Billy's Booze Blog

After two years of doing blind tastings at the monthly Whisky Squad meetups I’ve become quite fond of the technique. It’s shown me a number of drams that I wouldn’t have usually touched and helped strip away a number of my whisky prejudices, both conscious and unconscious. I like to think that it’s made me [...]

How time flies. A mere two years ago I was an occasional drunk who sometimes wrote things up on his blog, who then bumped into Andy and Jason of WhiskySquad at a couple of booze events, leading to my attendance of almost every one of their sessions. These days I’m a professional drunk who still [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve been officially involved in a Twitter whisky tasting. I gatecrashed Steve Rush‘s last one, thanks to a few random minis of Cooley whiskey I had knocking around, but I’ve stayed away from them to let other people get involved – one of the things that makes a Twitter tasting [...]

I haven’t posted about any single drams I’ve tasted recently, as in general I seem to do ‘proper tastings’ in flights or just not get around to writing about them. However, every now and again something comes along that’s a little bit special and deserves some extra attention – one of those popped up on [...]

This week has been ‘hard’. By ‘hard’ I mean that my normal ‘work’ has been supplemented by even more events than usual, culminating in the 2-day fungasm (fungasm might be going too far, I will admit) that was Whisky Live London 2011. I was at there under the auspices of work and I have at [...]

Today is St Patrick’s day, a fact I know due to a) it being the day after my mate Adam‘s birthday (happy birthday Mr A) and b) Diageo having died their lake green. Again. In celebration of this holiday that I have no particular personal attachment to I have decided to live the stereotype to [...]

One of the things that people always said to me before I started working in the world of whisky was that everyone was friendly. Since I have started I’ve found that pretty much holds – the world of whisky is full of many lovely people. I met a bunch of them at Maltstock last year, [...]

Hello. I’m in Scotland, surrounded by snow and equipped with inadequate footwear, a combination of facts that should make post(s) later this week a beacon for schadenfreude tinged enjoyment. Anyways, as whisky distilleries treat weekends in February with appropriate level of contempt (they’re working but don’t open for tourists, as there are only four of [...]

January has now drawn to a close and with it came another Whisky Squad session. It’s hard work writing up two of these a month, it barely gives me any time to sit on my arse and obsessively watch The West Wing. Only two episodes watched this evening. And yes, this is two Squad posts [...]

With two Whisky Squad sessions per month and my current reduced rate of bloggage the site does seem to be turning into a Squad record site, which ain’t no bad thing (I love double negatives). However, #28 is a session that is close to my heart, as it was my first foray into leading a [...]