Hopped whiskey

Corsair Rasputin tastes/smells to me overwhelmingly of hops. Not a lot of variety there, to my palate. I suppose it is great if you really like hops.

@Victor Thats too bad... I can imagine it being really nice if it would be well balanced, cuz I loooove a well hopped beer.

I too love heavily hopped beer but I place no value on balance. Give me bright, intense, zippy, unbalanced hops! Maybe that Rasputin is for me.

Victor, do you like really hopped beer? I wonder if our taste preferences align at all here.

And has anyone tried the Charbay S or R5?

For a long time, all I knew about was their "legendary" (LAWS) and expensive ($300+) distillate from a few years back. But now I see those S and R5 bottles at a few online retailers in the $70-80 neighborhood. I don't know whether they're new or I just never saw them. I tentatively plan to get one soon, probably the R5. Some info is to be had on various sites but the opinions vary a lot.

I can think of two Belgian beers. They've redistiled some Duvel whisky into (I use the term very loosely) whisky. www.duvel.com/en-gb/duvel-distilled

And whisky from Gouden Carolus Single Malt, which actually uses the same mash from a popular special beer for distillation. So from the same mash tun they produce both beer and whisky at the same time hetanker.be/Stokerij/Strokerij/…

Though only Duvel can be considered a bit hop. Belgian beers usually have a more subtle hop flavour compared to their British counterparts

The wife tells me that my highly anticipated package from Binny's arrived today, which means I now have a bottle of Charbay R5 waiting for me at home. Woo! I'll share my impressions when I open it—but for now, I'm very excited about it. Mucho.

I'm going to open my Charbay R5 soon. Did anybody else out there on Connor buy this? I wonder whether I might have a buddy out here to exchange views with.

The R5 appears to have sold out from the online stores that had it a few weeks ago.

Binny's currently has the Corsair Rasputin, but in-store only (doable for me). Any other views on that, beyond Victor's above? If I love the Charbay R5, I'll be tempted by the Rasputin if it's good. Views across the interwebs are enthusiastic but not confidence-inspiring.

So, I don't love the Charbay R5. I suppose I'll post a review if I ever muster the motivation to start those here. But for now, I'll just say that it tastes like flat, cheap, high-octane IPA. The flatness is the biggest disappointment. I think I was unconsciously imagining the lively carbonation of an IPA when I anticipated what this R5 was going to taste like. Instead, it's like beer that's sat out overnight. Even when I come back to it with more realistic expectations, it still seems limp.

And the hop flavor is, very sadly, reminiscent of cheap IPA instead of good IPA. Like, have you ever had that crappy "Bunny" brand of IPA and APA. It has a sucky cheap hop flavor that I taste in the R5 too. Nothing like the actual Racer 5 beer.

I expect to drop a fair amount of the R5 into my glasses of IPA, boilermaker-style. Boo.

News: Corsair appears to have some new hopped whiskies out that are specific to various types of hops. I was just browing the Binny's website and noticed a Galaxy hops version and a Mosiac hops version.

They're 46% and about $55/bottle, so not too shappy by relative standards.