Tales Of The Gurrier

Breakfast Whiskey is a term coined by Warren Ellis to describe the kind of emergency whiskey one sometimes must imbibe when nothing else is available or affordable. Breakfast Whiskeys are generally consumed in the pub with friends when a round system is in operation. In my early, neonate days I drank Breakfast Whiskeys with soda and ice. As the skin of my palate has toughened into the texture of old leather I find this diluted whiskey mix become a little pale and insipid and now take them neat.

Jameson is a typical Irish Breakfast Whiskey. The kind of whiskey you can rely on in all circumstances to be inoffensive and a little dull. You can drink this stuff all night long without too much lasting damage. Think of it as the Heineken of the Whiskey world, available everywhere and nothing to write home about. It was my favoured tipple in the pub for the past few years, but I have recently moved on to neat Bushmills which is a step up the evolutionary whiskey ladder. Bushmills is more of a lunch whiskey.

Bells is a Scotch Breakfast Whisky, this one ended up in the collection from some night out or other. It’s a blended whiskey which means they had a load of left over whiskeys lying around and they poured them all into a big vat  like Georges Marvellous Medicine and sold it on to gullible fools like me. This one claims to be ‘Aged 8 Years.’ It has a definite paint stripperish aftertaste, good for varnishing floors or treating halitosis. Terrible stuff, not recommended.

The final Breakfast Whiskey in the collection is ‘The Famous Grouse.’ This one arrived by way of The Da, who is not a whiskey drinker. He pressed it into my hands over the Christmas, as it had been languishing in the back of his drinks cabinet for several years. It may languish a few more in mine too. Another blended scotch this is definitely an improvement over the Bells, but not by much. It’s smoother, but has a sickly, syrupy taste to mask that cheap raw alcohol flavour. A night on this stuff will leave you feeling like somebody sandpapered the inside of your stomach.

The Irish Breakfast Whiskeys fair much better than their Scotch cousins. Perhaps they have a purer pedigree? The cheaper, mass produced scotches taste like they mix all sorts of shite into them to make them palatable.

Tomorrow we move on the the malts. Oh yes!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 24th, 2009 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Bloggery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.