Last week I tried out three possible ways to improve the fairly simple character of the Deanston Virgin Oak. Two of the three showed enough promise to warrant a second look after letting them marry for a bit. Both the Deanfrog and the Dealish have been marrying in small 5cl bottles for 8 days, which should be long enough to allow the flavour and scent of the malts to meld into each other. I´ll go a bit deeper into why and how long of marrying in a future post, but read on below to discover that (at least in these these two cases) it is an essential part of blending.

So, you want to start blending whiskies (you do, really). Good on ya, mate. I suspect by now, however, reality is slowly sinking in and you’re realising that you have no idea where or how to start. Oh, of course you can just randomly put some whiskies together (the ‘blend-n-pray’), and while that can net surprising results at times, most of what you produce will be… not so interesting. A better way to go about it is to have some sort of plan. Decide beforehand what type of blend you want to end up with. You can opt for a single dominant taste: for instance a sherrybomb, a blend with […]

It’s time for the big friday post! (‘Wait, what? Is there such a thing? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention this?’ There is now. Why? Because I just invented it, that’s why.) Aaaaanyway, this friday it’s a three-in-one homeblend review. The style of blend is a recovery and the whisky I’ll be trying to improve is Deanston Virgin Oak. Now, this is not by any shot a bad whisky in the sense that it is undrinkable, it just a little simple for my taste: the finish in new oak casks has overpowered any other tastes, leaving the taster with an (unsurprisingly) oaky, vannilla-y taste with just faint hints of […]

There are a few reasons why you would want to blend your own whisky. I’ve come up with these categories as a guide: Enhancement This is adding just a touch of other whisky to a base whisky. The intent here is to subtly alter the character of the base whisky without meddling with the original taste too much. Recovery Sometimes you buy a bottle of whisky that turns out to be bad or bland. Recovery is adding other whiskies in an attempt to improve the characteristics up to the point that it either becomes drinkable (yay!) or even quite good (double yay!). Creation This is where master blenders for the […]