It is Halloween. Rather than skipping through the streets helping children acquire diabetes, I am locked up in my flat with all the lights off, ignoring knocks on the door and drinking weird spirits. The first part of that sentence is expected – I’ve been scared of trick or treaters ever since my university flatmates stole my strawberry Milky Ways to feed to some while I hid in my room (I’m still not entirely sure why, but dress kids up as skeletons, and I’m hiding). However, the weird spirits bit needs some explanation.
Continue reading “Oli Klimek’s Super Happy Halloween Fun”Bathtub Gin – World Gin Day
It is, yet again, World Gin Day. As is law, today I will drink gin – this year at Junipalooza. But, in a departure from usual, I’ve also made some. Well, started the process anyway – it takes a day or so to make bathtub gin.
Quick Tastings
December was busy, but I still managed to drink a few things even if I didn’t get time to write many blog posts. Here are some of those things so I don’t forget what they were.
Whisky Squad #34 – Whisky in Cocktails with Monkey Shoulder
I quite like sacrilege, especially in the world of drinks. My first blog post at work was about whisky cocktails, a subject that raises ire amongst many whisky purists, and I’ve championed the use of decent whisky in cocktails ever since. That said, I also hate whisky in lots of cocktails and find recipes that say ’25ml of Single Malt Whisky’ particularly annoying – the flavour variation amongst whiskies makes such a statement fairly meaningless (although does leave things open to interpretation by the bartender/maker, as is Right and Proper). Anyways, the folks at Monkey Shoulder have many strings to their PR-y bow and one that is popping up more often recently is the joy of using it as a base for cocktails.
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Whisky Squad #33 – Raw Spirit (aka the 2nd Birthday)
How time flies. A mere two years ago I was an occasional drunk who sometimes wrote things up on his blog, who then bumped into Andy and Jason of WhiskySquad at a couple of booze events, leading to my attendance of almost every one of their sessions. These days I’m a professional drunk who still only sometimes writes stuff on his blog, but WhiskySquad has gone from strength to strength. Up to at least two tastings a month and at least three iterations into their website, tickets still sell out quickly and, as a crowning achievement, they’ve even had me along to present an evening. After last year’s shindig there was a standard to be lived up to, so the big guns were rolled out for birthday number two – a matured whisky and new spirit pairing.
Yes, after two years of schmoozing the assembled masses of the whisky industry Andy and Jason managed to lever a number of sample bottles of new make spirit out of the hands of the distilleries for a bit of a special evening – tasting blind, as usual, whiskies and the new make spirits that they started out as.
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