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The Arran Port Cask Is beautiful.

Bourbon is almost a completely different category of drink from Scotch and Irish whisk(e)y. There's little point, IMHO, comparing bourbon to Scotch (or Irish) whisky. Not that bourbon isn't as worthy as Scotch or anything; it's just a totally different drink. Bourbon has a character not found...

It's an academic research lab so free-thought and "playing" is encouraged to an extent. The caveat is that if you actually stumble on anything interesting the uni owns the intellectual property.

"Robertsons of Pitlochry" http://robertsonsofpitlochry.co.uk/ Pitlochry is a fair old drive from Linlithgow, mind.

I've often wondered if I could "evolve" a super tolerant yeast over a couple of years, just starting with the generic **** we have in the lab. The good thing about my job is that if I'm producing the results in my "real" work, nobody bothers too much if I'm messing about in my downtime. In fact...

No probs. We have scales accurate to a milligram at work. The kind that you have to operate within an enclosed glass case. To be accurate you have to blast the subject with air before weighing and reweighing because even dust can corrupt your results. The only yeast we have is generic...

There are better whisky shops in Scotland than the ones found in Edinburgh. A favourite of mine that I try to visit once a year is a wee place in Pitlochry. Not the main booze shop there, this place looks more like a grocers from the outside. In fact, it's stock in trade is normal corner shop...

Yup. If you go beyond 30, you very quickly get into silly money. Heard a story (from the same guy) about a Japanese businessman who visited a famous specialist whisky shop up north and spent £22,000. On four bottles of whisky. Check out Highland Park 50 year old...

I backsweeten cider with lactose. I've heard people say this makes it taste "milky". Nonsense, IMO. I don't even see why it would. Lactose is just a sugar, and like most sugars has little flavour other than sweetness. "Milky" qualities in food and drink are due, mainly, to lipids. If you're...

Can't find them. Tell you what though, I'll repeat the experiment starting tomorrow because it's shaping up to be a slow day.

There's a much wider variety of flavours in Scotch. Sweet heather honey in Aberfeldy; meaty smokiness in Lagavulin; the TCP of Laphroaig; salty Bunnahabhain. Also, forget age statements. They're largely meaningless in terms of flavour. A 15 from a particular distillery may taste markedly...

I'll have them somewhere. I'll have a look tomorrow. I don't brew for a living by the way. I work in a biological lab. This was just a wee personal experiment. As a semi-relevant piece of trivia - the same thing happens when people lose weight. The majority of the carbon - and therefore the...

Not sure. I didn't record the amount of sugar I put in. I really just cobbled it together to test the idea, in principle, of measuring alcohol content from loss of mass, so I only weighed the complete set up. I should have tested the attenuation, actually, as it would have been trivial to do so...

A few months back at work I knocked up a simple fermentation in a 2L erlenmeyer flask. Just sucrose, yeast and water. Not for drinking, just to test an idea. Using precision scales, I weighed the set up at the beginning and end and calculated the alcohol produced based on the mass lost in CO2. I...

I'm out. There's clearly no comprehension of the point I was trying to make.

Okay. Okay. You're winding me up. I was falling for it there. "Maths isn't logical". Hahaha. Good one.

Unbelievable.

Are you serious?

It's not a mathematical law. It's a mathematical rule/convention. There's an important difference. My point was that the puzzle presents itself as a logic problem when, in fact, its about general knowledge. Logic problems can be solved a priori. This problem needs knowledge of the BODMAS...

Can you actually read?