Glenfiddich will use its own whisky waste to fuel its trucks | Hacker News Reader

Glenfiddich will use its own whisky waste to fuel its trucks

eandt.theiet.org

225 pointsOJFord149 comments

I find the terminology used here incredibly annoying.

> It will convert its production waste and residues into an Ultra-Low Carbon Fuel (ULCF) gas that produces minimal carbon dioxide and other harmful emissions.

> The biogas emitted by whisky’s production process cuts CO2 emissions by over 95 per cent compared to diesel and other fossil fuels and reduces other harmful particulates and greenhouse gas emissions by up to 99 per cent, Glenfiddich said.

Biogas is a mixture of methane and CO2. When burnt, it produces less CO2 per unit energy than petrol, because it's got more hydrogen, but it absolutely still produces lots of CO2. It is definitely not cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 95% or 99%! The important difference is that the carbon is not from fossil sources. This is vital! But CO2 is still being emitted!

Essentially, "carbon" has become a metonym for "fossil-derived carbon". This is going to lead to lots of confusion by anyone who doesn't have a firm grip on that fact.

It's already a metonym for CO2, and I'm already not happy about that.

There's lots of other tailpipe emissions worth asking about. Isn't that how Europe wasted years trying to make clean diesel?

Not to mention tire and break emissions which are still considerable on any vehicle.

My hybrid uses the brakes significantly less than a nonhybrid ICE. The motors do a lot of the stopping work instead of the brakes. It’s easiest to see this going downhills. My cars recharging while other cars are using brakes. Tire wear though is definitely not abated.

They've also banned certain materials from brake pads that were causing problem. Copper is a no-no in the time between when my car was built and I last talked to someone about replacements (my car didn't need it because while it's an ICE, the computer is smart enough to do engine braking much of the time).

Is tyre wear really a comparable concern?

Think about how many times you refuel your car between tyre changes. Contemplate the volume of fuel burned versus the volume of material scraped off your tyres over their lifetime. Whatever the environmental cost of tyres, they cannot compete with liquid fuel.

It’s more about PM2.5 and similar particulate pollution. But absolutely there are bigger concerns. Tire and brake pollution gets brought up as a false equivalency between ICE and EV car emissions often. Just wanted to add a factoid about how electrified vehicles really are more efficient.

It's not just how much stuff is consumed. Different materials break into different size and shape particles. Tires may wear out slower but the particles they release may cause more damage.

That carbon is not a green house gas so its okay :P

But seroulsly, a review found on pubmed¹ made me realise that brakes and tires emissions are an understudied public health threat. Breaks emissions accounts for 16% to 55% of the PM₁₀ emitted by an ICE car and those particles are an healthy mix of iron, copper, barium, lead, inorganic carbon (probably as soot and graphite, I would be terribly surprised if it was as diamonds and graphene) and various unlisted and unstudied organic compounds!

1- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4315878/#Sec8ti...

P.s. I tried to link directly to the conclusion but the pubmed reader sometimes show a seemingly random page... so the correct page is 40

the average person will take this to mean this use of a sustainable, renewable fuel will reduce the carbon footprint of the distillery... I don't see the problem

it definitely is reducing greenhouse gas emissions because the source of the energy is byproducts of plantstuffs they grow anyway for the purpose of making their whiskey

"Emissions" has become synonym for "net emissions" in non-technical discourse. I'm not sure what to think about that: on one hand it can be confusing as you said, but on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if someone takes a ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere and then re-emits it. After all, net emissions is the interesting number for climate change.

I appreciate the original comment’s explanation- it’s helpful to understand how the marketing points can potentially obfuscate the real/technical points.

I also think your feedback is here accurate, and beyond that would take the side of ringing relevant.

If when they ‘re-emit’ they’re replacing what would otherwise be gross emission, that’s a net reduction, and a good thing.

Is good the enemy of great? Jim Collins and many corporate managers would agree yes. At a global/societal scale? I think it’s probably more debatable, at least.

I remember learning reduce>reuse>recycle and I think this falls somewhere in the middle which might make it an ethical conundrum; but unless we expect to the whiskey company to reduce whiskey production, it seems to me like we should likely applaud the effort.

Isn’t fossil-derived carbon the problem? The whole point is that fossil carbon was sequestered. How does using non sequestered carbon in place of sequestered carbon not massively reduce the rate of atmospheric CO2 increase in the long run?

> but it absolutely still produces lots of CO2. It is definitely not cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 95% or 99%! The important difference is that the carbon is not from fossil sources. This is vital! But CO2 is still being emitted!

Isn't the presumption here that otherwise the CO2 would have been emitted anyway when the waste decomposed in landfill? So using it as fuel doesn't emit additional CO2 beyond the energy used processing it.

Landfilling organic waste leads to methane forming during decomposition, which is a substantially more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

More potent but shorter lasting, by a lot. Once CO2 is in the atmosphere you are stuck with it for centuries.

Yes, but CH₄ degrades into CO₂ and water (in the presence of oxygen).

Shh. You are going to spoil HN poo pooing another renewables initiative with your science.

No they didn't... They're only correcting gameswithgo's mistake - it still agrees with what's being talked about in the article...

Cogeneration is generally good, but it's not perfect. It tends to include perverse incentives. As someone pointed out in a recent thread, when you sell the byproduct you have an incentive to keep producing that byproduct. No incentive to remove it, reduce the volume, or reduce consumption. "The fuel is free anyway, so who cares?"

It's also lack of systems thinking.

When you turn a product liability into an asset, you increase the margins of the primary product, meaning you want to produce more of your primary product.

When that growth is coming at a cost to your competitors, then this is an overall win. But if it increases the overall supply, then it gets very hard to call it a carbon reduction, in the same way that vehicle fuel efficiency and safety have also increased total miles traveled and total land converted into housing.

I don’t see how doing something like this increases the global demand for whiskey/hard liquor. Also if one distillery can do it, so can others which is also an overall win.

It doesn't necessarily change the demand, but it changes the supply curve by making it cheaper per unit to produce whiskey. Previously, you could sell whiskey, and the waste was garbage. Under this hypothetical scheme, now you could make money on the waste, too, reducing the price of production.

Would this be an example of the Jevons paradox?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I can't really tell. Certainly jevon's paradox adjacent.

Reminds me of Kingsford Charcoal.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)

You are assuming that having more supply will mean they need to immediately lower their prices. Glenfiddich is a premium brand. Have you once seen Apple lower prices on their MacBooks because they had too many in stock?

It doesn't increase the demand. What it means is that if Glenfiddich needs more fuel to meet its own fuel demand, it will have to do so by creating more whiskey, even without demand for the additional whisky.

Or they could just buy fuel like everyone else. If their biogas is cheaper than fossil fuels they can buy then they’ve stumbled onto something much bigger than whiskey.

Yes, I expect the only reason it would be cheaper is because it's waste stream that they would otherwise discard. So yeah, it wouldn't make any sense for them to produce more whisky just to produce more fuel - they would want to use as much fuel derived from waste as they can and purchase any deficit or sell any surplus...

This stunt just got them a huge amount of free advertising.

I haven't thought about Glenfidfish since my Playboy days.

(I took a class on advertising in college. In one assignment, we were told to pick out the sexual imagery in magazine ads. Glenfiddish seemed to have a lot.)

> When you turn a product liability into an asset, you increase the margins of the primary product, meaning you want to produce more of your primary product.

Which brings up an interesting question: what software product liability can be turned into an asset that increases the margins of the primary software product?

Technical debt, security gaps, defects, etc. are difficult liabilities for me to imagine turning into assets that increase the margins of the primary product. There are certainly external actors who could treat those liabilities as their assets.

Technical debt is great for a consultancy brought in to clean it up.

Security gaps are great for black hats who monetize penetrations based upon them.

Defects are great for outsourced support organizations who manage the ticket flow based upon them.

Without significant scaffolding surrounding those liabilities that far exceeds what nearly any organization I have known is willing to put up (think: US shuttle program levels of scaffolding), I cannot think of lower hurdle means to turn product liabilities into assets. In the manufacturing world, some product liabilities like in the OP's article are waste stream conversions, where the application of more technology turns low-grade embedded energy into some more useful form.

Software "waste stream" seems to demand significantly more technology than industry is willing to accept in most foreseeable futures.

No "drinking for the planet" then? Disappointing.

Of course, all that carbon comes from the crops grown to make whiskey. So it's 99% from the atmosphere on the first place, so emitting it is really "re"-emitting it.

And it the waste were just dumped, it would likely produce a lot of methane, itself a greenhouse gas...

Burning fossil fuels is the main issue with CO2 emissions because that it adds CO2 into the atmosphere by releasing carbon that was sequestrated underground.

On the other hand, burning renewable plant matter is pretty much neutral: The plant absorbs carbon from the atmosphere while growing and that carbon is released back into the atmosphere when the plant is essentially burned to release energy.

The main problem with biofuels is that they may compete with other crops for land, etc. But if they are produced from plant waste that was already being produced anyway then they are a pretty good option.

The CO2 emitted is not a concern because it's carbon from the current environment. Just like it's fair to call wood-fire heating carbon-neutral (even though it's not so great from a particulate standpoint)

> Just like it's fair to call wood-fire heating carbon-neutral (even though it's not so great from a particulate standpoint).

As long as you grow these trees specifically for burning. Once you start chopping down forests without replacing them, you're still adding to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

> As long as you grow these trees specifically for burning.

I don't think anyone's chopping down ancient forests in the West anymore.

https://thenarwhal.ca/topics/fairy-creek-blockade/

It's still happening in Canada. :(

For the most part, you're right. Monoculture tree farms with straight rows of fast growing pine trees as far as the eye can see are now the norm, for better or worse.

>The CO2 emitted is not a concern because it's carbon from the current environment.

Nope, it doesn't work like that.

Source: Business very related to this exact activity.

In what way? Regulations that don't consider the source?

Because the CO2 goes back to the atmosphere.

Didn't the CO2 that went into the tree come from the atmosphere in the first place?

Yes, and life and ecological systems adapted around particular levels of it. Man put too much back in recent years (see [1]) so we'd like to take it off there because the vast majority of current research points to it being a bad thing for the weather dynamics of the planet.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...

But if it came from the atmosphere, and goes back into the atmosphere… why isn’t it carbon net zero? Out -1, in +1, net 0. Wasted energy to harvest trees? But you also waste energy extracting fossil fuels, and offsetting carbon.

It is always net zero if you're pedantic and say the earth is a closed system plus conservation of matter.

But the whole premise (i.e. the concern) is that there's too much CO2 as an atmospheric gas and it would be better if some of it were instead somewhere else.

If you take from the atmosphere but then put it back it doesn't really help alleviate the problem.

> But the whole premise (i.e. the concern) is that there's too much CO2 as an atmospheric gas and it would be better if some of it were instead somewhere else.

Yeah, everyone gets that.

Burning wood is net zero. The point is we don't want net zero - we want net negative.

>Burning wood is net zero.

Nope, when you do that, you're moving CO2 into the atmosphere.

I get your point, "but what if you somehow made that wood explicitly to burn it", but the whole idea is to sequester carbon and keep it out, remove it. Fossil fuel's CO2 also came from the atmosphere, no sane person would suggest that burning it is net zero.

Whew, but looks like you have US' EPA on your side: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epa-declares-burni...

If you grow 2021 grain (taking CO2 into the grain’s carbon), then burn part of that carbon back into CO2 in 2021, how is that not strictly better than taking millions of years old carbon and turning it loose into the atmosphere?

It's definitely better than doing nothing, but an hypothetical company doing business as usual and then buying the necessary carbons offsets from permanent carbon sequestration projects would be better for the atmosphere.

Of course, the ideal scenario would be a company that does both things (reduce + offset).

That’s not at all clear to me. Are you saying that a company which burns 1 ton of carbon from 2021 grain is worse than a company that burns 1 ton of carbon from fossil sources and buys permanent sequestration to offset 1 ton?

That’s breaking my engineer brain.

Yes. Because the net effect of the latter is zero carbon on the atmosphere.

Isn’t the net effect of the first also zero? (No net carbon was added to the atmosphere than was there on Dec 31, 2020.)

There are net emissions from all the equipment and processing involved. But of course, if buying carbon offsets is a valid way to offset burning coal, it is also a valid way to offset all the truck, tractors, etc associated with liquor production. So you are correct.

Close to zero as growing the grain was not "free" conversion from atmospheric CO2 to glucose or w/e.

I think most people would roughly understand “reducing carbon” as meaning “renewable” or “sustainable”, while the more technically informed will recognize it’s shorthand for “fossil-derived carbon”. Relatively few will be confused.

Title should be updated to "Glenfiddich plans to use..." - the article is dated July 2021 and they're talking about making this transition. The current title makes it sound like it's an established practice at the company already.

Well, it does include this:

its whisky waste-based biogas is already powering three specially converted trucks

I've added "will" to the title. We can call that the Hedberg tense (i.e. they're using, and they will use as well).

++1 for the Hedberg.

I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

Whiskey makers sit on a lot of inventory in order to use a library of older spirits to backstop their highly imperfect annual production. Producers also lose an astonishing 20% of inventory to the "angels' share."

The Bloom Energy guys –– fuel cell experts –– have now started a whiskey company doing interesting things.

https://www.sfgate.com/shopping/article/bespoken-spirits-mak...

Seems they were influenced by YouTuber tech ingredients.

https://youtu.be/meB09jXHhRY

They claim to do the work of years in hours, but yet their spirits are extremely expensive.

Do I have to understand this?

Accelerated ageing isn't a new thing... There are YouTubers doing this kind of thing in places where distilling is legal ('Still It' from New Zealand is a good one). You literally just have to put it through much more rapid heating and cooling cycles than it would normally experience.

The guys in that article are probably just pricing it really high because they want to make it seem "premium" I expect. But somewhat to their defence, they also probably don't have the economy of scale of the bigger players, and depending on tax jurisdiction, a big part of the price might just be tax.

FTA: "Sixteenth-century English chronicler Raphael Holinshed wrote that, when consumed moderately, whisky’s many medicinal benefits include preventing the “head from whirling, the tongue from lisping... the hands from shivering, the bones from aching.”"

Just before reading the article, I had a shot of Famous Grouse (a blend), and it caused, not prevented, head-whirling ....

I don't know if they still do after the buyout, but New Belgium Breweries had a bioreactor that used spent wort to produce methane to help fire the boilers. Then the doubly-spent wort went into compost for the landscaping.

I'm thinking that the shorter supply chain there probably works better, but then again you need multiple examples to get most people to actually start solving problems so kudos to GF for at least trying.

To me it's always hard to figure out whether this is good,bad, or just propaganda.

My guess would be that Glenfiddich would make a greater impact on the environment by reducing the whisky waste and go electric with their trucks. But I have no way to know since there is no real mechanism to measure the benefits. A problem that's endemic to all these GREEN projects.

I think society would greatly benefit by creating a branch in economics that focuses on the pluses and minuses of carbon emissions. Anyone looking for a PhD project, here's an idea that would certainly help society.

If the waste they're talking about would otherwise decompose in landfill producing methane, then preventing that and turning it into fuel like this is a big improvement over fossil fuels (as long as they're using green energy for whatever transformation processes they need to do to produce the fuel).

One thing to take into account is that the energy density of this fuel would be far higher than batteries - while range is good enough for cars, fully electric trucks aren't quite a solved problem yet for certain load/distance combinations (there are weight limits, and at a point you have more battery than load!). This is part of the reason they're not very widely available yet. So it might make sense to go electric when the technology is closer in five to ten years, and use this apparently mostly carbon neutral fuel in the meantime.

Glenfiddich makes some damn fine Scotch.

Honestly, not really. A lot of the blended export stuff isn't great. Some of the older single malts are good (but then again which aren't?), but there are much better ones out there.

It's just got a good recognizable name that is easily marketable to consumers in the US and Europe as a "good" Whisky.

Edit: So it's not bad, it's just super mass-produced. You find it in every single place that sells Whisky (corner-stores, supermarkets, petrol stations, etc etc) alongside Famous Grouse, Bells and the like. They make it for a particular audience is all I'm saying, and IDK if I'd define it as "fine".

What do you rate?

Anything from Islay is my jam, with Laphroaig having a particular place in my heart.

Same here. Laphroiag, Caol Ila, Bunna, and though not Islay, Talisker has a special place in my heart

That's the I don't know anything about whisky but I read on pretentious blogs that these are good list.

Those are the ones I’ve enjoyed (I’ve been to Scotland. Also don’t care about what others - blogs- opinions are on things). Sure I don’t know anything. Any recommendations? Why does liking those mean I don’t know anything about whiskey?

If you’re after Speyside then Balvenie and Glenrothes make some good bottles. Overall it’s probably the least interesting variety of Scotch but it’s light and drinkable.

I don’t understand the infatuation with single malts. The distiller has a lot more control when making a blend and assuming equal skill and care can make a better product

I'm also not sure why almost every whisky out there seems to be watered down to 40%.

Bound to be for tax reasons.

However, if you haven’t read this story it’s quite interesting.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2144353-why-adding-a-dr...

Doesn't it get pretty hard to actually drink it above 40%?

Not at all. Acquired taste perhaps, but high-strength, well-made spirits can be wonderful. Need to treat them with respect though, as the downsides are obvious. Loads of the over-proof whiskys and rums are glorious.

The strongest you'll likely see is 60% (I have a Glenfarclas 105 at that ABV) but you are right it gets a little challenging at a higher ABV. However between 43-46% is a little richer in flavour without being too nippy even for beginners.

depends on the whisky. I understand some do well being diluted and others are fine at cask strength.

40% is the legal minimum to call it Whiskey in the UK. It's watered down to increase profit.

I think in general (i.e. not just w.r.t. whisky) it comes from the constituents being non-vintage, since not many vintage crops declared a {relevant mark for 'good year'} wind up blended, and then since correlation of course equals, er, backwards causation, we end up with this 'all blends are worse than any single X'. Which of course isn't true.

Urban legend I've heard is it was a marketing ploy dreamed up by the Guinness company to charge Americans more. Seems to have worked.

Not quite: "blended whisky" is a blend of malt and grain whisky. Grain whisky has very little flavour. Hence, blended whiskies invariably have less flavour than single malts.

There is also "blended malt whisky", which is made entirely of malt whisky, but from more than one distillery. As you say, that can be very good, but for whatever reason it isn't a huge category. I think it's growing, though - Monkey Shoulder is a fairly new blended malt that has become a de facto standard workhorse Scotch in cocktail bars, and Compass Box has been grinding out good blended malts for years.

Bear in mind that there is enormous variation between individual casks even at a single distillery. The blender at a distillery has an adequately broad palette to work with, even within the constraints of making single malt.

Indeed, it is often the case that a blender will decide that some particular cask in their stock is too far outside the parameters of their house style to use at all. These casks go to independent bottlers, who put their own name on it, and try to find some niche to market it to.

That really depends on the country/regulation, Irish blended whiskey is indeed a blend of Grain and Malt whiskey, Scottish blended is a mix of single malts and is usually labeled as blended malt whiskey instead of just blended.

But indeed people tend to classify blended whiskeys as inferior for some reason they aren’t, especially in tightly regulated countries or from good distilleries.

Blended whiskeys allow for a much wider flavor spectrum and most importantly consistency which you can’t get from single malt/single cask whiskeys as each batch and even cask will have quite a bit of variance.

Once you get to the few £1000 per bottle often from brands you never heard off including a lot of private clubs, the whiskeys are nearly always blended and they basically are blends of some of the most rare and sought off single malts.

Just to add a bit more regarding what we call Scotch, since there's a bit of confusion here. We have a few terms which are quite strictly legally protected:

Single malt = a single distillery blending various barrels of malt whisky they produced themselves

Single grain = a single distillery blending various barrels of grain whisky they produced themselves

Blended malt = a whisky produced from barrels of malt whisky from various distilleries

Blended grain = a whisky produced from barrels of grain whisky from various distilleries ... I don't think I have ever seen this :)

Blended scotch = a whisky produced from barrels of grain or malt whisky from various distilleries

If you were to randomly choose a cheaper whisky it'll likely be a blended scotch, if you were to randomly choose a more expensive whisky it'll likely be a single malt. There are exceptions of course - there are cheap(er) single malts and there are pricier blends - and "blended" does not necessarily imply bad whisky (nor does the presence of grain whisky necessarily imply bad!). And indeed there are pricey single grains (Arbikie in Arbroath were doing a Rye whisky for a few hundred pounds a bottle). The only way to know anything for sure is to sample for yourself, which is a delicious and fun thing to do :D

Edit: oh and "grain" refers to a bunch of things that aren't barley - it could be corn, millet, wheat, rye, rice or other things.

How could i have forgotten Royal Salute Tribute to Honour:

https://robbreport.com/food-drink/spirits/taste-royal-salute...

Well you could have Sheep Dip:

https://sipwhiskey.com/collections/scotch/products/sheep-dip...

A single malt is not made from a single cask, and each cask behaves slightly differently. The distiller therefore has a lot to work with, and will very carefully blend multiple casks to create the desired single malt product before bottling.

"blended export stuff"? Does Glenfiddich even have a blended expression? (Does the Solera vat count as a blending method for your statement?)

I've not seen one locally, but I've definitely seen them in the USA and in a couple of airport duty free sections. Unless I'm going crazy

Glenfiddich is used in Monkey Shoulder, but other than that?

Well this is weird. I have this distinct memory of seeing a blended bottle in NYC from them, and concluding that it’s some export version that they don’t sell to the domestic market because it’s not very good.

This was quite a few years ago though, so it must be a false memory or another brand entirely. And I can’t find anything on Google…

I bought a bottle of some random scotch whiskey. I t was young and raw but not actually bad. I did a bit of research and it's common for distilleries to sell excess under a popup brand label or sell it for blending.

"Blended" means a whisky combines both malt and grain spirit. Glenfiddich make malt spirit, but not grain spirit [1], so there's no way a "blended Glenfiddich" could exist. There could be blended whiskies containing Glenfiddich and grain spirit from another distillery, but those are just blended whiskies like any other; you couldn't consider them to be Glenfiddich.

"Blended malt" means a whisky combines malt spirit from multiple distilleries, so "blended malt Glenfiddich" would be an oxymoron.

A Solera system doesn't count as any kind of blending, as long as all the inputs are malt whisky from a single distillery.

[1] these are the grain distilleries: https://www.whiskyinvestdirect.com/about-whisky/grain-whisky...

Blended doesn't mean malt + grain. Blended means producer + other producer. That's why, as you said, blended malt means malt spirits combined from multiple distilleries.

This was my understanding as well, but I was confused about the statement that Glenfiddich produced blendeds, and wanted to draw @orf out about what they meant, but it turns out that they might have just been mistaken about a previous purchase.

That had been my belief up until i started to write that comment, at which point i went to look it up. Having done so, i am moderately confident that the definition of "blended whisky" in the context of Scotch is that it combines malt and grain whisky. Since there are (almost) no distilleries that produce both, this also implies combining different distilleries. But it's the malt plus grain aspect which is essential.

Note that if you combine malt whisky from two producers, you get "blended malt whisky" not "blended whisky".

Ok, I partially stand corrected and partially renew my objection. The word "blended" on its own does not mean malt + grain, and leading off an explanation of scotch categorization with that definition is confusing. "Blended" is part of the name of three different categories of non-single-distillery products, only one of which is "blended scotch whisky"; the word itself simply denotes non-single-distillery products.

"Blended scotch whisky" is the term of art that denotes scotch whisky blended from single malt and single grain whiskys, according to the SWR.

Particularly when one's audience isn't experienced in this area, it would be helpful to flag terms of art, and to clarify that you're talking about specific labeling standards. The commenter had said "blended export stuff" which made it clear (to me) that they weren't speaking that technically.

That's fair, and I'll say I've only recently been getting into scotches. I recently tried a flight of the following which influenced my above comment:

- Glenfiddich (18)

- Highland Park (18, my personal favourite of these)

- Oban (14)

- Auchentoshan (21)

- Lagavulin (16)

Yeah, a Glenfiddich 12 year old isn't anything near any of those.

I’d highly recommend trying Laphroaig if you can, it’s really smokey and delicious.

But sorry, I didn’t mean to crap on your taste in whisky. I live in a foreign country and I see all kinds of “genuine Scottish whisky” for sale that is absolute piss (hello Scottish Meadow). Something is wrong with places charging extortionate prices for not-great, young mass produced whisky.

I really like Laphroaig, but it's definitely an acquired taste. It's like eating moss so most people don't enjoy their first taste and many don't come back for a second.

Moss? Peat smoke, certainly. There’s a hint of it even in the drinking water if you ever stay on Islay.

Bruichladdich Islay Barley, while being an nonpeated Islay, is the best deal in all of whisky.

My nephew-in-law's groom cake (at his wedding) was in the shape of a Laphroaig bottle. The whisky always struck me as like drinking diluted roofing tar.

Or just get some liquid smoke and pour it into your scotch and ruin it the old fashioned way. Have had lafrog and it’s like cancer with a hint of cancer.

A few must haves:

- Bunna 12

- Nikka FTB

- Craigellachie 13

- Springbank 10

- Ardbeg 10

HP18 is pretty damn good.

Few other fine experiences from over the years

- Aberfeldy 12y

- Powers John's Lane 12y

- Glenfarclas 40y

- Glen Garioch 1994

- Old Pulteney 21y

- Old Pulteney 16y Bourbon Cask strength

- Imperial 16y (Signatory Vintage / Rare Auld Duncan Taylor bottling)

- Glen Moray 24y cask strength (Duncan Taylor bottling)

- Port Ellen 27y

- Bushmills 1988 14y (Cask strength, Rum Barrel)

- Ardbeg Uigeadail/Corryvreckan

- Laphroaig 18y (excellent; the 10yo tastes like exhaust fumes)

- Laphroaig 1989 Vintage 23y

- Royal Brackla 1976 (Mackillop's Choice bottling)

- Caol Ila 1990 Mackillop's Choice bottling, single cask sherry wood

- Evan Williams Single Barrel Vintage

They sell an awful lot of it, so someone must like it!

It depends on what you're looking for. I've seen so much "trash" wine and spirits turn out to be total hits with people that I don't think anyone can outright say that any drink is objectively good or bad other than perhaps absolute bottom-shelf spirits. I was at a party back on fourth of July where someone brought this incredible scotch that literally everyone there found to be amazing. My parents decided to get a bottle and we shared it with a group of relatives who unanimously poo-poo'd it.

Maybe a connoisseur looks for certain taste and smell profiles most people couldn't discern, but that doesn't mean a given whisky is bad.

The Speyside malts are pretty underrated in my opinion. Equally, Bells and Famous Grouse, _are_ the purest expression of what Scotch is, and in fact not that easy to get hold of outside of Scotland as we scots might presume.

Bells and Famous Grouse are available everywhere in the UK? Everywhere that sells any whiskey sells them almost by default.

When I think Speyside I think Macallan.

Sorry, should have said "outside of the UK" then.

I have been living overseas for a couple of decades, and Bells/Grouse/Teachers are not that easy to come by. Internationally, at least in my experience, Johnny Walker and Chivas Regal seem to be the more common "name" blends, supplemented by all sorts of weird "only for export" brands. You can also get hold of the big single malts pretty easily.

Its actually not always that easy to get hold of the standard Scottish "cooking whiskies" which means that a lot of people outside of the UK have a different starting point for defining what Scotch is.

> Bells and Famous Grouse, _are_ the purest expression of what Scotch is, and in fact not that easy to get hold of outside of Scotland

Pretty sure you can pick them up at any basic petrol station anywhere in England, 24 hours a day. Sorry to shatter that illusion.

I'm into wine but my sense was that GF is more like gas station Scotch in Europe.

my thoughts exactly. But at least it isn't Jack Daniels..

Ehh not really. Some cheaper blends like Grant's (same parent company and bottle shape!) would be what you're thinking of. But Glenfiddich is generally considered to be an accessible, affordable single malt and is often recommended for beginners as an introductory Highland malt.

I happily drink Glenfiddich 12 when I'm in the mood for a whisky in a bar that doesn't have a great selection, and I have a Glenfiddich 15 in my cabinet which is really pleasant

I like Glenfiddich (15)... but apparently others disagree. I like Laphroig a lot as well, though they're totally different.

I don't drink anymore, but the GF15 was always my favorite scotch.

Their 15-yr Solera is one of my favorites.

Seems there's a few of us here who are into the 15 :)

Heh, be careful. There are no bigger connoisseurs than American whiskey/whisky drinkers. Scotch is out. Small batch bourbon and Japanese whisky are in.

For now the “proper” Japanese whisky is just too hard to find to make a dent into Bourbon, let alone Scotch. For me at least it’s possible to get my hands on a few very nice bottles, but for the price they’re just not worth it - I can get a couple of really good Scotch or Irish for the price of one bottle of, say, Hibiki Harmony. Many of the “Japanese” whiskies you’ll see that seem available and reasonably priced are simply Scotch whisky with Japanese labelling heavily implying or outright claiming it’s a product of Japan (such as Nikka From The Barrel, distilled at Ben Nevis distillery). The situation might get better - some producers have agreed to label their products more honestly - but there’s still not enough real stuff available, which is a problem when it takes years to mature and your product is red hot at the moment.

I can’t speak for small batch Bourbon, we don’t get much where I am which is a real shame.

Ha, so 5 days later the Japanese whisky mistrust issue got covered here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFtTPp9rD2g

That is the true headline for this article.

Am I missing something or is this actually bad?

> Glenfiddich has sold off spent grains left over from the malting process to be used for a high-protein cattle feed.

This sounds as if the leftovers used to be sold as cattle feed, but now they are turned into fuel. If correct, that's horrible! Valuable protein is destroyed in the process. That protein will now have to come from somewhere else, and that's plants fertilized with ammonia, which is in turn made from natural gas.

Destroying protein is not green! Never! Fueling the very same trucks with natural gas is as easy and more efficient, because it skips the intermediate steps.

> The Scottish whisky industry hopes to hit carbon net-zero targets by 2040.

I'm curious how they plan to do this while burning peat in the production process. My guess is by creative accounting.

Yep, you're missing this part:

> However, through anaerobic digestion – where bacteria break down organic matter, producing biogas – the distillery can also use the liquid waste from the process to make fuel and eventually recycle all of its waste products this way.

Basically, they have solid waste which was and is going to be used for cattle feed, and they have liquid waste which they're now converting to bio-gas by feeding it to bacteria.

Oops, looks like I overlooked an "also". But I still can't think of a protein poor and energy rich waste stream in whisky making.

The world--and especially the tech world--is such now, that I never know if a word is misspelled or if the spelling is intentional and has a meaning I have not yet learned. Or learnd.

The name means "valley of the deer" in Scottish Gaelic.

Glenfiddich was founded in 1886 in Scotland.

Guessing you're referring to "Glenfiddich", but it reminded me of the case of whiskey vs. whisky:

It's generally spelled “whiskey” — with an e — in the United States and Ireland. It's spelled “whisky” — without the e — in Scotland and Canada. Since this article is about Glenfiddich, which is based in Scotland, it makes sense that it's spelled without the e.

The reason for this is purely historical — there's not necessarily a difference in the product. That said, "Scotch" must be produced in Scotland, and hence you'll always see "Scotch whisky" (no e).

The way I understood it, Scottish distillers had widely adopted the extremely productive Coffey still and were quite willing to use non-barley grains, which allowed them to produce a LOT of quality whisky for export so they went on to dominate world consumption of whisky. This was to the detriment of Irish producers, who at the time stuck to the more traditional pot stills and barley (some point after they got a bit more flexible). To distinguish their own product from Scotch whisky the Irish chose to start spelling what they sold as "whiskey".

It's actually not so cut-and-dry as you might think regarding the USA. Even some bigger brands like Makers Mark call theirs "whisky"

But anecdotally as a Scot, the only people who really get upset about that extra "e" are non-whisky drinking Scottish people :D Those who drink it are, in my experience, generally pretty chilled out and understanding.

All the US legal documents spell it whisky.

Good point, I forgot that TTB spell it that way. Just goes to show that it’s really a non-issue, and we can focus on enjoying the drink itself :)

See to it that the trucks do not become wobbly after drinking the whisky waste! :)

I will get my tartan :D

That is the most infuriating license plate I have ever seen.

I'm more irked by the asymmetric "FUELLED BY Glenfiddich" text at the top.

Wait what am I missing, why is it infuriating? "WG51GAS" - I guess:

- WG = "William Grant"

- 51 = no idea

- GAS = ... gas :)

When a vehicle is registered for use in the UK it is assigned a plate number, you can buy a different ("vanity") plate and do paperwork to change it, within limits, but most vehicles will keep this plate for their lifespan.

The two digits (51 here) signify the six month period in which registration took place. So 51 means between the start of September 2001 and the end of February 2002. The two digits are the last two digits of the year (so 01 = 2001, 02 = 2002, etc) and then 50 is added to indicate the second half of the year, thus a brand new car bought next month here would have a "71" plate, the second half of 2021.

I presume the rationale is that nobody will be confused by a 2055 car and think it's from 2005, since both technology and aesthetic preferences change enormously in such a period of time.

Vanity plates aren't supposed to be fitted to vehicles that logically could not have been registered with that plate, making it appear newer than it is, but it would be permitted to fit these 2001 plates to a vehicle built in say 2019.

I know about how UK car registration numbers work, i just couldn’t figure why GP was infuriated by this vanity one. So I guess it’s just the confusion that they chose a vanity plate that happens to have two digits in the year position that would normally imply the vehicle is ~20 years old. Hmm

It definitely looks like they intended to get the plate that at first glance would read "WSGI GAS" ("whiskey gas"), but failed to do so, so had to settle for "WGSI GAS".

Artificial, low emission fuel has a great potential.

so they had to build a new engine?

Article says they are using trucks already designed to run on liquid natural gas.

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