Once again proving that no sacrifice is too great, I boldly ventured on to the Jameson Bartenders Ball last night. Oh... what I won't do for my readers :)

This event is hosted By Jameson 3 times a year here in Northern California and last night was the last one for the year.  It's a heck of a party and nothing like what I expected.  I was imagining something with the lights up, music mellow and insiders chatting about products, promotions and other aspects of the spirits industry. This was just a wet tshirt contest short of spring break.

The drink menu was extensive: Jameson neat, Jameson on the rocks, Jameson and soda, Jameson and ginger ale, Jameson and cola, Jameson and American Honey or American Honey. All of the open bars were stocked with cases of Jameson and it was flowing freely.

Father's Day is apon us again and what better time to get that special dad a bottle of something special. As a father of four myself, this guide for is a projection of what *I* want since there are no guidelines from a congressionally sponsored Government Institute Managing Mandatory Inferred Expression (GIMMIE?).

My first son was born in October of 1994 so this marks my 13th Father's Day. I thought that the perfect gift would be a bottle of whisk(e)y that is the same age as my fatherhood. The more I thought about this, the better I liked the idea. It has serious flaws for getting something affordable for my dad at 35 years but he doesn't like Scotch so I get off easy.

Life has a way of pushing things around. Mine has been a roller coaster for the last couple of months and pushed writing off the cliff of available time. Now that Baycon 2008 is behind us and my release schedule at work is starting to gain sanity I can get back to writing of our adventures in the land of whiskey.

Bear with me, thar be great tales a comin!

Every field and venture has it's dangers. Being a whisky afficianado is no exception, and while some are well known (having a dram too many of the Laphroig and drunk-dialing an ex) some are a bit more...exotic. As a for instance, last October my esteemed WhiskeyBro Mark and I were perusing the plethora of possible pours at WhiskeyFest SF. If there was a bit of stagger to our step, well, it had been a long night. We encountered the Dalmore table with gusto, but not quite as much as the fiery Scot who walked us through the tasting. In fact, "fiery" and "gusto" don't quite do justice to the force we reckoned with. Suffice to say that we did not treat the Scotch in front of us with sufficient gravity, which resulted in, well....ice chucking. That's right ladies and gentlemen, Richard Paterson himself, award-winning, third generation, master blender for Whyte & Mackay threw ice at my brother-in-law.

Just to prove that we are real human beings, once again we will crawl out of the whiskey cellar back at HQ. This time to share a couple of great American whiskeys; Bulleit Bourbon and George Dickel. We'll be at the Elixir in San Francisco starting at 7pm and pouring until 9pm.
So come on down Mike and I will be sharing schwag, stories, and some great hooch!

Last night was the premiere of the new season of The Deadliest Catch on The Discovery Channel. The captains have always gathered for drinks before the fleet sets out on the next crab season. This time we got to see what they drink for their toast -- Duck Farts.

Ingredients:

• 0.5 oz. (15ml)  Kahlua
• 0.5 oz. (15ml) Baily's Irish Cream
• 0.5 oz. (15ml) Crown Royal Whisky

Layered, not mixed, each in a shot glass in order.

Hat tip to this blog.

There's a very interesting law being worked on in Sacramento:

This bill would also permit an out-of-state distilled spirits importer, out-of-state beer manufacturer, beer manufacturer, distilled spirits manufacturer, rectifier, beer and wine importer, distilled spirits importer, beer and wine wholesaler, or distilled spirits wholesaler to provide entertainment, food, and beverages to invited guests, as specified.

The current law limits these activities to local companies. Out of state (or out of country) companies are very limited in the ways that they can provide product for events. Product launches and promotions are very limited by the CA ABC. With this change we would be able to open up the market for sponsored parties and tastings to a much wider base.

Rum and Root Beer was an accidental creation of BayCon. I was invited in for a mandatory drink by and old acquaintance. He had Meyers Rum but no Coke. So I grabbed the closed thing I could find -- Henry Weinhard's Root Beer.

This proved to be the most fortuitous accident of my drinking life. Root Beer complements rum much more cleanly than Coke. It also works well with spiced rum.

Mike has been present for many expirements with the Rum and Root Beer. We've varied both ingredients up and down the scale. Rums include Captain Morgan, Captain Morgan Tatoo, Captain Morgan Silver, Whalers, and Sailor Jerry. Root beers have included Weinhard's, IBC, Jones, Hansen's, Mug, A&W, and the favorite, Virgil's.

Virgil's and Captain Morgan Tattoo has been cited as the best combination.

Ratios vary, but with a sweet rum 2 parts Root Beer to 1 part rum works. Add more root beer as your taste suits.

Once again into the breech of Rum based cocktails! Whiskey is the drink of choice here, but we're gearing up for Baycon '08 and having some fun with Captain Morgan Tattoo and Bulleit Bourbon.

So here is another pirate creation for use with dark rum and extreme caution. We were going to call this the "Will Turner" but that innuendo is too direct. My will was turned and we changed the name to Bootstrap.

Good sweet rums are wonderful for mixing with sodas. The right spiced rum brings a whole new lampshade to any soda party. With Bootstrap it is Cream Soda. This is one of the more successful experiments in the vein of the Black Pearl.

Feel free to push the boundaries with the ingredients, I don't think you can go wrong.

• 1oz (3cl) Captain Morgan Tattoo
• 5oz (15cl) IBC Cream Soda

Serve chilled over ice in an 8oz highball glass and garnish with a straw.

Last weekend the WhiskyBros were faced with the difficult and dirty task of attending the Whiskies of the World expo in San Francisco. To make matters worse Mark was working the Johnnie Walker table which left me alone, in a room full of whiskey. As you can imagine, this put me in a quite an onerous situation.

 I managed.

While we will certainly write more about the event, the whisky, and the brilliant seminars the day before, I wanted to spend a minute on a new friend. High West Rendezvous Rye is a real treat, and while  Ryes tend not to be my prefered dram, I've said before and will say again that good whiskey is good whiskey, whatever it is.

 High West is a new micro-distillery started by a Californian named David Perkins, in Utah (of all places). Take whatever time (or drinks) you need to stifle your disbelief, that's where it is, and apparently, it's not a big deal to the locals. Even if it is funny.

I'm so happy St' Patrick's day is here again. The one day a year I can convince a large number of my coworkers to join me in some good Irish cheer. Every year I celebrate at the office by making a large pot of coffee, bringing in some whipping (or whipped) cream and a bottle of Irish Whiskey. I have a feeling that Guinness might make an appearance as well.

This year, in honor of Bushmills 400th anniversary, I wll be making them with Bushmills Original Irish Whiskey. I was considering going with Bushmills Black Bush or Bushmills Malt 10 but settled on the Bushmills Original for economic reasons.Not the least of which is that I can get a full liter of Original for less than a 750ml of the other two. Also just to sweeten the deal a little bit more, I'll bring in the Carolan's Irish Cream. I normally stock Bailey's Irish Cream but I'm out at the moment and the Carolan's was a very good deal at Christmas.

Bushmills has given me a couple dozen Black Bush / 400th Anniversary key chains to give to you my lucky readers. I'll have a picture of them here tonight, they're quite nice.

This is part of the 400th anniversary celebration and a reminder to go vote for the Bushmills Twin city in America.

Use the form here to send me your mailing address and I will get it out to you right away. I only ask that you pay the shipping. ($1.50 US)

Use the paypal button for US delivery:

UPDATE: I've decided to catch up with the rest of the world and start using a 100 point scale. We probably will never rate anything below 30 points (because we're not planning on rating anything that doubles as an industrial floor cleaner) but the conversions to the old ratings will be easy enough.

• Bushmills Original - 50
• Jameson Original - 50
• Crown Royal - 50
• Crown Royal Special Reserve - 55
• Midleton 2007 - 85
• Bushmills 21 - 87

I think this works, considering I also placed Bushmills 1608 at an 88

Original Story:

The other night, Mike, Travis and I got together to do some serious tasting. Before we began we had four new bottles to open. We tasted Bushmills 10, Bushmills 21, Midleton 2007, The Balvenie Doublewood, and Scapa 14.

This is hard work. There are so many great flavors there to try and quantify, codify and categorize them is very difficult. But that is what we do and we try to do it well.

Boy, Bushmills is very busy this year. In addition to the release of Bushmills 1608, they're doing a Twin Cities poll with a drawing for a trip to Ireland:

One of my idle daydreams is to take possession of and restart a silent distillery. The two news stories here and here point to good news for the Scotch industry but bad news for me and my idle daydreams.

Soaring demand for Scotch whisky around the world has prompted another major distiller to announce expansion plans, this time on Speyside.

Chivas Brothers yesterday said it was reopening its mothballed Braeval Distillery and extending its Glenlivet production plant.

Diageo is also adding capacity like crazy:

Work started recently on the £40million plant at Roseisle in Moray - part of a total £100million investment in whisky by Diageo.

as is everyone else in the industry: