So, what are you drinking now?

@Robert99 Maybe I should get one for our house. We have so much in the garage we may not have room for my wife's car (let alone mine).

@Nozinan Join the club. My garage is history as a garage. Anyway, the Tempo was a good excuse to get a good Scotch.

I enjoyed a fun night of tasting tonight. I purchased a standard ol’ Jameson because my mom tends to not like what I have....low and behold, she showed up with a bottle of Jameson Caskmates Stout Edition. I have to say I was pretty impressed. This must have been a good batch. I feel like there was a higher proportion of Single Pot Still in this as opposed to standard Jameson. It was rich with a noticeable boost in the lower end of the range. We moved on to a 50/50 blend of Caskmates and Redbreast Cask Strength. I would say it was a successful experiment. I then had a full dram of 100% Redbreast CS, as I seem to have forgotten how great this Whiskey is. Wow. So good. While I sipped that, my mother tried out the Glenfarclas 12, and she really enjoyed it. So much so that she had a second dram while I finished the night with a magnificent and satisfying pour of Ardbeg 10. If my soon-to-be-acquired bottle of Uigeadail proves as good as people say it is, Ardbeg might actually dethrone Lagavulin as my favourite distillery.

@OdysseusUnbound oogie is good but lagavulin is better!!! Long live Ron Swanson.

@OdysseusUnbound Lag 16 vs Ooggy isn't fair.... you'll have to pit the Lag 12 CS against it.

@Nozinan And maybe throw in some Laph 10 CS and call it The Clash of the Islay Titans ? Hmmm there’s an idea...

@OdysseusUnbound Then you'd have to add Caol Ila CS as well.

@Nozinan Better throw Kilchoman Machir Bay Cask Strength into the mix too.

@BlueNote I can't...I don't have it. I'm trying to see what a lineup of bruisers I could put together.

@Nozinan Me neither, wish I did.

@BlueNote It, in its 46% ABV glory, can be yours for just $100 at the KGBO

@Nozinan I've got the 46% one but apparently there is a cask strength version. I may have it wrong, maybe it's a different Kilchoman that's cask strength

Hmmm...depends how you define bruiser. Is abv the only measure? The biggest abv drams in my collection are likely abunah, bowmore laimrig, and Octomore 7.1 and 7.3.

@nooch Fair enough. I think in this context PEAT punch was the criterion. Many of the bottles in my collection are full flavour bruisers of some sort, but I was looking at cask strength Islays with high power peat.

@Nozinan Octomore it is.

@nooch If only I were as lucky...

After I finished off the last of my Glen Garioch 12, I had a dram of Laphroaig Quarter Cask. I think it is still a very good dram. The problem is the price is getting out of hand.

No, @BlueNote, you're right: There was a new cask-strength version of Machir Bay this year. I've heard about it, but not yet encountered one in person.

Drinking Bowmore 12 and Johnnie Walker Green tonight....it's a light peat kinda evening.

@boatracer I don't know if you saw my post from a while ago. I livened up my fairly sad Bowmore 12 by mixing it with Laph QC. About 3parts Bowmore with one part QC. That was really quite good and helped me get through my bottle of Bowmore 12. I did it with Ledaig 10 one night and that worked too.

@BlueNote Imagine if the blenders at Bowmore put even half the effort into beefing up their malt as you do...

@Nozinan I would give them all my recipes in exchange for a lifetime supply of Laimrig. And maybe a few bottles of every annual edition of 10 year old Tempest.

@BlueNote, that's a very effective strategy. QC has enough oak & ABV (not to mention the peat!) to jazz up many a lifeless glass. And Bowmore 12 is a pretty lifeless glass.

I did some similar batching last night. I'm trying to get through my bottle of Lagavulin 8, which I find undercooked. Meanwhile, I also have this bottle of Te Bheag that I've barely touched in the past year+ it's been open—it turned out to be kinda syrupy & sweet, with no salty edge like I fondly remember from my first bottle years ago. But together—boom—a pretty good whisky.

@MadSingleMalt What does uncooked mean? Bland? Flat? Harsh? Raw? It is the first time I encounter this term to describe a whisky.

@Robert99 I would take that to mean not enough time in the cask to reach it's optimum level of maturity.

@Robert99 , the Lagavulin 8 has very distinctive (to me) kind of nastiness in its core that I sometimes find in young peated whiskies. Kind of like mezcal. Once I notice it, I seem to fixate on it and the problem becomes worse and worse in my mind as I go through the bottle. I blame it on casks that weren't up to the task of taming the peat in the short time allotted to them, but who knows.

I've found the same quality in Big Peat, Smokehead (I think—it's been a few years), and some young indie Caol Ila. Similar-on-paper whiskies that I don't find it in include Ardbeg Ten and Kilchoman Machir Bay.

Does that help convey what I'm talking about? Have you ever tasted that yourself? Do you think I'm crazy? I know I'm in the minority in not liking the Lagavulin 8.

@MadSingleMalt If you don't like Lag 8 you're clearly wrong. Something is wrong with you.

Of course not, you like what you like. No right and wrong. I happen to like it.

@MadSingleMalt I am a real PeatHead, so I don't have any problem with young peat and I don't have any problem with you not liking the Lag 8. The only problem I have with young peat is that too many of them are alike.

I am also a bit like you. Springbank has, for me, some note of rotten grass on which I have a tendancy to focus on even when it is faint or almost non existing, which makes it hard for me to appreciate that distillery (I do like the 12 CS). I used to have some rotten grass out of Bruichladdich as well but with some refinement and tone down by the sweetness. We are all peculiar in one way or the other... As my wife say: "Thanks God you are unique!"

@Robert99: "The only problem I have with young peat is that too many of them are alike."

I agree with that. I really like them, but yeah, most young bourbon-matured Islays seem pretty indistinguishable. Not identical, but indistinguishable. I'm always surprised (and I admit, skeptical) when reviewers of the usual suspects say that its parent distillery is obvious. I think that parentage would be much less obvious in a blind lineup.

And like you, I don't as a rule have any problem with young peat. My favorite open bottle at the moment is probably PC7, and lord knows I'm always blathering about how great Laphroaig 10 CS is for the money (in the US). But sometimes young peat has a gross quality to it. Do you ever get that? Ever had a young peater that was too immature?

@MadSingleMalt A few years ago, I had a grade 10 student named Peter who was quite immature. Wait, what? I find Laphroaig Quarter Cask develops some sort of unpleasant “green” and spirity notes if it is left open too long. I like it well enough freshly-opened or within the first 4-6 weeks, but I find its youth becomes apparent after that.