hello malty
hello malty mad mentalist musical musicians thank you tony m for that multi mentioned
this is ralphie review 938 extras and i have just reviewed an independent bottling
a high strength of douglas lange talisca 12 year old and i encountered a problem but the
problem started to fade away because i knew how to deal with it and the problem was and the flavor
it it hit a flat zone and whiskies can do that whiskeys can do many many things uh so i gave it a
perfectly respectable 85 out of 100 as a mott mark i i'm enjoying that whiskey i will continue to
enjoy it i have an official bottling of talisker open 10 year old and 18 year old and therefore
i'm going to blend them together and i'm going to have a lot of fun mixing and fixing mixing
and picking uh permutations and variations on the theme of talaska i do not recommend
the non-age statement bottlings of talaska i recommend the age-stated bottlings now apparently
recently the 10-year-old has significantly improved on the quality disappointing quality
that it was a couple of years ago so fingers crossed that diageo are going to do more
because all the sellers need to do more these days to uphold the quality of casks being used for the
maturation of whiskey because if the casks do not have the quality in them you will not get
the quality in the whiskey and then they're going to have to spend even more and more and more on
disingenuous increasingly failed marketing because people are just getting sick of the same old
same old same old message coming from marketing which to be honest when you've been around whiskey
for a period of time and just spending your own money on it it becomes increasingly fake
disingenuous insincere and frankly it's morphing into commercial gas lighting
now i'm going to talk about this in another in another extras
so let's get back to the this bottling here what's special about it is it's a single cask
from an independent bottler based in scotland which is probably only available in the uk
or if you happen to have friends in the uk they can buy it for you and boast out to you depending
if you're allowed to even receive alcohol through the post and it's even affordable
my goodness that that industry is so rigged very rigged but you know that
when we start out in whiskey we buy a bottle of glenfiddich glen mungee
they're chill filtered they may be caramel cullen added they may have some burnt sugar
in them to give them a darker color to make them look more appealing and that's fine
because when you start out when we all start out with whiskey we're not making big comparisons
we're not aware of it and we're not spending that much money we're maybe picking up in the
sales or in a discount or we happen to be in a supermarket or we're online or just
having to go into a grocer's shop a licensed grocers or a specialist whiskey bottle shop
and there is a sitting there we bought a scotch whiskey and you think to yourself right i'll buy
that i'm going to buy that because you know i've apparently whiskey's quite fashionable these days
and people are raving about it in the internet and talking all about how complex it is so let's get
a bottle and try it out and that's exactly what people do so they pour it we drown themselves or
they have a meal they've got a few friends around say by the way let's open that bottle of whiskey
now and have a taste into the tumbler it goes there's a few wee sips oh it's a bit hot in it
it's a bit well i find it quite smooth well i find it quite rough well can you can you taste the peat
no what what does peat taste like you need to taste peat to know what tastes like that
distinctive tangy phenolic odour and the flavor and therefore it's the beginning of a journey
and only about one in a hundred whiskey buyers will go beyond being a passive
well-intentioned consumer and start to explore further and deeper and yes of course
spend more money not just a bit more money mommies a lot more money i spend a lot of money in whiskey
each year i spend a small fortune in whiskey there's a very good reason for that i buy
everything that i review so that i get the customers experience and not the loaded up market
experience that happens to be when distillers hand out free bottles to journalists and
influencers in exchange for good publicity it's very very cheap marketing super cheap
and then for those with maybe a slightly bigger channel but you don't need that many views
you get the hospitality you go along and then suddenly you're presented with maybe a cask
strength whiskey a limited edition and you're getting through the burn of the alcohol and you
need to quickly gain the experience of using water to cut down that alcohol to access the flavors or
if you're just an enthusiast you haven't started your internet channel but you maybe you've joined
the whiskey club or you're you're checking out the forums and all of a sudden you have this avalanche
of valuable information and it's very difficult to absorb it all in a short space of time
got to take one step in fact my recommendation malt mates is see what however fast your whiskey
journey is proceeding slow down a bit don't rush it because ultimately there is no destination
there is no destination it's the journey that matters and the journey is when we we evolve
over time with patients practice and tasting perseverance we start to move to higher strength
whiskeys like official bottlings without chill filtration color added like spring bank and kilken
aaron and glenn kadam no aardnamakin and churaveg these very exciting distilleries some of which are
only just arriving in the scene and showing great promise you will not know about them until you're
online learning your trade the malt trade the malt tasters trade whiskey's not for guzzling people
who are opening a bottle of whiskey and having a whole bottle with a mate and a night going nowhere
just hurting the liver so it's the culture you go from the chugging culture the coughing culture the
let's put ice in it put coca-cola in i'll make it easy to gulp and then i can get
some more we we morph away from that culture towards the sipping culture which needs time
a little more quiet a little more careful planning but it's worth the investment moments
for the complexity and these unforgettable flavors and by the way you'll get to the stage you cannot
turn back you will have a night where you're just coughing something back with ice in it and
coca-cola and ginger bale beer and all the rest of it and do you know what you won't really enjoy it
because it's not the same it's far more superficial far more shallow it's what most bars
thrive on they need it the volume of consumption to make their profits
even better if they're a style bar they can travel treble the price while offering basically
the same product with a little garnish minimal garnish that's where the real money gets made
the real fast bucks and they are fast so here we have an independent bottling and this before
i go any further i want to explain it to you before i explain how you access it i'll use
this as an illustrative example 12 year old tasker there we go bottle at 48.4 percent
i think roughly until filtered natural cask color so that's reasonable about
a color it's an active cask because inactive casks don't pick up that color over 12 years
it's a settled cask bigger cask only 355 bottles but don't worry if you've missed one
because they'll bottle another one soon they're always bottling
and they always will be so as regards rare and exclusive you will find very
soon that you have a million and one rare and exclusive casks coming out constantly
every rare and exclusive will be followed by another and if you think that you've got
a rare and exclusive whiskey because it's 50 years old i tell you within the decade
50 year old whiskies are going to be 10 a penny you're going to be spoiled for choice
because the distillers are responding to the market
and the older they can make their whiskey the more they can absolutely rocket ship their profits in
a moonshot and they know it they've never had it so good malt mates never in the history of whiskey
never have so many people been spending so much money why because of global prosperity and wealth
driven by technology driven by the internet driven by knowledge and driven by the consolidation of
nation states it's what it is it's to understand things explains the whiskey there's something i
want to point out this whiskey was bottled at 48 point what was it again was my steam bunker 48.4
which you may regard as high strength and you may regard as cask strength but let me
tell you this is not necessarily the case it is not unusual in fact it is relatively common for
independent bottlers and official bottlers to take a high strength whiskey say for example 58
what after 12 years whiskey would be 58 yes yeah it can particularly in larger casks where there's
less evaporation due to the volume to surface ratio that's what you get you know that bit
what happens is they taste the whisky and they think oh oh my goodness it's chock full of flavor
i tell you what if we dilute it slightly not a lot we're not taking it down to 50 not taking it
down to 46 not taking it down to 43 or 40 percent because we're not going to do that it's not our
market but we can take this 58 whiskey down to 54 percent in fact let's take it down to
52 and how many more bottles will we get out the run out the batch of the cask a couple of dozen
and there's more in the uk they'll be paying lower rates of duty customs and excise
tax the lower the volume of alcohol in the bottle the less tax you pay the less tax you pay and
it's a whacking great slice it's 20 percent and this 20 value added tax it's almost 40 percent
off the total that customers paying that's a huge amount of money for people taken by
people who contribute zero nothing nothing they only do it because they can because it's accepted
but it's real life we go on with it that's the rules deal with it just deal with it
so one way they deal with it is they reduce down a little bit because they've got a great
high strength whiskey it still looks like a cast strength whiskey it is still cask strength but
not what it was previously and they get more bottles they pay less duty and they make more
profit and with the cost of buying casks nowadays with the cost of grain and the cost of energy with
the way the cask prices have skyrocketed they need that extra money for the business they
need to keep skews the pun a whiskey business needs to remain solvent i couldn't resist it
what else can i tell you about these bottlings the higher the strength particularly with single cask
do not expect the familiarity that you get from official bottlings bottled at 40 or 43
percent jill filtered and caramel added do not expect it you're getting a different experience
and it will take harder it'll take longer and it will be a more effort and it will be a little bit
harder yes it will to access it you need time the first glass no the second glass probably
not third glass you're getting there fourth glass now now you're starting to understand the whiskey
and you'll have to do it not in one night you'll have to do over three or four nights
in this whiskey there's a flat spot there's a green sour flat spot
in the development right through to the finish and you need exp you
need to experience it first to recognize it then you need to experience the subsequent
recovery due to the oxidization and the unraveling of flavors out the liquor over a face of an hour
and then you say wow hasn't that changed whiskey's in the glass they change with each
pour out the bottle the ones that change the least the ones that change where it's barely noticeable
are the ones that are bottled at 40 to 43 chill filtered and with calvin cullen added
these are the sanitized whiskies these are the convenience whiskies
these are the pot noodle whiskies malt makes they're the pot noodles pour and go
whereas integrity whiskies whether official bottlings or under unofficial independent
bottlings they need work they need they need you to apply the skills of the trade the whiskey trade
the customer trade the drinkers trade to to actually have the patience and perseverance
to see how the bottle morphs and i'm going to conclude this video quite an important video
going to conclude the scene i had a bottle of mortlak which was pure parma violets
totally bulmorish and all i did was i decanted it in and out a jug a few times
and put the bottle on the shelf for about three months when i came back to it it was fabulous
it was a good whiskey to start with it was just dominated by a certain
note of flavor same with this this is the skills i'll tell you more of the skills in your course
that's quite enough for the moment i'm ralphie this has been an extras i know how much you love
the extras and if you enjoyed this click the likey leave your comments i do look at the comments
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really more mates pleasure as always and again my final conclusion is a big thank you to my
patreon pals who follow me in patreon ralphie um the quality of the commentary and the content
is just fantastic in the feedback and i really really enjoy having such a civil
wonderful group of folk as my patreon pals that's why you get extra content bye