Cheap Whiskies

Today me and a couple of my friends had the final tasting in the "30 Euro project". During the last year I have bought several bottles of whisky that are below 30 euros, to prove that there is quality there as well.

We have done 2 tastings to decide what the itinerary was going to be for the finals. During the 2 'semi finals' the favorites were chosen based on the quality, the taste and the nose of it. Of course, this was all very subjective and based upon our opinions. My closest whisky friends tend to like the Islay whiskies the most, but another dude in my "circle of trust" is more the Speyside kind of guy, which makes it just a bit more interesting.

The whiskies we tasted today were:

• Auchentoshan 10
• Tobermory 10
• The Arran 10
• Scapa 14
• Laphroaig 10
• Smokehead

I have some other's but they didn't make it, or it was just too much of the same type. A 10 year old Bruichladdich from Auld Edinburgh didn't make it because we wanted to satisfy the non-Islay drinkers as well.

The reports were as follows. (warning. notes below are written by a novice whisky taster, with little experience. I could be way off :-) )

Auchentoshan 10:

Very smooth, but tasty enough to be noticed. The triple distilling makes it a bit softer as a regular Scotch but nice nonetheless.

The nose and taste are both very similar, quite floral and fruity. The mouth of the whisky consists of a bit of barley and more fresh meadows.

A short but nice finish. Nothing in your throat, but it lingers a bit in the mouth. Do not drink this one after another whisky, because the taste is a bit fragile.

Tobermory 10:

A hard to judge whisky. Lower highlands, or almost high lowlands in the taste. A marketing guy would call it well rounded, but that would just to be to conceal the lack of expression in any direction. Nose and finish don't live up to expectations of a harbour whisky.

Fun fact: I had this a year ago, when I started tasting Scotch, and I thought Tobermory would be a long time favorite...

The Arran 10:

The next step. An Island whisky (non-Islay, of course). I bought this because I was curious how a non-finished Arran would taste. It is very fresh on the nose, almost like walking in a field during a spring rain. The taste lives up to the expectations. It is like having fresh fruits distilled. Apples, grapes and stuff like that. A bit floral as well. Almost no finish though...

Scapa 14:

Up north, to Orkney. The nose is somewhere in between anise and nuts. Still very fresh. The taste goes more towards a bit of oily anise. I recognize the taste of an Island whisky by the little bit of salty freshness. A longish finish that doesn't reveal any new tastes.

Note: I bought a litre of this, because that was the only way of getting it to fit in the 30 euro project per 0.7 litre. The normal bottle is a little bit over 30 bucks.

Laphroaig 10:

LEATHER. This is a very smooth whisky compared to the more popular Quarter Cask, but still... It smells like waxed saddles and chesterfield chairs. The smoke is not as pronounced as I expected it to be, but still very much there. A bit of wood on the tongue? Not that long a finish, but that could be because it was the fifth of the afternoon.

Fun fact: the difference in price between 0.7 and 1 litre was just € 2,50...

Smokehead:

I recon this is an Ardbeg like my liquor supplier told me, but some people say it is an Caol Ila.

This has lots of leather and peat smoke in there (as the name implies). The taste is quite salty, but I think there is a small hint of plastic in there as well. The finish is a bit longer than the Laphroaig's

Results:

In the end of the afternoon we decided to set up a top 3 and the results were not too surprising for me:

#1: Laphraoig 10

#2: Scapa 14

#3: Smokehead

The Laphroaig just beat the Scapa by one point, and that is because that is a very very good whisky as well.

In total I bought 12 bottles of whisky which were priced below 30 euros per 0.7 litres. Some remarks might be handy:

- Glen Grant 10 is considered very good for making sauces and to be used in cooking only. All of my friends that tasted it thought this was the worst whisky of the 12 ones tasted.

- Glenfiddich 12 is a bit of a soft whisky. I still have and almost full bottle, and that will not change for some time...

- Bunnahabhain 12: very very good and quite surprising for an Islay whisky. This is one that didn't make it because we didn't want more than 2 Islay whiskies in the final tasting. One that might have been a top 3 whisky if we tasted it today.

- Battlehill (Miltonduff 7): quite nice, but not one that you will remember next year. The price/quality comparison is very good though.

- Old Pulteny 12: Lost to Scapa. Quite a good one, but I would recommend Scapa over this one.

- Auld Edinburgh Islay (Bruichladdich 10): Nice, peat, smoke and still a bit fruity in the distance. A good one that didn't make it for the same reason as the Bunna. This one wouldn't have made it to top 3 though.

Will I do such a project again: No. I liked some of the whiskies, but in the end there are about 4 bottles that I would not have bought otherwise. There is some good quality in the cheaper whiskies, but as soon as you compare it to one of € 50, you know where those extra 20 bucks went. It cost me a bit too much cash, and in several cases it did not pay off.

Right...

Well, that is a change. Instead of working my ass off, I have several weeks to do whatever I like. It takes more time to get used to that than I expected. The weekend was pretty regular, and the two days of blackout at work gave me some time to slowdown.

I have found out that I need some target every day. Since Monday, I have woken up without anything to accomplish in the day, which makes me very lazy.

Luckily, I can spend my time building a site for myself and a friend of mine. We are planning to build a small whisky community on which we can post our tastings and remarks on whisky in general. This means I have another project to spend my time on.
I am not working full time on this, since it looks way too much like my job and I am having a vacation.

Thusfar I have spent my 3 days off watching movies, reading, a little bit of programming and yesterday I went to a pub to see some live music (which was quite nice actually).

So, when all is said and done, I am not really occupied with anything and I don't want to be. As long as I can say what I have done that day, without having forgotten it already, I have had a good day.

Next week, Anneke has a couple of days off as well, so those will most likely contain much more sleeping, and some preparations for our wedding as well. I have set a target in that; I want to have chosen a place to have our party in the evening and I would love to have made a deal for that as well. That would mean we could check a very big thing off our list.

Blackout

Wednesday night the Dutch aiforce had an exercise near my work. They were flying their appaches in the dark, and low to the ground. With all the gear and high tech stuff stacked in an apache, it would be hard to have accidents, but they managed to do exactly that.

The helicopter flew through some powerlines that were hanging over the river Waal. This caused an enormous blackout in the adjacent areas. There are 50.000 houses without electricity since Wednesday evening, which also means no heating.

The power company is putting up an emergency solution, but expectations are that power will come back on this afternoon. Almost 48 hours of darkness.

Lectric has been without power since Wednesday too, which means it is incredibly hard to work now. All files that I was working on are on a computer at Lectric, and my laptop is mostly used to connect with that.

Yesterday I was able to do some off line work by typing several documents. Today I don't have a clue what to do. Not too bad, since I only had half a day today anyway, but I can imagine that it sucks for my boss :)

Almost Christmas

Not that I care too much for Christmas, but since I haven't really been on a proper holiday this year, I had some days off left. So, after this week, I won't have to work until January 2nd. Nice.

Anneke has to go to work next week, so I have a full week on my own. Expect a lot of sleeping in, watching movies, playing some computer games, reading books, and all kinds of other stuff I wanted to do before.

I have started playing World in Conflict last week, a nice new computer game. I expect ot finish playing that game somewhere next week.

Also, I have started downloading all seasons of Alias, since a friend of mine recommended it and I have heard some positive rumours before. It's just that 29 DVDs aren't downloaded that quickly.

I have planned to build a proper website, again. I have been planning to do that for about 2 years now, but so far nothing happened. I might just do that next week.

Of course, I wouldn't be me if I had a vacation of 2 weeks in which I didn't plan to do things that will take two months...

Last weekend I had the second part of my 30 euro project tastings. We had two tastings since I stopped buying more bottles, just to determine which ones we were going to drink as a closing act. The list has been completed now, and we are quite satisfied with the quality of the whiskies you can buy for 30 euros per bottle.

While drinking we decided we hadn't been playing board games for quite a long time and started playing RoboRally. Great game, I can recommend it to everyone, especially to all IT dudes!

More on the whisky project coming soon.

Live music

Last weekend was a themed weekend. The theme was Live Music. After a while of not seeing any bands (almost a month) it was time for an infusion of good tunes.

I went to see two bands this weekend. Saturday I went to see Rodrigo y Gabriela, a Mexican duo that plays very good acoustic music. With only two guitars they know how to build a good party and still play metal.

Sunday I went to see De Kift, a Dutch band which plays "brass band folk punk" or whatever you like to call it.

Rodrigo y Gabriela played in Amsterdam, in the Melkweg. I like the Melkweg as a place to see live music. It is not too big and the atmosphere is always very good. The guitarists played very good tunes, with some covers and some of their own songs. The most recognisable songs they played were "One" by Metallica and "Wish you were here" by Pink Floyd. Their own music is very good too, and when they started played their most popular song of the last album, everybody went wild.

The only bad thing of the show was that a lot of people had the idea that it had to be completely quiet and they kept on sh-ing everyone. The hissing sounds were far more annoying than the murmur in the background.

De Kift played in a local pub in Den Bosch. I expected it to be a bit more crowded, so I booked tickets, but when I got there it was not even half full. Shitty in a financial way for the pub, but the atmosphere was very nice. We had a couple of beers and made the band surprise a friend of mine. He didn't expect to like it very much, but was blown away. The music was very good and we really had a good time.

Looking for new collegues

The company I work at is looking for lots of new people. So, I try to help out by putting this post on my blog. Someone might actually read it...

We have the following list of vacancies:

Junior .net developer
Medior .net developer
Senior .net developer
Project manager
Account manager
Front-end developer (xHTML)

We also have lots of available internships!

So, if you are interested, you can leave a comment, or send an email to Hans van Leuken. We have an office in Zaltbommel (the Netherlands), and another one in Geleen (the Netherlands). We are working with a couple of collegues in Minsk, Belarus too.

The line of work we are in is mostly site construction and web development. We have built sites for some medium to large companies in the Netherlands.

For more information, you can always look at the site of The Lectric Group.