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Putting a new country on the board is always fun – Juraj Dobrila Single Barrel Malt Viski from Croatia! Thanks to Steph for checking a bag to bring this home. There’s not a lot online about this distillery or whisky – they have a Facebook page that suggests maybe it’s an offshoot from a winery.
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When a lovely birthday present isn’t a lovely whisky – Thanks Steph! Caribou Crossing Single Barrel whisky – a birthday gift that has turned into a bit of a public service announcement. We’ve talked before about the Box Tax, well, this whisky makes you pay all the taxes. The Box Tax. The Swank Velvet Bag
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Most completistisming going one here. We had the VP01. So therefore we must have Innis & Gunn’s Vanishing Point VP02 or how will we know.. anything? How will we know we even exist unless we experience two similar things and observe their subjective differences over linear time? I ASK YOU. Last year’s beer was only
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This one’s going to be a little messy. Steph, Dan & I reviewed the Founder’s Original – Dan discovered he does not like Old Fashioneds and bowed out of the Barchef review – fair dinkum. Steph suggested we have some people by – these things are made for parties. So we invited some interesting Ottawa
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Another big bottled, high abv, milestone-celebrating weird beer here, with a twist – it’s actually good! A lot of times these large format beers can be.. um.. challenging. A lot of hops to make big flavour can make something undrinkable or a lot of yeast to kick up the alcohol content can make things a
Ah yes, the great Victoria Day long weekend, known as May 2-4 by people still drinking crap beer by the crate. “We here at iScotch only drink the best!” – a lie, best exemplified by what we did to ourselves for you, loyal reader. We put ourselves back through the Jack Daniel’s product stack to
Add another Innis & Gunn to the roster – Longitude & Latitude Series 001, the Barrel Aged Raspberry Saison. This was a great drink, somehow managing to be 6% and full flavoured while remaining exceptionally light. Hard to drink a case at $5 a pop but hey, that’s not good for you anyway. Here’s what
Quick little review with the family while I’m on the road in Vancouver. My sister bought a pre-St Paddy’s Day treat, Innis & Gunn Kindred Spirits Tullamore DEW Barrel Aged Stout for my brother in law and I to try (she did smell it and pronounced it “coffee I wouldn’t drink”). We’ve had Innis
Knob Creek, purveyors of fine Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. This is their Single Barrel Reserve, aged nine years and bottle at 60%. It’s not often a distiller can pull off a high-powered whiskey without a lot of collateral damage in the flavour and face burning departments, but Knob Creek manages to do it and still
Continue Reading “Round 2! Knob Creek 9y Single Barrel Reserve with Virginia”
Here we go, the other Stalk & Barrel blend, the Blue. So what’s going on here? Stalk & Barrel is retiring the 1+11 blend and instead offering the Blue & Red Blends as the entry and midrange bottles, respectively. We really enjoyed the 1+11 originally, but anecdotes suggest it may have changed over time – I’m not
Stalk & Barrel Red Blend! Aged single malt, rye & corn whiskies blended by the lads in Concord. It’s been a while since we’ve had a new S&B, but since we did this one at Dan’s place for a party, the notes are… not great. Here goes: nose: vanilla, floral, wood, books, sharpness, lemon &
A slightly odd bottle this time. Some Jameson Black Barrel arrived in a covert container on the doorstep, a sample from somebody’s stash. Thanks, generous stranger! Jameson is an Irish whiskey we’re familiar with, having tried the White Label and Select Reserve in the past. The Black Barrel this time refers to the charring of the
Hadn’t seen Vanni in a while and he swung by for birthday drinks with this interesting bottle. Thanks Vanni! Merlot Barrel-Aged Earnscliffe ESB from Dominion City! So many things! We have steered around the wine barrel-aged stuff in the past, having experienced a few examples where the cask overpowered the contents. Getting it right should “just”
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Jack Daniel’s. You know it, you’ve had it. But you may not have had this. As the name suggests, this is bottled from a single barrel of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey. Okay, so why is that interesting? Because coming from a single barrel limits gives us the best indication of what Jack Daniel’s whiskey
Continue Reading “Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Select with Matt, Marie-Michèle & Julia”
Post 301 y’all! Haven’t done back to back articles in a while. Since we’re starting on a new day, with a new theme, I figured we should do a proper single malt scotch to mark the occasion. Bowmore Legend. We’re known as big Bowmore fans – before the price went up, their 12y was *the best* budget-range
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I spent a few days down in (relatively) sunny Michigan for a Michigan Municipal League tradeshow, and stumbled across another Canadian. Well, not… not Canadian beer, like Molson Canadian Beer, but a lower-case-upper-case-C Canadian beer…ugh. Let’s try this again – I was down in the States with my buddy Brad for work and we found
Continue Reading “Labatt Prohibition Series Bourbon Barrel Ale with Brad”
Blanton’s Single Barrel Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. This has been on the to-try list for a while now, so this was a great Christmas present. Great bottle. Good website. Excellent product placements on Bored To Death (a personal favourite), House Of Cards & Justified. A Sazerac brand related to the Buffalo Trace lineage, Blanton’s has
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Welcome to 2015. This year will mark 3 years of iScotch, and there’s a good chance we’ll cross 300 posts and a million views this year too. And what better way to start another year of whiskey than with something good and weird? Koval is definitely unusual: from Illinois, organic, single Minnesotan barrel and made
Continue Reading “Koval Single Barrel Millet Whiskey with Dan & Goran”
Great Lakes Brewery Beard of Zeus Barrel-Aged Barley Wine. It’s a name whose length is only bested by how long I’ve been meaning to post this review – there just always seemed to be something better to talk about. I believe Ryan picked this up for us to try. We cracked it open and had
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Back to the creek best known for its knobs. That is a terrible intro, so let me try again. Knob Creek! Single Barrel! 120 Proofs! All the proofs! We’ve had a Knob Creek before, about a year and a half ago, and the last review is a little, or completely, light on the information. I’m
Continue Reading “Knob Creek 9y Single Barrel Reserve with Dan”
Whisky from far away lands, and our second from Japan! Nikka Whisky From The Barrel comes by way of a friend‘s mountain climbing travels. There’s a great story about this distillery – Masataka Taketsuru’s long journey from his family’s sake brewing in Takehara, Japan to university in Glasgow, Scotland, bringing home the origin of the
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1792 Ridgemont Reserve Barrel Select. That’s a pretty huge mouthful of a name, let’s take a look: Why 1792? That’s the year Kentucky became a state. Since the distillery was established in 1879, the why is marketing. In fact, the why on the whole damn name is marketing wrung through the legal system, exclusively. Why
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Can’t do a quick business tour of the GTA without stopping in at Still Waters Distillery in Concord/Vaughan. If you check our reviews of their Stalk & Barrel Cask 2 single malt and their 1+11 Special Blend, you’ll see why: these guys are doing it right. I have to admit that last time I visited
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The fourth Forty Creek. So that’s, like… A Hundred And Sixty Creek, I guess. And we’re not even half way through the brand. This time out we’ve got the Double Barrel Reserve, specifically lot 240 distillery no. 54sl46. It’s a blend of individually aged corn, rye and barley whiskies mixed into and aged in second-use
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Christmas Stalk & Barrel! Thanks, Jono! I’m about to make two grandiose claims, and it won’t even cost you much to find out if I’m right: This is the BEST Canadian whisky, and this is the MOST Canadian whisky. The first part of that claim will be completely apparent the first time you taste it,
Continue Reading “Stalk & Barrel 1+11 Special Blend with Devin, Jono, Ryan, Dan & Goran”
This is a little weird, but according to my whiskiography I’m quickly approaching 100 bottles tried, and a glaring hole in my whisky experience was that I’ve never seen a distillery. While I’m still envisioning a whisky tour of Scotland, Ireland, Japan or Kentucky, I’ve crossed this milestone here in my home province at Still
Oh man. Forty Creek – a blast from the past. You might be asking, dude, why? Why? WHY? It has at least three strikes: “Canadian Whisky” (which as we know is a moniker with some serious credibility issues), twist-off top, “premium” in the name. This was Dan’s go-to whisky for forever before we started this
Continue Reading “Forty Creek Premium Barrel Select with Dan & Ryan”
