Nuclear bomb tests help to identify fake whisky

[leo-rcc]

Blends are a different animal to single malts, but like with single malts and single casks etc, there are good ones and bad ones. The thing with blends is that the difference between the good and the bad ones are not worlds apart.

Single malts tend to be in a much broader spectrum of flavours, while blends go for a more uniform consistent taste. But even there a Dimple will be much nicer than a JW red, but not so much better than a famous grouse. I will happily drink a famous grouse, but will not touch a JW red. Same pricerange. Different taste.

A JW double black however, also a blend, has a more peaty taste because the Japanese love that flavour, and I happen to like that too.

[Svartalf]

Thing is that bad malts usually don't get bottled and sold as single malt whisky, they get sold tol blenders.

Then again, yep, there are notable differences from a bottle to the next withing the same brand.

[mistermack]

I started drinking whiskey before I was twenty, staying with a well-off relative in the US who had a huge selection of just about anything you could want to try. I went through the lot, but ended up with straight american rye as my favorite. Jim Beam I think. I wasn't that impressed with single malts.
I certainly didn't end up liking the expensive ones more.

[Svartalf]

Rye isn't bad, though old Beam is rather the bottom of the barrel... but if you aren't impressed by the difference between a charred barrel American whiskey and a sherry casked maritime malt, you ought to sue your parents for giving you defective taste and olfaction genes.

[Blind groper]

Whiskey of all types and varieties tastes foul. If you do not believe me, give a nip of neat whiskey to a child, who has better taste buds, and ask.

Of course, I love whiskey. The thing is, that the foul taste is overcome by our love of alcohol, and the fact that we are conditioned by the association between that foul taste and the lovely buzz that follows. It is a principle similar to the love of needles that heroin addicts get. A true heroin addict enjoys a needle sliding through their flesh, believe it or not. They have learned to associate the needle pain and the pleasure of heroin.

Whiskey lovers are actually alcohol lovers, and lovers of the alcoholic buzz. We learn to love the taste of whiskey (which is actually foul regardless of how expensive the whiskey is) because of the association with the alcoholic buzz.

[mistermack]

Whiskey of all types and varieties tastes foul. If you do not believe me, give a nip of neat whiskey to a child, who has better taste buds, and ask.

Of course, I love whiskey. The thing is, that the foul taste is overcome by our love of alcohol, and the fact that we are conditioned by the association between that foul taste and the lovely buzz that follows. It is a principle similar to the love of needles that heroin addicts get. A true heroin addict enjoys a needle sliding through their flesh, believe it or not. They have learned to associate the needle pain and the pleasure of heroin.

Whiskey lovers are actually alcohol lovers, and lovers of the alcoholic buzz. We learn to love the taste of whiskey (which is actually foul regardless of how expensive the whiskey is) because of the association with the alcoholic buzz.

That's true. My mother used to give us punch when we were kids, when we had a cold or the flu.
Warm milk and whiskey. We used to hate it, even with sugar in it.

I remember my first taste of alcohol as a fifteen-year-old.
I was a member of an archery club, and turned up one day, but nobody was there, it was cancelled.
There were crates of beer and cider empties on the floor, and one bottle was half full of cider.

I decided to try it, so I took a swig. It was soooooooooooo foul that I thought someone had put cleaning fluid in it. I couldn't believe people would actually CHOOSE to drink that stuff.
I was spitting, and trying to be sick, I was so scared I'd been poisoned.

Not long after, I tried some that I knew really was cider, and it tasted just the same. I was amazed, but I gradually got to like it. Rapidly.
I drank cider and perry for a long time after that, and loved it.

[MiM]

Whiskey of all types and varieties tastes foul. If you do not believe me, give a nip of neat whiskey to a child, who has better taste buds, and ask.

Of course, I love whiskey. The thing is, that the foul taste is overcome by our love of alcohol, and the fact that we are conditioned by the association between that foul taste and the lovely buzz that follows. It is a principle similar to the love of needles that heroin addicts get. A true heroin addict enjoys a needle sliding through their flesh, believe it or not. They have learned to associate the needle pain and the pleasure of heroin.

Whiskey lovers are actually alcohol lovers, and lovers of the alcoholic buzz. We learn to love the taste of whiskey (which is actually foul regardless of how expensive the whiskey is) because of the association with the alcoholic buzz.

Only partly true. There are rather few tastes that a child likes immediately, and many many things that one needs to get used to. Take blue cheese, as an extreme example. Most kids would react as Mistermack above to that taste, but still many of us learn to love it later on, without it giving us any special buzz. And if alcohol would be the only thing we go for, then why drink anything but vodka (or vodka-juice, if you like to hide it).

[Blind groper]

Speak for yourself on blue cheese. I still hate the stuff.

Why not vodka? If you are Russian, it is vodka you learn to love.
Each of us learns to love whatever alcoholic drink is part of our background as we grow up. (Plus, there are other factors affecting our taste development.) Some learn to love brandy, or bourbon, or gin, or .....,.

[MiM]

...(Plus, there are other factors affecting our taste development.) Some learn to love brandy, or bourbon, or gin, or .....,.

.
What makes us prefer alcoholic drinks is the buzz. What determines which alcoholic drinks we prefer are those other factors, that work much the same way as they work in developing tastes for normal foodstuffs.

[mistermack]

Perhaps little children are programmed to dislike fermenting fruit, and hence anything alcoholic.
They do die a lot when they get diarrhoea. Or maybe alcohol made our ancestors children fall out of the trees.
It seems that kids can soon get over the initial dislike though.

[Tyrannical]

All good whiskey originates in the US, though many of the foreign manufactures try to fake it buy using discarded American whiskey barrels to improve their domestic swill

[Svartalf]

Perhaps little children are programmed to dislike fermenting fruit, and hence anything alcoholic.
They do die a lot when they get diarrhoea. Or maybe alcohol made our ancestors children fall out of the trees.
It seems that kids can soon get over the initial dislike though.

My foot, at my grandmother's home, we kids did all we could to be allowed to drink cider (hard cider for you folk) at meals.

[Svartalf]

All good whiskey originates in the US, though many of the foreign manufactures try to fake it buy using discarded American whiskey barrels to improve their domestic swill

The use of bourbon barrels has nothing to do with improving the whisky (we use claret, port or sherry casks for that, sometimes more exotic ones), it has to do with the fact that, since you yanks have to use new barrels for the bourbon, your used stuff is cheap and plenty.