Billy's Booze Blog

Since my first forays into more interesting drinks I’ve been keeping an eye out for potato vodka. Partly due to its increasingly rare nature, partly due to the mention of potato based spirits in Robert Rankin’s books and partly due to my being intrigued by the concept of potato based booze. It’s not a big [...]

A beer that I didn’t expect, this one, appearing in my Christmas order from Brewdog as a replacement for one of the beers that they’d run out of. It’s a brew that was put together during a visit to Brewdog HQ from Greg Koch, Steve Wagner and Mitch Steele of the Stone Brewing Company (see [...]

Another month, another interesting tasting at The Whisky Exchange. The main difference this time is that I was actually able to attend rather than gallivanting around in places that weren’t the deepest depths of Vinopolis (which seems to get bigger every time I visit). This month it was the turn of Aberlour, with the tasting [...]

It’s a busy time of year for a man with a booze related mission, such as myself. All of a sudden tastings and shows are appearing from the woodwork, and last Saturday allowed me to combine both of those into one event – Whisky Lounge London. My tasting notes from the show floor are fairly [...]

Old Malt Cask 15 year old Bladnoch – A baby single cask bottle that I grabbed from The Vintage House a while back. The nose has white wine, a light savouriness and a hint of charcoal. The taste is sweet to start but quickly fades to lightly coloured wood, sawdust and a dry slightly fruity [...]

It surprises me how many random booze related events happen around London every day. Little by little I’m finding where some of them are (and am writing a website that will hopefully have information about them, not that I’ve actually started yet) and this was another that fell into my lap – a tasting of [...]

Some more of what I done been drinking: Balvenie 12 Years Doublewood – a whisky grabbed as a chaser round the corner from the Sci-Fi-London film festival after a day of packing bags and herding punters. It had a grassy, olive oily nose with hints of sugary spice and a touch of wood. To taste [...]

Yet again I have been struck by the urge to inflict my sarchastic voice and workings of my shaky hands upon you, the lovely people who are reading my excuses for drinking things. After my recent gin related experiments I ended up (due to a rubbish measuring jug) with about 3 measures of gin left [...]

Innis and Gunn are a company that I mainly associate with blame. They were the first people to bring out a whisky barrel aged beer (that I am aware of) and since that initial release maturing beer in whisky barrels has become a bit of a fad. Now, that’s not blame in a bad way [...]

Outside of drinking interesting booze I’m also rather interested in making it. However, lacking both license and equipment to distill and the patience to brew at home I’m currently sticking with the joys of flavouring spirits. I’ve done a few vodka based experiments (with the liquorice vodka being a repeated success which never lasts very [...]