. So I'm so happy for you and grateful to have you back on almost exactly a year later. It's been wild. Thank you for all the support, Aaron. I really appreciate it. And I'm so excited to see what's happened with your channel, too, with the people you're having on. Your reach, it feels global now. It feels global.

It's really cool to see. And this studio, it's a mind trip. I appreciate it, man. I highly recommend people go follow your page, whiskey on the West Coast. I think you're doing such tremendous work. I think you offer such great insights. And again, I think all of the tools that you're providing people specifically for whiskey can be utilized in so many different ways for people to connect themselves with that they're eating,

with their drinking, and making sure that they live a long, healthy, happy life. So thank you again. Thanks, Aaron. Perfect. Cheers. Cheers. I would cheers again, but I finished mine. I didn't think I could handle it the second time.