That bottle has a lot of water in it

@Oljas I never add water, but how often do we read that by adding water to a dram the flavors are coming out. I myself solved the problem with a simple drinking technic... the sipping. The higher the ABV the smaller is the sip. I then use my saliva to bring the ABV lower if needed. That way, I am tasting the full range of flavors and I likes the CS for that! But when you let the money do the talking, why not bring the ABV lower if that is exactly what most consumer want and let those connosr cry over there lost! O cynicism!

A tangential point about a bottle’s water content: This means that your standard 40% ABV blend has a lot less malt content than we might think—if we don't really think.

When a better blend, like Te Bheag, has a “high malt” content of (say) 40%, I’m almost positive that means that 40% of the non-water content is malt, not 40% of the whole bottle. 40% of the non-water content is only 27% of the bottle’s overall content. (40% is grain and the last 33% is water.)

And a cheap blend, which as (say) 20% malt, is of course the same but worse. The bottle’s contents are 13% malt, 54% grain, and (again) 33% water.

(All my math in this post assumes 60% ABV in the barrel.)

@Robert99, We also read that master blenders dilute their whisky samples down to like 20% ABV or something to get the "full nose" or whatever. I'm pretty sure I don't want any 20% ABV bottles of whisky. :)

I'm not sure most consumers want 40% ABV whisky. Witness the Maker's Mark hoopla. I think, really, most people don't understand that 40% ABV is synonymous with "the bottler watered this down to the greatest extent allowed by law."

But as we often remind ourselves, folks on board like Connosr are not like most consumers. I really want to know what folks here think about this. Do you usually think about how much water really is in those low-ABV bottles?

It's a lot more water than I'd've guessed before I thought it through. It's nowhere near comparable to the few drops that you might toss into your glass.

@OlJas, sometimes I have to remind myself that the liquor world is actually several different worlds. The Connosr types are sippers and aesthetes, who treasure and savour the nuances and the unique details of whisky. There are also the frat-boy shots-drinkers...and that great mass for whom the liquor industry mostly provides, the cocktail drinkers, who routinely mix whisk(e)y with soft drink, ice, other spirits, and other ingredients.

Shots-drinkers and cocktail drinkers require neither the beauty nor the concentration of flavours which the purist sipper-aesthete values. Sure, I'd like all of my whisky 65% abv and up, if I could get it that way. But the industrial mega-corporations are making most of their money selling 40% abv stuff for cocktails and shots.

Sometimes people who hate the concept of bottled water say things like "I can get good water of my faucet for free—why pay $1 for a little bottle?" It surprises me that the same sentiment doesn't seem to prevail among whisky drinkers. You see it sometimes, but not all that much.

A $50 bottle works out to around $2/oz. If it's diluted to 40% ABV, then about 8oz of the bottle is water. That's like paying $16 for a modestly sized water bottle.

So I'm thinking about the volume of water in whisky again, so I dug up this old thread of mine†.

It's beyond my formatting capabilities to write out the formula that—I'm pretty sure—tells you how much water is in a given bottle of non-cask-strength whisky, given that you know the pre-dilution ABV and the final bottled ABV. But I set it up in a spreadsheet, and now I can just plug in any scenario to see how much water is involved.

Some examples:

•Generic example: 60% ABV whisky bottled at 40%: 250 mL water in a 750 mL bottle

•Laphroaig 10 example: 58.1% ABV (the ABV of CS batch 9) bottled at 43%: 195 mL water in a 750 mL bottle

•The same Laphroaig 10 in the UK: 58.1% ABV bottled at 40% for the UK: 218 mL water in a 700 mL bottle

•Hypothetical 20-year-old malt: 50% ABV bottled at 46%: Just 60 mL water in a 750 mL bottle

•A typical blend, assuming (fairly, I think) 30% malt content at 60% ABV and 70% grain content at 90% ABV: 81% ABV blend bottled at 40%: A whopping 380 mL water in a 750 mL bottle—over half water

Any surprises there? (Or mistakes?)

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Edit to add a @Victor tag. We've previously discussed the ABV of grain whisky that goes into blends, so maybe you want to see this angle on the dilution amount that those high ABVs ultimately require.

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†I used to be Ol' Jas, as seen earlier in this thread.

I'm assuming you mean "added" water, or in other terms...flavour dilution. 40% alcohol is almost 60% water...

Yes, I do of course mean the water added at the time of bottling. Plain old tap water (or "untouched Highland spring water," or water)—water that never saw the inside of a barrel.

@MadSingleMalt Unless it was a rain barrel.

So am I to understand that you too believe that the cask strength ABV is less important than the amount of water added to a whisky in terms of effect on flavour?

Ralfy always says "more alcohol = more flavour" but I don't think that's accurate.

@Nozinan: Yes, I would absolutely agree that a whisky's flavor power is typically a result of the amount of added water rather than just the ABV in a vacuum.

"More alcohol = more flavour" is easy shorthand to compare 40% (and similar) whiskies to cask-strength whiskies. But the high ABV isn't really the driver there, I shouldn't think. The driver is the water content.

Many times—probably enough to annoy—I've poked at a comment in a review along the lines of "wow, this 28-year-old whisky really packs a punch despite the low ABV." I think people get the wrong idea that low ABVs = low flavor power because they forget that the weakness of most low-ABV whiskies is due to the high water content.

(None of this is to deny that, sometimes, a certain whisky is just better, by all accounts, at a certain ABV. I think there was just a review (here?) that told of how everyone who worked on the whisky agreed that it was way better at 46% (or whatever) instead of cask strength. Those seem like they must be exceptions, though, and that for most whiskies, diluting at the last moment with tap water would surely dilute the flavor.)

It’s not that more alcohol = more flavour necessarily. It’s that more alcohol gives the consumer more control over creating an ideal flavour for themselves. If I buy a bottle at 46% I have the option of ‘watering’ it down to 40% to suit my palate or I can leave it at the strength it was bottled at. I can’t take water away from a 40% bottle though. My father finds too much alcohol burn with anything at 46%, whereas I enjoy that and more just fine depending on the bottle - I’ve enjoyed Octomore at bottle strength many times. To me it’s about being left with greater flexibility to tailor my drinking experience to my mood.

As an add on - when 200ml are added to a bottle that will likely produce 15 drams it’s basically the equivalent of 12mls a dram (a bit more than a two tsp). At an ounce and a half (50mls) you might get 15 drams out of a bottle with 12mls pre - added water per dram at 40%. That makes sense because if I added 21/2 tsp to a cask strength glass it would be too much - which is why 40% tastes thin to an experienced drinker.

@nooch, nosing and blending by industry experts is done at 20 - 23% abv.

@paddockjudge but it should be done at the ABV people drink it

@Nozinan _ I agree; however most people do not drink their whisky at bottle strength.

@paddockjudge Hmmmm. I will accept that even if I'm not "most people". i drink most Canadian whiskies at bottle strength, and most bourbons most of the time.

Wasn't it Kennedy who said something like:

you can drink some at bottle strength all of the time, and drink all at bottle strength some of the time, but you can't drink all at bottle strength all of the time

@Nozinan _ Fo sho it was Teddy Kennedy.

@paddockjudge I can fool you none of the time...

All you fellow ABV-watchers out there won't be surprised to hear that Redbreast 12 offers one of the easiest and starkest ways to compare a standard low-ABV bottle with its cask-strength counterpart. My club is tasting the two Redbreast 12s side-by-side in a few days, so I did the water calculation and filled a random old bottle with the amount of water that transforms the CS version into the 40% version. You gotta have a visual aid!

It's a lot. A third of the bottle: 249 mL in a 750-mL bottle.

@MadSingleMalt I'll be interested to read a review on the differences between the 12 standard and the 12 CS.

Think about how much whisk(e)y for the money you are getting buying a cask strength bottle versus a 40% bottle. A $60 of Stagg Jr for example is a lot more whiskey for the money than a $45 of whiskey at 40-50%. Even if the cask strength whisky bottle is more expensive, you're getting more whiskey and less water so in a way it's cheaper. And the bottle should last longer.

@casualtorture - "And the bottle should last longer." In theory

When you see the amounts of water (in mls) that are added it's quite eye opening. I must admit I'm being drawn more towards cask strength and higher abv bottlings these days. But it has to be said that even at 40% some whiskys can still be decent. Guess it's a flavour/concentration thing

Benromach 10 (at 43%) vs the 10/100 was an interesting h2h comparison. I reckon on some days I'd have chosen the 10 over the 100.

@RianC I agree. I have both and I don't think I would spend the extra for the 100 Proof again as I find the 43% version absolutely adequate.

@BlueNote - More than adequate, I'd say! Still, the 10/100 is decently priced in the UK so worth the extra every now and then. I think the 10, Ardbeg 10 and Springbank 10 are three whiskys I could happily buy by the case load.

@RianC If I could only have three, I could live happily ever after with those three.