I’ve complained a lot about most of my favourite beer not being available in the UK anymore. There is one silver lining to it, though, and it’s Estonian Pohjala barrel aged imperial porters, that are still easy to get.
Barrique Noire is a masterpiece. Smell of prunes, and taste of cherries and chocolate, all thanks to reme the cassis barrels. I can’t say I taste blackcurrants themselves, but then I don’t taste them in the liquor either.
After all the frustration with not getting Springbank 18, I still have two unopened Springbanks sitting on my shelf. So I opened the 100 proof. Got it for a fair price too.
It’s not bad. But for 50GBP, you can get Bunna 12, you can get Arran 10. And despite cask strength, you are still drinking 5 years old whisky. It smells and tastes of cheese. A bit sweet, a bit smoky, and so very sharp.
Masters of Malt had a sale of Cambletown whiskies. It started at 3PM. When I checked 15 minutes later, almost everything was gone. Springbank 21 for 300GBP? 150 bottles gone. Springbank 18? 300 bottles gone. Kilkerran 16? 200 bottles gone.
I managed to get Sprinbank 10 at a decent price, but considering that I also had to sign up for their membership, it ended up costing me 90GBP for a bottle. Which I would have considered to be a good deal, if not for the fact I’ve missed all the much better opportunities.
3 hours later, even Springbank 10 was all gone.
Funny thing, the notifications that bottles are available came an hour after they’ve all disappeared.
Received my second bottle from Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Tropical Highland Fling. This one is only 12 years old, which for 90GBP sounds overprices, but at least it’s 58% ABV, cask strength, so I’d say at the top of the price range. It is super interesting, though. I was guessing rum casks, because it is very tropical, but they say it’s bourbon.
Usually I post an image of a bottle as well, but for some reason I can’t find this particular cask number, 122.93, on the official site or anywhere else. What I did find, though, is that 122 is most likely Loch Lomond distillery.
The only time I had Loch Lomond was from advent calendar, and then I thought it was one of the worst whiskies I’ve ever had. But that’s different, of course.
I rarely go back to write about beer I’ve had before, but I’ve finished my second and last bottle of Dragon’s Milk Tales of Gold, and it’s still one of the best beers I’ve ever had. Maybe it’s the barrel aging, or the the added lactose, but it has this amazing creaminess and vanilla notes that none of the Belgian beers come close to. A real shame it’s impossible to get in the UK nowadays.
3rd bag, 5.5 hours, over 2 months, though, with a break of almost a month in the middle.
I wanted to finish the gear box in one go, as the gears aren’t held together by anything until fully assembled and simply fall out, so I spent more than one hour in a single sitting on it. There was one angled piece that you either need tweezers or drop it extremely precisely, because that’s the only way it gets in. I thought I’ll push through to finish the engine. But it turned out to be a literal jumble of pipes going at weird angles, and loosely connected. And on page 218 I realised I did a mistake on page 158. So I spent 20 minutes fixing it. Good times.
Once you get deep enough into whisky, there are a couple of topics you start to encounter: “batches” and “rebuys”.
Batches are relevant to cask strength whiskies mostly, because any blending diffuses the character, while making whisky more consistent. “Batch” is between “single cask” and “age statement” for me at least. People still rave about Bunna 12 Batch 2022.
Rebuy is a whisky that once you’ve got in your collection, you’ll happily get one more once you finish the bottle. It’s one of the highest praises a whisky can get from an enthusiast. Because, let’s be honest, there are plenty of good whiskies.
For me, Lochlea Cask Strength Batch 2 is probably the first whisky ever I’d happily rebuy. Not that I didn’t have other great whiskies, I’ve had plenty, but I really think this one was something special, and I’m not sure they’re gonna beat it.
I already painted one 10cm base model, Horticulus Slimux from Warhammer. It had a lot of detail, but Ghostkeel Battlesuit is interesting in many different ways. First, I’ve never seen instructions to paint before assembly. When I painted Commander Farsight, I cursed and swore that the next model I will paint in parts, but here they’re basically saying “no way you’ll manage to paint the details once you put it together”.
And the reason is, that this model has moving parts. The barrels of the not-minigun and not-grenadelauncher rotate. But also, the highlight is that the cabin opens, showing grumpy Tau pilot inside. Speaking of pilot, that’s also the first model that has choice of parts. You can pick its main weapon, it’s side weapons mounted on the top, whether you want a missile rack or some sort of a radar on the back, and there are even two heads for the pilot. There are also a few decorative pieces you can choose from, like the top of the “helmet”.
There are practical reasons for some of those choices too, I guess. I’ve heard that those suits are so effective in tabletop play, some bring 3 of them, and you’d want to be able to distinguish between them at a glance.
On top of that, I also decided to magnetize the model. Magnet Baron have some good instructions and even kits at a reasonable price, but their shipping to the UK in unfortunately unreasonable. So I bought the drill and the magnets separately on Amazon, for half the price too.
18 taster from the Advent calendar, this one is from New Zealand. It’s very floral on the nose, jasmine like, and very light and smooth, to the point I thought it’s a blend. At 50GBP, it’s not great, but it is discounted to 30GBP, which make it not great but cheap whisky.
It’s a good strong Belgian beer, that starts with molasses and ends up with canned pears. The only issue is that it’s not as complex as I’d expect from a whiskey infused beer. But then, it’s also reasonably priced for what it is.
After wearing Scramkeys just a couple of times, I decided to sell them. Would have returned them altogether, I already removed the tags. Maybe I should have gotten one size bigger than my usual, or maybe it’s just not a good model, but after spending the whole day in them, my thumbs became blood swollen as if I put them in heating jars. Two weeks later, they still haven’t fully recovered 😬
Spyridons are great so far, though.
17th whisky from the Advent Calendar. Bottled at a strange 47% ABV. The palest whisky I can remember, lightest white wine. Light smoke on the nose. Peach sweetness on the palate, then some more light smoke, like smoked bacon. Surprisingly long warm finish in the throat. I was never impressed by English whisky, and this isn’t different, and considering it’s almost 60GBP, I wouldn’t say it’s a good bargain.
Whisky enthusiast always chase the rare, the weird, Springbanks of the whisky world. But sometimes, happiness is under the palm. I had both Abunda and Abunda Alba, and I considered the later too sharp and not sweet enough to my liking. But nowadays, I find it perfectly pleasant in terms of taste and headfeel. Like pineapple syrup. Not a bargain, but also not a bad deal either.
Mikkeler is a Danish brewery, but confusingly, this one they brew in Belgium
Only after trying it I discovered that Black Hole is what Mikkeler uses for all its imperial stouts. In any case, this was the regular one, not one of the barrel aged ones.
The taste is what a cold brew imperial stout would be like, I’d imagine. Not very sweet, smoky, with almost chili warmth, not sure if it’s honey or ABV.
What I didn’t like is how bitter the aftertaste is. Interesting and complex, but not something I’d buy again.
3rd bottle from the Master of Malt taster set.
I had a bottle of this about 3 years ago. But it still positively surprised me, despite being blended, with no age statement, and all the talk that most of Japanese whisky is just imported Scotch (Ben Nevis, most likely).
It has some of this barley smell, the taste is sweet and quite smooth, finish is almost apple, and warmth very long.
Finished painting it a couple of days ago.
This model absolutely needs to be painted is subassemblies, painting it as a whole was a total pain.
Not only you can’t paint the armpits, the jetpacks also block the back.
I didn’t want to go with the standard scheme, as I find black and white to be too boring. But I just couldn’t find a scheme that would work for the buckler.
Also, I wanted to avoid metalics at first, but nothing else worked, while Balthazar Gold actually did wonders.
Same goes for the sword: at first I tried what worked well for Krittok, but it didn’t look good at all, so I went back to Leadbelcher.
I didn’t have good blues for the plasma effect, so I went for the greens, Tesseract Glow and Hexwraith Flame. Those worked out well enough.
I wanted to replace my V-Train (17M6603) for a long time, since, like my FiveFinger often do, they started to tear at the thumb.
The newcomers are Fivefingers Scramkey and Spyridon EVO.
I picked Scramkey precisely for their reinforced thumbs. But they surprised me in other ways too. First, they have two hook-and-loop straps. I’ve seen one, I’ve seen it with shoelaces in V-Train, but I’ve never seen two. Also, that’s the first time I see two heel pull loops instead of one. And considering that the single loop on my V-Train tore off some time ago, I can see why.
Spyridon EVO have very little to do with original Spyridons. They have kind of two layers now, and also the hook-and-loop goes all the way around the ankle.
Another whisky I wanted to taste from the Master of Malt box. It has that corny smell I associate with Irish whisky, strangely, but the taste is sharply Scotch, sweet and oily, with nice finish. For its price, it’s a good deal. But I’m not after good deals anymore.
This one I brought from Norway’s Vinmonopolet. It’s very reminiscent of Garun from Iceland. Scandinavian Imperial Stouts have lower ABV, lighter body and less sugar. Still hit like a truck, since it’s 500ml, not 330. But I definitely prefer something more complex.
I’d be honest, I mostly bought this whisky because it was limited stock, and it was limited stock because it’s Cambletown. Still, here we are.
It smells like Irish whisky, what others call “toast”, and what I call “corn”. Tastes nothing like Irish, though.
There’s a surprising amount of sweetness for a whisky that’s only 30% sherried, and spiciness of the chilli level. Speaking of chilli, it has a lot of warmth on the finish.