Time and Oak Test

Whiskey is _______. I'll let you fill in the blank. For me its an acquired tasted. Bourbon. Scotch. Sour Mash. Irish. Blended. Single Malt. They all have so many subtleties. I could write about them forever and never finish. Sometimes though, you want that 10 or 12 year old scotch but you only have the scratch for a bottle of Johnny Red. What to do? Well some fellows out in Portland decided to figure it out. Using science and their own taste buds they figured it out. You can check it it their Kickstarter project here.

So once they got their funding they setup and started producing thier "whiskey elements." Somewhere along the line I found their website and ordered the Multi-elements pack. 2 Maple or Signature elements, 2 Smoke and Oak, and 2 Wine cask elements. If you want you can order yours here

They came in today's mail and I just had to give them a try. I bought a bottle of Wild Turkey 81 proof and set the elements to work.

Then as I sat here listening to Jamey Johnson and, well "testing" the Wild Turkey "gobble, gobble," (I needed a good baseline to work off of...) I thought "What if I tried these elements in some gin?"

I keep a bottle of relatively inexpensive gin in the house... I do have the Tanqueray for martinis, but a good gin is no use in a gin n tonic. New Amsterdam is a relatively inexpensive gin however not cheap like Seagram's. It has a decent enough juniper flavor and some nice enough citrus flavors that it works with tonic.

In a couple of days I'll have an answer to my "What if..."

I'll keep you posted...