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A Single Malt Christmas Result
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I personally ate far too much and washed it all down with some fantastic whiskies.
For anyone who attempted to make a Christmas pudding, I thought I better post some photographic evidence of my own Macallan filled pudding.
Cheers,
Craig
In my glass: Glenrothes 1985 -
Recipe: A Single Malt Christmas
I must admit that I hate thinking about Christmas before December, but there is one thing that must be contemplated at least a month in advance. The famous Whisky Christmas Pudding!
A couple of years ago I decided to make my first ever Christmas pudding. A traditionally boozy dessert full of rich dried fruits and oodles of spices, not to mention a bottle of whisky. It is a great triumph to get one of these right. This recipe is taken from the BBC food website, but of course we have substituted the brandy for some lovely Single Malt Scotch Whisky.
The trick is to make this as early as possible and feed it with some amazing Whisk(e)y to ensure an incredibly rich flavour come the festive season! This year I’m going with a stunning bottle (that’s right, the whole bottle will be in the pudding by Christmas Day) of sherry casked 10 year old Macallan.
Here’s what you will need:
Ingredients:- 225g/8oz golden caster sugar
- 225g/8oz vegetarian suet
- 340g/12oz sultanas
- 340g/12oz raisins
- 225g/8oz currants
- 110g/4oz candied peel, chopped
- 110g/4oz plain flour
- 110g/4oz fresh white breadcrumbs
- 55g/2oz flaked almonds
- 1 lemon, zest only
- 5 eggs, beaten
- 1 level tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 level tsp mixed spice
- 5g/1 level tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- pinch of salt
- 150ml/5fl oz Single Malt Whisky (The Macallan 10 year old)
Method:1. Lightly grease 4x600ml/1 pint or 2x1.2 litre/2 pint pudding basins.2. Mix together all dry ingredients
3. Stir in the eggs and Whisky and mix well
4. Spoon the mix into basins. Put a circle of baking parchment and foil over the top of each basin and tie securely with string. Make a string handle from one side of the basin to the other so it is easier to pick the basin out of the pan after cooking
5. Put the basins in a large steamer of boiling water and cover with a lid. Boil for 5-6 hours, topping the boiling water up from time to time, if necessary. If you do not have a steamer, put the basins in a large pan on inverted saucers on the base. Pour in boiling water to come a third of the way up the sides of the pudding bowls. Cover and steam as before.6. Cool. Change the baking parchment and foil covers for fresh ones and tie up as before. Store in a cool cupboard until Christmas Day. Be sure to add more Macallan every couple of days so the pudding soaks up all of the Whisky’s flavour and aroma.7. To serve, steam for 2 hours and serve with brandy butter, rum sauce, cream or homemade custard.I’d show you the steamed product, however it’s still steaming away!Let me know how you get on!Cheers,CraigIn my glass: Courvoisier Exclusif as I had no use for it in the recipe! -
Recipe: Lagavulin Whisky Torte
Good morning Whisky Adventurers,
I am about to embark on a wee Whisky Adventure to Pitlochry today, climbing hills, visiting Edradour and checking out the Enchanted Forest.
While I’m out exploring, I thought I’d post a recipe for my famous Whisky Torte.
This is an adaptation from a recipe I saw in a charity recipe book a few years back. It is incredibly versatile and can be made with a number of different drams, as well as chocolates. My favourite combination is Lagavulin DE and 85% cocoa chocolate. A peaty finish to a rich chocolatey monster! Here’s how you do it:
Ingredients:
250g chocolate digestives
90g butter
340g dark chocolate
500ml double cream
25-50ml Whisky (you decide)
Method:
Method:
1. Whizz biscuits in blender
2. Melt butter in saucepan and add to biscuits and mix. Spread the mixture evenly in a tin (tart or pie pan) with a removable base and put in fridge to chill.
3. Melt the chocolate in a microwave, checking and stirring 30 seconds at a time to make sure that it does not burn.
4. Whip the cream until it makes soft peaks
5. Warm the whisky in a microwave for 30 seconds - make sure it is warm and not hot. Add the chocolate mixture, stir and fold it may look like it will separate but keep mixing.
6. Add the Whisky and chocolate mixture to the whipped cream and fold.
7 Spread the mixture evenly on top of the biscuit base and leave in fridge for approx 6 hours
Other possibilities:
Originally the recipe called for Baileys and Irish Whiskey with White Chocolate, lovely.
Macallan Fine Oak is great with White Chocolate, light and delicate with a zing at the end.
Highland Park is amazing with Orange Chocolate, sink into this cake.
Aberlour with Dark Chocolate is like the Shimmy and the Shake, a perfect marriage!
The possibilities are endless.
Let me know how you get on.
Cheers,
Craig
In my hipflask: Scotch Malt Whisky Society 4.155 a true hillwalking dram! -
Craftsmen Series: 1. Luxury Leather Embosser or How High Class Fashion Got Me Thinking About Whisky
Yesterday I was out of bed at 6am, to embark on a secret mission. My remit was to turn up at one of the largest designer fashion brand’s Glasgow store and hand out complimentary drinks and chocolates. A rather unusual task, I must confess, but I wanted to see how these luxury brands work from the inside; the people that they attract and the actual (undoubted) quality of their products. There is no better way to do this, than by offering your services for a day and becoming part of the furniture.
It’s an interesting world, the world of fashion. It’s not one that I pay particular attention to, unless I’m in professional work mode, and even then, I don’t care so much about the label of my attire, I care about the comfort; the style; the look and the price. Therefore, the idea that people can wholly commit to one particular fashion brand, and we’re talking about a massively exclusive Italian designer here, was an idea that was completely foreign to me. Or so I thought…What I witnessed was a huge array of different customers with different needs.There were the older demographic who had been buying from this house for decades. They loved the quality and the feel of the product but never bought anything with the trademarked logo emblazoned all over it. You could tell where it was from, but only of you knew the more subtle trademarks of the brand. (Whisky drinkers who drink a product, because of the flavour)There were also the younger demographic who had clearly made a success of their lives, and come into some disposable income. These folks had also recognized the quality of the product but made sure that the trademark logo was emblazoned all over their product. If the brand had 3 trademark indicators, these people had at least 2 of the three tastefully displayed. (Whisky drinkers who like the flavour, but would order the older expression regardless of their opinions on taste between the two choices)I also witnessed gentlemen in fashionable sportswear accessorized with designer baseball caps (no longer the tartan caps, this other designer has stolen the market here); designer trainers; designer scarves and designer belts with the biggest logos they could possibly fit on them. These gentlemen paid from designer wallets and almost inevitably they paid cash. (Drinkers who bought the oldest available and consumed it whether they liked it or not)The day was indeed an interesting anthropological investigation, but the monotony of standing with a tray loaded with champagne for 8 hours, despite the variety in customers and their needs should have killed me with boredom, yet it did not. It nearly put my back out though!The single reason I did not collapse, or fall asleep or storm out, was because of craftsmanship.The reason I was in the store, was to serve people whilst their leather products were personalised by the designer’s embosser. Leonardo had been flown out from the factory in Florence to emboss products by hand, right in front of the client. An incredible craft to watch.Armed with a heated wand, printing blocks, gold or silver leaf and an extremely steady hand, Leonardo would take thousands of pounds worth of handbag and emboss up to 5 characters into the leather to create a one of a kind fashion accessory.
It may have been the scents of leather, chocolate and tobacco (Leonardo smoked rollies), or the sheer quality of the live craftsmanship, but this experience got me thinking about whisky. A couple of brands in particular sprung to mind, but mainly it got me thinking about the people in the industry. The true craftsmen who make our national drink. And therefore I have decided to start a series of blogs commemorating these craftsmen and hopefully bringing to life the jobs that they so tirelessly do to ensure the quality of the product we are lucky enough to consume. The first of these blogs is the one you are currently reading, and I am going to have to dedicate it to Leonardo and the craftspeople in the fashion industry.I suppose the thing that hit me most about Leonardo’s line of work, was the sheer difficulty of some of the requests he gets. He had to emboss everything from the inside of bags, to the outside of wallets and the underside of belts. Each product was worth a minimum £200, so any mistake is extremely costly.He had to do everything by hand. Setting up the printer, ensuring every letter was the right way up and facing backwards, even making sure the print was parallel or perpendicular to the edges of the accessory. This is easy on a wallet, but when your client wants an embossing in the middle of their iPad cover, things get more difficult.He also had at least 10 different leathers he would have to work with, each one throwing up a different challenge. For example, he could not emboss cracked pattern leather, unless it was with leaf, as the tan on tan would not show up well in the cracks.
The tools he had meant that there was a 5 letter maximum for each embossing, so when somebody decided that initials were too subtle, and they wanted to write their whole name, Leonardo would have to line up the second embossing exactly to ensure a smooth transition from one printing to the next.Every single embossing was practised on some leather scraps he had with him to mimic the end result and show the client what it would look like, but even then, the final print would be a high pressure, one chance job where he could be handling thousands of pounds worth of merchandise and still he approached it with a steady hand.It really was incredible to watch. However, the unseen, unsung part of Leonardo’s character (and this goes for most of the craftsmen I have met) is in his love and pride in his work. No matter what he was asked to emboss (one gentleman wanted his nickname embossed in his wallet, the same nickname he had on the back of his football shirt) Leonardo would approach the job with respect and professionalism. He handled every article with care, and gave a balanced and informed opinion on where something should be embossed for maximum effect, as well as relishing the challenges of embossing new areas of accessories he had never even thought of. Challenges that, once again could have cost thousands of pounds.It was a brilliant day, delivering all of the data I needed on a professional level with the added bonus of seeing a true master at work. I will never forget when a woman in her eighties pulled out a vintage bag from the designer and handed it to Leonardo. His eyes lit up. This was the oldest piece he had ever been asked to work on, and he spent at least 20 minutes analysing it and explaining the product to the client before happily and tastefully printing her initials on the inside of the strap.
Class.
Cheers,
Craig
In my glass: The Macallan 25 year old, it had to be didn’t it? -
Definition: Wort
Every now and again I come across a new snippet of information that gets me excited. It’s normally to do with whisky production and it’s normally at the extreme end of the geek spectrum. Occasionally it’s even worth sharing… I think. Here is your first insight into the info I think is worth sharing… (comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome.)On a recent visit to The Macallan Distillery, the brilliant tour guide shed some light on something most Whisky geeks have pondered about at one time or another: Where on earth does the word ‘wort’ come from?
Dictionary.com had offered this up:
wort
nounthe unfermented or fermenting infusion of malt that after fermentation becomes beer or mash.
origin:
before 1000; Middle English; Old English wyrt; cognate withGerman Würze spice;The definition definitely fits, and until my trip to Easter Elchies, I was in no place to question it. It was an unusual term passed down from generation to generation, the origins and meaning of which became more convoluted and irrelevant as techniques changed and brewing loaned itself and its techniques to distillation.However, as we reached the Mash House at The Macallan, our tour guide, Alistair sprung it on me. Completely out of the blue. No one saw it coming (or nobody else cared)…wort
nounthe unfermented or fermenting infusion of malt that after fermentation becomes beer or mash.
origin:
worts or wort is of course short for ‘worthy liquids’.
Only the first two waters are good enough (or worthy enough) to go on to ferment and eventually become our Scotch Whisky. It was a simplification or shortening of a term used by the craftsmen making Scotch Whisky! Why hadn’t anyone offered up this information before?
Genius.
(I must admit, that this is still the only place I have heard this definition, and dictionary.com may still be accurate, but I hope Alistair was correct, it just makes so much sense…)
If any lexicographers out there have insights to back up or dispel this theory, I’d love to hear them.
Cheers,
Craig -
Tasting Technique: Let me introduce you to some Mexican Genius…
One of the most gruelling parts of working in the Whisky Industry has to be exploring new serves and experiencing how other cultures enjoy our amber nectar. It’s a tough job, but one I will happily undertake on your behalf. (You can thank me later.)This is a practice that has two sides. There are the cultural drinking techniques which can be very unscientific, unsophisticated and a barrel load of laughs. (If you’ve ever been in an important meeting with a Chinese client, and the word Ganbei is uttered, you’ll know what I mean.) Each and every one of these techniques heighten the enjoyment of our national drink in some way, shape or form and therefore I am extremely happy to embrace them, even if it is something I am only willing to do once.SIDETRACK: I should point out here that I am not a traditionalist. I do agree that a spot of water in a whisky makes a huge difference, and I understand the science behind it, this is the way I drink most of my whisky. I also believe (tin hat on here) that ice can be a huge contributor to different flavours in a dram and therefore deserves it’s place as an additive to my glass on occasion (this is a practice I would like to explain in a later blog after a practical experiment or two.)I am also a huge fan of any other form of whisky drinking that heightens the profile of our national drink and country as a whole. If you like ginger beer in your whisky, great! Pick the right dram and you have a mighty fine, if simplistic highball cocktail. Now take that principle and extrapolate it to more complicated drinks and you have a whole new world of flavour. If you’re screaming at the screen after reading this last paragraph, (something along the lines of “You should NEVER mix single malts) then my advice is to go to the local cocktail bar, order a Laphroaig sour (with just a drop of pernod if you like anise) and tell me I was wrong, if you can put the drink down that is!
That’s a £15,000 bottle of deliciousness being enhanced there! (Macallan Lalique II is worth every penny.) Finally if you like a single malt and Coke, all I can say is it will be the best damn Coke you will ever taste. Don’t change your drinking habits or lose enjoyment just because someone with a kilt and a beard tells you you’re wrong. Politely tell them that they can tell you how to drink YOUR whisky when they are willing to BUY your whisky for you.Then there are the ‘nosing’ and ‘tasting’ techniques I have learned from fellow spirits professionals. Ways of heightening the sensory experience and allowing us to get at the elements in the glass more easily. It is one of these techniques I would like to share with you today.Back in the Spring of 2008 I was lucky enough to be invited down to Mexico to make tequila. A massive privilege and an insight into a category that we in the UK have very little idea about. This thankfully is changing as we discover that a good sipping tequila can give many good single malts a run for their money.
While there I eagerly embraced my role as Jimador for the day, as well as taking the chance to shadow the workers and see exactly how the fine spirit of Mexico is crafted. I was blown away by their way of doing things. Most small tequila manufacturers have one remit, and one remit only: They have to make tequila that is as good as, if not better than the generation before them. (a remit that once ruled in Scotland but has sadly been lost over decades of business growth and the search for consistency)A truly refreshing way of working was also backed up by a truly incredible way of nosing. A way that I teach to every seminar I host these days, and it still catches people off-guard. Why has no one heard of this? Why hasn’t our industry embraced this? Why did I have to go all the way to Mexico to learn such an important nugget of information?Here it is:You should always smell the top, the middle and bottom of the mouth of your whisky glass.That’s it.Each aroma has a different weight, and therefore three distinctive groups of aroma form and escape at different levels. Here’s an example using an Islay whisky:
Hope this helps, and allows you to get past the more obvious notes in a glass of whisky.
Let me know how you get on,
Cheers,
Craig -
Archive: Indian Adventure Day 15 23/10/09
Day 15
I have one mission today… Qutub Minar.
This intricate tower has evaded me twice so far, and I want to see what all the fuss is about. After breakfast and the offer of a massive packed lunch (Yes Archit, it is your mother’s job to make sure everyone is fed, my mum is the same, as is my Gran) we head to the ancient folly.
I pay my 20 times more than anyone local, and head in. At the gate a thought passes through my mind: “What if it’s just a big tower that you can’t go up and nothing else, I could have seen it for free…”
I could not have been more wrong. Towers and mosques and tombs and colleges adorn a huge site.
This place is MAGICAL!
Here are some highlights…
Map
The Qutub Minar
After Qutub Minar, I meet Siddharth. Mission Drink Indian Whisky is underway…
We head to the Turquoise Cottage, a Thai food, Irish pub with a 24hr Happy hour. For those avid readers with an interest in such things, Indian Whisky is not Whsiky as we know it. It is a molasses based drink, with alot of E150. I approach with an open mind…
1st up: Royal Challenge
The nose is solventy, like vodka. Underneath is a bitter burnt aroma, but the overwhelming nose and taste is clean and pure, not much flavour. I suspect this has seen very little oak, but has a BROWN colour. Not convinced. Molasses and liquorice lurk in the aftertaste. Water doesn’t help. Ice on the otherhand kills the off notes, and leaves no flavour in the glass.
2nd glass: Blender’s Pride
Siddharth’s favourite. It has more aroma than the first, definitely a little bit older, but colour and sweetness are identical to the 1st one. Ice helps, but I would say this is palatable with a slosh of water.
3rd glass: Macallan 12
Sorry, but compare with what you know. We have a winner.
After beers and whiskies, we head to a bakery where I buy a plethora of muffins; none of which can destroy the immaculate aftertaste of that Macallan…. -
Not Another Whisky Blog…
Welcome to the world of WhiskyCraig’s Whisky Adventures.
Over the past 8 years or so, I have been extremely lucky and privileged to work in the Scotch Whisky Industry. Starting out as a humble tour guide at Glenkinchie Distillery, I quickly grasped a sense of value, worth and most importantly ownership of my national drink. It was here that I learned about the most important aspect of Scotch Whisky: The Drinker.
The Drinker: something I have been since Day 1 at Glenkinchie, a title I hold dearest in my heart. Without the amber nectar, I would no doubt be stuck in an office, bored. Instead I am travelling and drinking, sharing my stories with anyone who will listen. My most significant Adventures to date have come courtesy of my other roles, namely The Macallan and Highland Park Brand Ambassador in Western Canada and Scotch Malt Whisky Society bartender and Ambassador. These Adventures will feature on this site as a target. A target of fun times to beat and a reminder of past experiences and hopefully as inspiration for things to come!
It was and still is my job to paint the picture of the skills and magic that go into every bottle of Scotch Whisky. This is a job that I have signed up to for life. It is also my job to make sure that every drop produced by the highly skilled workforce that our industry has gets a fair crack of the whip. That is why I will try to avoid posting opinions here. What you will find are brand stories, drinking tips, photographs and any events that I think the Whisky Adventurer may find interesting.
To life as we make it!
Craig
In my glass: Laphroaig Triple Wood
Here you will find all interesting things I come across in the world of Scotch Whisky as I travel and spread the wit and wisdom over a dram or two...
