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Comment by tb8424 | Hacker News Reader

+1 on this. There's a big difference for some between the 15 dollar whiskey and the 35 dollar whiskey, probably another jump between 35 and 80 dollar whiskey, and then after that it starts getting into crazy marginal gains. If you drink 15 dollar whiskey you'd get 90% of your gains from just bumping it up to 35 versus going straight for the 300 dollar bottle.

Same it was with me for coffee, I enjoy single origin vs supermarket coffee, but after that it got to a point where I couldn't realistically make up the difference.

There seems to be an 80/20 effect here on how much you should deep-dive into these tangent domains in your life.

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Once you get into that high end ($100+ whiskeys for instance), I feel like it often doesn't get _better_, it just gets more interesting. People seek out unique flavors or experiences, but you start max out the pure quality aspect.

Don't go into the difference between varietals, washing process or fermentation ones. Better, I don't know but there are large differences between producers.

I feel it's the same or similar than wine, chocolate etc

I remember buying a bottle of Pappy van Winkle at a gas station over 25 years ago for $40. Hipsters ruined that...

As in to OP's experience with chocolate, some of this may be down to people being more sensitive to flavors and textures associated with the less expensive manufacturing processes.

I, for one, don't like the bite of low quality alcohol. Whisky taken neat starts to be drinkable to me somewhere around $150-$200 a bottle. With ice or water, you can go cheaper than that because you're cutting the harshness of the impurities.

There used to be a theory that passing cheap rail alcohol through an activated charcoal filter several times would improve the taste. In my experience with rail vodka, it removes the worst part of the bite from impurities. But it obviously doesn't make it taste like high quality alcohol. I've only tried this with vodka. It may remove some desirable favors from other alcohols.

can it be like perceiving the value is higher making your taste as good as it is the value of it? can it be a placebo effect?

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