Closing the Whisky Experiment

It's been a bit more than a month since I started my Double Blind Whisky Taste Test, and I've decided it's time to call it. I've drunk a scarily large amount of the whisky, but science is a harsh mistress and she will not be denied. Those of you who are sitting at home complaining that I haven't fixed your bug, it's because I was drunk from too much experimentation.

I've posting my reviews to Twitter, which in some ways adds a third blindness: I didn't know how I reviewed a given Scotch previously.

I'm writing this having not yet looked at the key that will tell me which Scotch is which. Here are my reviews so far (using my arbitrary decanter names). I'm actually taking a small drink of each as I write, just to remind myself and do one last review. These reviews are in order of perceived strength, so that I'm going from weakest to strongest.

My comments will also try to mention what I would do with these whiskies; this is because I've still got decanters with a lot of whisky in them, and really, I probably won't drink them all straight, which is all I would normally do with a single malt.

My primary goal in this review was to find that single peaty Scotch that I could put in my liquor cabinet (currently virtual, since the liquor is kind of scattered wherever there is storage).

• Teardrop: Very drinkable and very smooth, but relatively mild. It almost doesn't belong in this review. Once I have closed the experiment, I look forward to comparing it to Macallan, which is my old stand-by in terms of smooth Scotch. A little bit of peat, some harshness if you aren't careful, and just a bit of roundness. It's like all the edges are filed off and nothing really stands out. I expect this is a great Scotch if you're not drinking it near anything else, but near the others, it seems weak. It's almost a Scotch for people who don't drink Scotch.

  I like it, but it's not peaty enough to be considered a great peaty whisky.

• Oval: This one definitely has some peat in it, but it's got a hint of sourness that I don't really like (that's sour as in "something went sour" as opposed to "puckery"). This is apparently a consistent review, since I've mentioned that in my twitter microreviews, too. I expect that this would make a great whisky sour, but you would always want to hide the whisky's own sour, rather than focusing on it. Hopefully it would meld with the citrus, rather than having some sort of weird sour harmonic.

  At least this one's peaty, and it's got an overall good flavour. I wouldn't recommend it to most people, though, because of the sour note. I do remember drinking this multiple times without really noticing the sour, for what it's worth.

• The D: [1] This is definitely my favorite. It's got peat, a bit of spice, no real harshness unless you snort it, and none of the sourness of the oval. It has an almost mustiness to it, like a good blue cheese. It's really an even, peaty whisky; drinkable neat, but strong. It should mix well if you wanted to, given how much flavour it has, and go well in soda or with ice, but it deserves to be neat, or maybe on ice to keep the fumes down.

• Square: Very spicy, almost with a Bourbon spice, but quite harsh, also. Strangely, there isn't a lot of other flavour to it. There's some peat to it (I expect that's what adds the spice), but the harshness stands out so much that I'm not real fond of this whisky. I'm not even convinced it would taste that good with soda (which is often how I drink my bourbon), since it doesn't have much depth.

Okay, so now we know what I think about each of the whiskies, it's time to get the key out and see what is what. First, though, I will give my guesses as to what is what. Here's my estimate:

• Laphroaig: Square
• Teardrop: Caol Ila
• Ardbeg: Oval
• Lagavulin: The D

And now, without further ado, here's the real key:

• Laphroaig: Oval
• Teardrop: Caol Ila
• Ardbeg: Square
• Lagavulin: The D

So, I got two correct but mixed two of them. The clear winner in the "best peaty Islay malt" category is Lagavulin, which is unfortunate, since it's about $20 more per bottle than any of the others (assuming you can find Caol Ila, which I had to buy at the Duty Free in Melbourne). The Caol Ila gets an honorable mention as the easiest to drink.

Looks like I've been harshing on the Ardbeg this whole time, and it's the Laphroaig that has the sourness I didn't particularly like.

And with that, the experiment closes. Now I can finally drink some of the Caol Ila 18yr I have -- I couldn't drink it while the experiment was on, since it would likely have clued me into which decanter had the 12yr.

In the name of Science (and great whisky), Luke

[1]

This decanter has a square bottom and a kind of oval top, so it looks kind of like a D sitting on its back. Really, though, it gets its name from the movie 8 Mile -- I have a friend from Detroit who said it was an accurate portrayal of Detroit, and ever since I've harassed him about how Eminem calls the city "The D".

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 | Tags: whisky, science

Whisky in the Name of Science

I'd been talking about wanting to do blind taste tests of liquor for a while, so I can be sure it's the flavour of the liqour I like, not just preconceptions or marketing or whatever, so this past summer my wife bought me four decanters for my birthday. I'd already done a couple of smaller comparisons (one Bourbon (Basil Hayden beat Woodford Reseve), one Scotch (Macallan beat Cragganmore)), but I hadn't recorded any of them.

I did encounter significant problems setting up the experiments, though -- you have to choose liquors that you're either unfamiliar with or that are very similar in character, or you end up being able to tell immediately which is which. The Macallan is much darker and has a much rounder flavour than Cragganmore, so it wasn't a real blind experiment. I probably should have compared the Macallan (which is aged in Sherry casks) to the Glenmorangie Sherry Cask.

I have only recently begun drinking peaty Islay malts, and I still haven't tried many of them, so I figured it's a perfect opportunity to do a full comparison of four whiskies I barely know. I remember John Willis mentioning that he'd liked Caol Ila (although I can't find evidence of this online), and I happened to be able to get some in Duty Free in Melbourne, so I had the first of my test whiskies. It was relatively easy to pick the rest of the lot; they're all listed below.

Here's the setup:

I've got four Scotch whiskies:

• Laphroaig 10yr
• Caol Ila 12yr
• Lagavulin 16yr
• Ardbeg 10yr

In addition, I've got four temporary containers (in this case, two Nalgene bottles and two pitchers), four decanters, and four pieces of paper. I actually got a bottle of Caol Ila 18yr, also, while I was in Melbourne (and both Caol Ila bottles are liter bottles, as all Duty Free bottles seem to be), but I didn't want to have two such similar whiskies in the test.

At least two participants are required to make it double blind (double blind means neither the researchers nor the subjects know which is which, and we're assuming all researchers will also be subjects). My wife puts a piece of paper in front of each temporary container, pours one bottle of whiskey in each, and labels the papers appropriately (she apparently didn't quite successfully take a picture of this stage). She then flips the paper over so I don't know what liquor is in what container and leaves the room.

I come in and pour from the temporary containers into the decanters, and label the pieces of paper with the decanter. This makes each piece of paper a key that matches the whisky name to the decanter it's in, without either of us knowing what's where. Here's the final result:

The bottles and decanters are arranged randomly, and both my wife and I were careful to rearrange the bottles on the table during each phase, so that, for instance, a single liquor doesn't stay on the far left the whole time. The box in the picture contains our keys.

Given that this is more than three liters of Scotch, and I don't drink it all that quickly, this is going to be a heckuva long experiment, but I expect I'll be able to deputize some friends as subjects.

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 | Tags: whisky, science