Blend your own whiskies

You can blend your own whisky and make it more enjoyable. I first heard this from Ralfy’s vlog (video at the end of this text). Ever since it’s been a great way to experiment and enhance the mediocre contents of my cabinet.

Do you have bad or mediocre whisky in your cabinet, that you’d like to make better?

Best example of making a bad/decent blended whisky a better one: Mansion House 3 year old blend is surprisingly a decent dram. It has some nice toffee notes in the otherwise harsh and watery palate. By adding cask strength, heavily peated whisky called Big Peat into my Mansion House, I got a replica of Highland Park 12 yrs. It only needed just about 1/4 of cask strength Big Peat to make it taste good. The smoke was added only with few drops.

In my experience, Mansion House 3yo blended whisky with drops of cask strength Big Peat, the 2012 Christmas Edition, felt like something from Highland Park

Few ground rules in blending whisky:

1. Strong, powerful whiskies (like peated ones for example) are better as “mixers”. You don’t have to pour too much and they dominate the palate much easier.
2. Try with small steps – adding too little is always better than too much. It’s easier to correct your blend, when it’s short of that stronger stuff. You don’t waste too much whisky to say the least.
3. Use an old empty bottle or whisky decanter for the marriage.

Here’s the blending video by Ralfy: