Drinking habits

I like scotch, and bourbon, and have a drink on a Friday evening, maybe a Saturday too. Just a couple.

Some of you lot seem to drink whisky all the time, judging from the content of your posts.

How much do you consume, and how often ?

Reply to
boulder, MBA
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0 - 6 shots a week or so. Usually Thursday, Friday and/or Saturday evening. I suspect that most of us that love scotch savor the good stuff and do not guzzle. I also suspect that we talk a lot more than we drink.

Ed

Reply to
Ed

We have at least one small dram every evening while reading, before going up to bed. Often we have two.

Reply to
nick

Ed schrieb:

[x] agree

Andreas

Reply to
Andreas Gugau

I drink about 20 Oz. a day. Mostly Vodka with either coffee or Diet Cola. After dinner I'll have a wee dram of Scotch. On the weekends, I'll also have a Bourbon in the afternoon. I've been drinking at this level for 55 years.

Reply to
Nick Cramer

At my peak, it was about three to four units (150 - 200ml total) of "the good stuff" per day -- unless I was having wine with dinner, in which case I might have just a sip.

Years and liver enzymes have convinced me that this is an unsustainable level, and teeters uncomfortably close to dependency (try staying over night in a "dry" county and see if your sympathetic nervous system rebels

-- if you need benzodiazapines to sleep, you have a problem.)

I've pulled that shit together, and probably have alcohol, of all forms, no more than four times per week, and no more than two servings at an eve.

And yes, my old friends here are going to call it heresy (anyone who doesn't remember me and thinks me a troll, ask an old-timer), but that wonderful "character" of Islay malts is their *extreme* toxicity. I will admit Ardbeg and Port Ellen are delicious stuff, but you dip far into the heavy feints with the still cut, and are risking severe organ damage. Not just boring organs like your liver, but fun ones like your eyes. If you are going to become all nutso about an expensive liquor, and think you might reach that dangerous three-to-four-drinks/day level, *deeply* consider whether your pocketbook can handle Cognac instead. If you think, "Hmmm, how about tequila, then?", come over here so that I might smack you.

Reply to
Joshua McGee

I'm not going to call it heresy. I'm going to ask you for a citation from a reasonable authority that this is so.

Reply to
bill van

Hello Mr. Van,

Perhaps a chemist can step in at this point. I do not have a PhD in chemistry, but I can do some BOTECs.

A couple of leaders:

The MSDS (Materials Safety Data Sheet) citation of the LD50 of pure phenol in vivo, murine: 630 mg/kg (http:/avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/ phenol.htm)

Assume a 70kg man, and extrapolate from mouse studies. LD50 (dosage at which 50% of individuals die) would be 44 grams.

Modern "hyper-Islays" come in at >80 ppm phenol. A drunken evening consuming 1L of Islay malt (not unheard of in my circle) exposes one to

one evening's exposure, far higher than OSHA regs would have it. If it were arsene or phosphene, there would be no question: the employee would not dare work with concentrations this high.

Granted, the ethanol is more toxic at this point. The big question is, how quickly is is excreted from the body? I do not know the answer to this. If the half-life of phenol is >2 years, alcoholic Islay malt- consumers could die from acute phenol poisoning before they die from alcohol poisoning.

But acute poisoning was not my point as much as were two other factors: carcinogenicity and poisoning by "fusel oils".

Phenol is listed as a Group 3 carcinogen (cancer causer), which means that evidence of carcinogenicity in humans is unclear. It is, however, highly suggestive, and again a substance that could contribute greatly to cancer risks if the retention period is high enough.

Islay malts contain "fusel oils", a friendly name for alcohols heavier than ethanol. These include Propan-1-ol (marketed as ink remover) and isopropanol (rubbing alcohol, which can cause coma).

These are a *few* of the toxic chemicals in Islay malts.

Look, guys, I'm being buried with my bottle of Bowmore Bicentenary, which I'm opening when my son graduates grad school. I'm a devotee. I'm one of the "good guys". And you still need to be careful.

Let's say someone came up with an "Instant Ardbeg!" mixture, like those Propel or Crystal Light tubes that one adds to a vial of water to make a refreshing drink. This would be one that you would add to vodka or Bacardi 151 to make Ardbeg, and it would contain extract of roofing tar, ink solvent, drugstore rubbing alcohol, and a bunch of other stuff ordered through your chemical supplier. Open a packet, pour it into a bottle of vodka, and, voila! Ardbeg. This is not impossible. It's all just chemistry, and the congeners that separate Ardbeggeddon (of which I was one of the stakeholders) and pure grain vodka make up *far* less than

1% of the total. Someone is bound to do this at some point. What would you say? Would you say, "Barkeep, another round of Ardbeg-In-An-Instant with a chaser of copier paper toner fluid!" (also there)? Or would you say, "I'll take a red wine, please!" *Look* at my single malts pages (the mcgees.org link below) and ask people like Bushido about my palate. I know what I'm talking about. And this stuff will kill you. It's only historical accident that allows it on the shelves at all.

If you don't care, fine, f**k it. You have to die some way, right, and a nice '68 Bow or a 1975 Ardbeg are a hell of a way to go. I'm not trying to rain on your parade. But "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" and -- guys? -- methanol (put your favorite Islay through a mass spec) is an optic nerve toxin.

Reply to
Joshua McGee

Dear God - if you know anything about Macallan, please keep it to yourself. :-)

Gladys.

Reply to
Gladys

I find Guinness Stout to make an excellent chaser.

Reply to
Nick Cramer

You can call me bill.

You mean, back-of-the-envelope calculations? This should be fun.

Well, that's the first definition of phenol in my dictionary. Also known as carbolic acid. The second, however, is "any hydroxil derivative of an aromatic hydrocarbon," which may or may not have similar properties to carbolic acid.

Extrapolating mouse studies to humans is always problematic. That's why human trials are required before pharmaceuticals are approved for human use.

That's the anticipated level of the Octomore, I believe. Available Islays peak at around 50 ppm. Most have considerably less.

Fear not, I bring good tidings.

Consuming a liter of Islay in an evening *is* unheard of in my circle, such as it is. But let's say it's practical, that I have a big budget and I'm in Las Vegas, attending the Arbegeddon. And let's say I have an endless supply of the (still unreleased, as far as I know) Octomore and drank a whole liter without falling off the balcony. I'd take in 80 mg of phenols. And let's assume it's the carbolic acid form of phenol rather than less harmful compounds.

That's well short of the fatal range of one to 15 grams of phenol cited elsewhere (much higher levels have been observed that were not fatal). In fact, I'd have to consume 12.5 litres of Octomore in order to reach a single gram. But I'd have to do it very quickly, since phenol leaves the body in the urine within 24 hours of consumption. By the time I got started on the second liter, I'd be shedding phenol from the first liter at an impressive rate with frequent trips to the urinal. As long as I managed to stay awake.

Now, in order to reach the 44-gram lethal level you postulate, I'd have to consume 175 litres. I do believe a number of other things would kill me before the phenols.

I do.

"Studies in humans and animals show that most phenol that enters the body through the skin, by breathing contaminated air, or eating food, drinking water, or taking products that contain phenol leaves the body in the urine within 24 hours."

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(That's what I call a citation, by the way. You know, a link back to a respectable authority.)

Yes, indeed. Luckily, that's not the case.

(More cheerful nonsense snipped)

Help me out here. You're scheduling your funeral for the day your son graduates grad school? Will you be drinking any of the Bicentenary first? If not, I can provide you with a mailing address.

snip, snip.

Very impressive collection. Not quite up to Bushido's, mind you. Here's his wall of malts, from the last time he updated it:

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Bushido hasn't been around for a while. I used to exchange bottles with him when he hung out here. If there's one person who's responsible for my taste in single malts, it's Bushido. Any idea what he's up to lately?

Oh, I believe you know your malts. OTOH, I think you might have dropped in here just to make a bit of fun of the rubes.

And a happy historical accident it was.

That should be *is* a fine way to go, technically.

I see.

Nice post, but if you're planning to hang around, I hope the rest of 'em will require a bit less work.

cheers.

Reply to
bill van

Writing from the bottom up:

No, the point is that I can still enjoy it. But I chose one chemical to analyze. There is indeed methanol, for instance, in Islay malts.

You've treated me like a troll, but with no good justification -- for instance, by correcting my grammar on the sentence on which I added a second whisky upon edit, and forgot to change the conjugation, *surely* a sign that I am an idiot or troll, right? As I said, I'm not here to rain on anybody's parade. You can do what you want with your bodies. But the toxins are manifold in Islay whisky, one of the majors being *ethanol*

*itself*.

Yes, I correspond with him.

No, you would be mistaken on that. Look, I've been 'round the block enough to know that an infidel in a religious ng will be treated with disdain. I *am* one of the cognoscenti -- I *was* one of the converted

-- and I've changed my ways. In time, maybe you will, too. If not, best of luck to you and your organs.

Reply to
Joshua McGee

No, that's not true. I've treated you like one of the elder gods, back for a stroll among the peasants, who would be pleased of his company should he choose to stay and talk a while.

No. Settle down now. No one has a called you a troll, nor an idiot. But I have called your little bluff about phenols and lethal doses.

I took it as some kind of entertainment for the group. If you're going to persist with that crap, you'll have to be much, much better.

No, that's not acceptable. You tried to float this earlier. I certainly thought it was a clever joke, but it has been well discredited.

Tell him bill from Vancouver extends greetings, the bill who was very happy to discover Bush Pilot's Private Reserve.

You puff up your importance without reason. If you'd like to be an infidel in our "religious" news group you'll have to earn your status. Posting a bunch of stuff as you did, seeing it countered and pretending the counter-posts didnt exist and that you don't need to respond, is particularly weak.

You're saying you liked Islays but no more, Islays kill people? You have proved zero of your assertions with not a shred of credibility. In fact, I'm beginning to think Bushido wouldn't give you the time of day.

Go ahead, change my mind.

Reply to
bill van

Yeesh - Phenol? Carbolic acid or not, there's a fused ring there that plays hob with body chemistry.

This post strikes a chord with me. My intro to Islays was just over a year ago, at a wake for someone who died young, of cancer. We each got a sample of his favorite daily dram, Laphroaigh 15, which is what started me on SMS's in general.

Reply to
Mike Russell

Thank you, this is more of the response I was looking for. Yes, phenol, methanol, various heavy alcohols: essentially industrial sludge mixed with vodka.

I *agree* that it can be delicious. But one might want to become a "spitter" (I wish this were destigmatized, in tasting, as it is in wine) or to limit south shore Islays to rare, half drams.

My point about the historical accident is that if I marketed a vodka additive consisting of engine grease, paint thinner, Sterno, etc., and tried to put it on the shelf, they would put me away.

One recitation does not a study make -- to make it very clear for Bill, neither Mr. Russell (I presume) nor I are saying that Laphroaig alone killed Mr. Russell's friend -- but if you are going to drink to excess, or even to moderation, pick a cane other than an Islay malt against which to lean.

The distillery I collect now? Littlemill. Nice, unassuming, triple- distilled Littlemill. It's not health food, but it's not sludge, either. I don't know if Bill has responded (I've kf'd him, and he may have done the same to me) but alcohol poisoning, as anyone who has attended university is fully aware, is very real. No need to add sludge into the recipe.

Reply to
Joshua McGee

Dear sir,

Please add me to your your killfile, as I find your suggestion that Islay whiskys are phenol, methanol, various heavy alcohols: essentially industrial sludge mixed with vodka, to be so much sheep dip. Thank you. Have a nice rant.

Reply to
Nick Cramer

The only time I read any of Joshua McGee's BS is when someone quotes it.

Reply to
Nick Cramer

You speak as though I have a track record of polemics. This is the first time I've sought -- kindly -- to warn fellow aficionados of their intake of toxic materials.

What you may have read of me on the topic are, say, my malts reviews (wherein I rave about many Islay malts), the Single Malt Scotch pages on Wikipedia, bottle reviews and answers to valuation questions in the history of this newsgroup, comments on the PLOWED site, quotes on other fans' pages, etc. Find *one* example of me polemicizing. You won't, because I haven't.

I find the response I've received remarkable. I expected, "We know it's killing us, now f*#k off!" I didn't expect, "Islay malts aren't toxic, how dare you say so!?" Are you *really* ignorant of the toxicity of what you are consuming? Smokers aren't, and they keep doing it.

I'd be done here, but I want to hang around to give pointers to anyone who might be worried that they are poisoning themselves, as I was poisoning myself. So sure, I'll killfile you if you would like. And anyone who may want to give me a few seconds' attention rather than presuming that I'm a troll, I'm here to help. It should be clear how to reach me in my address, or from my web pages.

Reply to
Joshua McGee

I didn't remember him. Perhaps he was here before I wandered in maybe 10 years ago. You've encountered him before?

Reply to
bill van

No, Bill. His recent spate of holier-than-thou drivel was enough for me. I enjoy most spirits, several wines and a few beers. I tasted methanol in my early teens. I know the difference!

Reply to
Nick Cramer

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