Preferred Whiskey/Whisky Proof?

[Flatfish]

I don't like whiskey. Far too strong for me and I don't like the taste.

Lemonade improves it. Lemonade improves every alcoholic drink in my opinion.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Wild Turkey 101 on budget. WT Rare Breed is a good cask strength. Any others probably Old Forrester 100. So definitely 90-116 proof

No, WT 101 is terrible. WT in general is terrible. Everyone stop drinking it. I've heard rumors that the basic 101 line may become allocated, could you imagine? That undrinkable swill becoming allocated? Hilarious. STop buying it and making the demand outweigh the supply.

Seriously though, stop buying my WT101. All you trend following, bandwagon jumping, bourbon noobs have already ruined Elijah Craig, turned average bottles like Henry McKenna & Eagle Rare (or ANY BT for that matter) into unobtainium, and created an outrageous, overall price increase!!! But on the bright side the annoying bourbon boom forced Jack Daniels to start putting out actually great whiskey, like the BiB and the Single Barrels, especially the SB Barrel proof.

Oh yeah, don't buy that either, stay away, leave it alone!

 

[Briar Lee]

It's the same thing as buying juice concentrate vs. buying bottled juice, the more concentrated it is the cheaper it is to distribute the product.
Whiskey "marketing" doesn't follow the laws of economy of scale, but if everything were shipped cask strength (e.g. it could be written into law to make it mandatory), then everyone would just be saving money.

A little history I remember from my distillery tour.

The methods used to produce whiskey have always meant the product going in the barrel was at or above half alcohol.

To prove that, the government tax inspectors or the customer if it was bootleg, struck a match to a sample at first, and later there was a soaked gunpowder test. A hundred proof meant it would light. In more modern times science replaced fire for determining proof.

But whether liquor was poisonous was always the Provence of the distiller. Just a good sized sip of bad liquor makes a man go blind and can kill.

Many years ago my father and his friends were discussing the last moonshine still in the neighborhood which had operated during and for years after prohibition, in a wooded area known as Spout Spring Hollow. It was in the early sixties, and I might have been five. Old enough to trust not to tell my mother.

My father and his friends were all teetotalers, and devout Christians.

But they took me to view the remnants of that old still in the woods, and told me that their fathers, had told the bootlegger that his life depended on not one drop of his product poisoning the town drunk, who was to always sample it first.

A good Christian boy had died of bad moonshine in 1937 over in Hickory County, and that was never to happen around the Bug Tussle community.

Those old time Christians would never have called the law.

But there’d have been a man went missing in Spout Spring Hollow that must have had an accident back in there, you know?

By the way, the old town drunk that sampled the moonshine lived to be almost a hundred.

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

I would love it if you were right. I’m gonna stop there.

For the Bourbon industry all they'd have to do is take a vote on it with the existing regulators, the level of standardization they have is really admirable.

 

[gubbyduffer]

Whisky, Scotch, bourbon, Irish, Canadian whisky, Japanese whisky... these terms were very confusing for me at first. For decades I never even paid any attention to these. But, I was surprised that bourbon and scotch were the only two with restrictions and regulations. Anything can be a whisky, and anything can be added. Hell there are cinnamon and honey whiskies.
I don't recommend Japanese whisky. I tried four of them. They were trying to recreate a scotch, but developed a throat napalm. I guess they like their burn in Japan.
I like Irish whiskies, or the few I've tried. But, like the term whisky here in the US, any old shit can be added to it before bottling.

Regulations can be confusing. For flavoured whisk(e)y to be called that it must still be at least 40% abv or 80 proof otherwise it becomes a liquer or spirit based drink.
Japanese rules are changing I think next year. Currently the drink doesn't need to be distilled there. Japan has struggles for stock so a lot was imported to Japan, especially scotch, and as long as it was matured there for a certain length of time it could be called Japanese whisky. The rules I think are changing next year.
I have not had Japanese whisky for many years, however from what I hear the quality has gone through a really bad patch but is getting better again despite still being expensive for what it is.
Scotch rules can get confusing even for me. There are rules for single malts, blended malts, blends and grain whisky, depending on ingredients and method of production.