#also only included england and not the uk/britain bc like......

[menlove]

out of curiosity bc I want to know if it really is Just the US and our poor education system or if it's an issue for other western majority English speaking countries as well so.....

[thefisherqueen]

I came across the surname Baskerville in a text completely unrelated to Sherlock Holmes (in a book about wild camping), and it's gives some really interesting insight into the history and present state of UK inherited titles and landownership so thought I would share!

'William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066 and then made himself king. It was like any other invasion of conquest, in any other time or realm. King Harold the Second was dead. Long live the King. Life goes on. But there was a difference. New laws saw all of the land seized by the Crown - a relatively unique development in the history of conquest. Sasxon barons were replaced by the Norman lords and their allies. The Domesday Book - the most definitive land registery document every devised - was produced on William's orders in 1086 to identify the new owners and their land holding and what they might owe, in tax, favour and loyalty, to the king: the sovereign Landlord.

Landownership had worked broadly in the same way ever since our ancestors abandoned the nomadic life, and took up the shovel and plough about 10.000 BC. What the Normans changed in Britain was the communal right of access over the land. That system of non-communal access is still very much in force today amoung the modern-day descendents of the Normans. Which is why William's 1086 census - the Domesday Book (and its modern version, the Land Registry) - remains so important. It serves as a legal document that established ownership by the legal holder of the title.

My research into where I could roll out a sleeping bag today meant looking at landownership. I discovered that very little had changed sinde the Norman invasion. Just 0,6 per cent of the population still owns 50 per cent of the British land, and most of this elite are the descendants of the 11th-century Norman aristocracy.

A report - "Who owns Britain?' - by Country Life magazine in 2010 was said to be the most detailed survey of its kind in over 100 years. The research claimed that just 1200 aristocrats and their families own 20 million of Britain's 60 million acres of land. The top private landowner in Europe was the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, who owned 240.000 acres in England and Scotland. Research by the London School of Economics in 2013 claimed that the Normans who conquered England - with surnames Baskerville, Darcy, Mandeville and Montgomery - still dominate the student rolls for Oxford and Cambridge universities, still make up a large proportion of the elite that holds the prime positions in professions such as medicine, law and politics. They also control a good number of the political agencies, public bodies and charitable organisations that oversee rules regulating land management and access.

But 1066 was about more than Saxon lords losing their holdings. It was how it affected the peasants that mattered most. The common rights over common lands like Sherwood Forest and the Kentish Weald were gone. Those rights included the right to roam over woodlands, marshes, moors and coasts of many common areas; to graze animals, collect wood for fuel, tools and buildings, to eat fruits, to collect water from rivers and streams, to catch fish and generally to do all the things that made it possible to live off the land."

From: Wild camping. Exploring and sleeping in the wilds of the UK and Ireland, by Stephen Neale, page 29

I've been to the UK several times for hiking trips, and I remember being puzzled by the system of access to nature at first. It is quite bewildering to be just walking on a perfecty good path, only to suddenly find it fenced off, with aggressive signs warning walkers to KEEP OUT!!! Why are hikers treated with so much suspicion even in areas famous for its good hiking? And what do you mean by Right of Way? How come there's major roads and motor cross terrains within a national park? (turns out they are largely privately owned). Myself, I've never been shy to climb the occasional wall or fence, and pitch my tent somewhere even on private lands. I consider it my own gentle way of resisting the very idea of private property, which creates so much inequality. I've never yet faced any trouble for it, by the way. Turns out land owners have little desire to actually hike on their lands, especially in rain or cold or darkness, and the people who work for them are usually not payed enough to care about a lonely hiker who is causing no disturbance or damage whatsoever xD

[entity9silvergen]

I recently asked reddit for some LGBT history from countries other than the US. Here’s what I got:

Germany

The Weimar Republic was surprisingly accepting of "alternative lifestyles."

During the Weimar Republic, Germany had a pretty active LGBTQ scene, with some major films and songs being produced, despite it still being illegal at the time. However, there was also a push to decriminalize homosexual behavior which sadly wasn't passed as the Nazis came to power.

This was based of two factors: after WW1 the authoritarian culture of Prussia sorta received a long overdue pushback. People were kinda sick of it, especially since these losers led them into a seemingly pointless war to begin with. Second: A LOT of men died in WW1 - and the army did not exactly prefer LGBT people. So with a lot of regular folks dead, the percentages of the total populace was sorta shifted. This also pushed the women's rights movements at the time for a similar reason.

Magnus Hirschfeld was helping trans people transition, crossdressers get crossdressing 'licenses', and generally advocating for and helping the LGBT community in the early 1900s in Germany. Nazis ended up raiding and burning down his research institute.

Hirschfeld was a gay polyamorous man. He was one of the first advocates for trans and gay rights but his work was destroyed by the Nazis.

The institute he headed even did the first modern gender affirming surgeries. The institute was destroyed and many people who were there (including the first known person to undergo complete MtF surgery) were killed by the nazis and the place was little more than bombed out ruins at the end of the war.

More information on the institute

Pre Nazi interwar Germany (Weimar Republic)  was pretty open when it came to not only sexuality, but also gender identity. The Nazis put a stop to that & tried to destroy any & all research into either, but, for a brief moment, it was there.

Russia

Pretty sure all Russian LGBT history was erased before we even had a written language, but Russia almost got gay marriage legalized in the first soviet constitution (didn’t happen bc Stalin)

The early soviet period (pre-Stalin) is sometimes called “the first sexual revolution” as opposed to America’s “sexual Revolution” of the 60’s. Broad women’s suffrage, female employment and education, parental leave, advancement of GSM rights & decriminalization of abortion. This unfortunately did not stand the test of time & reactionary sentiment.

Additional Source

UK/ Britain/ England 

The lead singer of Judas Priest is gay. The commenter’s father thought it was kinda funny because it didn’t match with his biker aesthetic, but the commenter doesn’t think he considered how much leather he wears on a daily basis

Hell bent for Leather was a track off Killing Machine. It was written by lead guitarist Glenn Tipton (who is straight), but it's fun to find alternative meanings in Priest songs. A second commenter likes to pretend a lot of the lyrics Halford sings are gayer than they actually are.

A couple people mentioned how uncomfortable it was seeing Ru Paul interact with British drag queens because he barely knows anything about British culture.

Ru Paul got angry that a British drag queen hasn’t seen the Golden Girls because “it’s gay culture” and then not five minutes later someone had to explain to him who Alan Turing was.

Alan Turing, who was an incredibly noteworthy figure (He made the Enigma codebreaker machine, which broke the code that was used by Nazis during the war and basically sped up the war by a significant margin. He also set the foundations for artificial intelligence, one achievement he was named for: the Turing Test), was homosexual and prosecuted multiple times because of it

Shakespeare was probably bisexual (some of his sonnets had homoerotic subtext/were sent to a younger man). Plus, Hamlet is gay as fuck. 

Sonnet 46 was very gay. Here’s a link!

King James 1st was corrupt and used his position to promote his gay lover to higher positions than he should've gotten. 

The 13 year old king James 6th of Scotland and 1st of England fell in love with a 37 year old catholic Franco Scottish man. The king gave the older man so much free shit that other lords started getting salty and his lover ended up converting to Presbyterianism out of loyalty to his young lover. He also fell in love with a man who ''was noted for his handsome appearance as well as his limited intelligence.'' 

Clearly James was into himbos, and women too.

He had a secret tunnel connecting his bedroom to George Villiers’s bedroom.

His relationship with Villiers was basically common knowledge and a source of much amusement and mockery. He also once said that his relationship with Villiers was equivalent to the relationship that Christ had with John the Baptist

Much more recently, there's obviously JKR and the banning of puberty blockers and Margaret Thatcher opposing LGBTQ+ rights by passing a law meaning you couldn't 'promote homosexuality'. 

Prince Philip was a racist twat (and probably a huge homophobe knowing him).

Gay marriage only became legal in 2014.

The Wolfenden Report was published in 1957, and it recommended the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults. It was a huge topic of public debate, and ultimately led to the Sexual Offences act of 1967, which legalized sexual acts between consenting men aged 21 or over in England and Wales (sexual acts between women were never explicitly criminalized). Scotland decriminalized sex between men in 1980, and Northern Ireland in 1982. 

For a totally batshit real-life bit of gay history, check out the show A Very English Scandal. It's about a politician, Jeremy Thorpe, who put a hit out on his former lover who was threatening to go public with the fact they had had a relationship. 

Austria

Gay marriage was legalized in Austria about 3 years ago. The worst thing is that it'd have staid illegal if the Supreme Court wouldn't have jumped in and declare it to be unconstitutional.

Austria did have something called "partnership" which was where gay couples could officially register with the state as couples but not receive any of the benefits of married het people

They still have super backwards Transphobic laws requiring for example "real life experience" to get even diagnosed. Basically you're forced to be and live as feminine/masc as possible and a doctor them judges if you're femme or masc enough. It's torture

Australia had widespread, over 60% approval of gay marriage for well over a decade before the government legalized it. The governments were actually going against the people for a very long time by denying it.

Taiwan/ Hong Kong/ Mainland China

When Taiwan recently legalized gay marriage, their official statement was something along the lines that they were casting off Western-imposed values and returning to their own traditional values and the entire western lgbt community ridiculed them in a "if that's what you need to tell yourself" sort of way but it's actually the truth. 

Prior to western colonization, the Imperial Chinese attitude toward sexuality was not dissimilar to Greco-Roman attitudes in that a man must marry a woman to beget legitimate heirs but whatever else he does on the side is his own business. It wasn't until Victorian colonizers came along and imposed homophobic attitudes on China that China started treating gays like abominations. In Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, as indeed most of the world, homophobia is a western value imposed by colonizers.

Bonus history: there is an actual saying in Arabic that was in widespread use across the Middle East and North Africa for thousands of years from classical antiquity until European colonization. The saying goes "Women are for babies, [young men] are for fun."

The commenter specifies that this means “college-aged twinks,” not children

Another commenter speculates about when homophobia arose in China and how. They also add that in Rome, bottoms were stigmatized. 

There’s a story of Emperor Ai of the Han dynasty & him cutting off his sleeve for his boyfriend

There is also a god worshipped in Taiwan, the Rabbit God Tu'er Shen, whose domain is managing love and sex between same-sex attracted people. He is meant to be the incarnation of a soldier from the 17th century, who fell in love with an imperial inspector and spied on him bathing, and was tortured and killed by that official because he was offended by the spying. A villager from the soldier's hometown dreamed that Tu'er Shen appeared to him and said that because his crime had been love, he had been appointed to manage the affairs of gay people. The villagers erected a secret temple to the soldier, and people have been praying to him ever since.

South Africa

South Africa became the first nation in the world to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation in its constitution. It was also first country in Africa to legalize same sex marriage in 2006. What really set them back for so long was apartheid.

There is some speculation that that Shaka Zulu was gay since he never took any wives

South Africa's post Apartheid constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1996.

South Africa was also the 5th country in the world and only country in Africa to legalize same sex marriage in 2005.

Even before that the Constitutional Court ruled that sexual orientation was not relevant when deciding child custody in 2002.

Transgender folks have been allowed to change their sex in the population registry since 2003.

Conversion therapy is not illegal yet and public opinion still needs some work.

Spain

In Spain gay marriage was legalized in 2005, now they are considered one of de gay-friendliest countries in the world. The commenter is a lesbian and has never been closeted or directly experienced discrimination for being a lesbian.

In July 2005, Spain became the third country in the world to explicitly legalize gay marriage, after a thirty-year struggle following the fall of Franco's dictatorship, during which most activism was carried clandestinely (as it was illegal).

From 2007 onwards, Spanish [binary] trans people can legally correct the name and sex fields of their IDs and currently, there's a push for a law that would allow for legal recognition of non-binary Spaniards.

Despite the dictatorship in the 60s, there were cinemas that specialized in gay meet ups. Trans women also had ways to get passports so they could go to the US for surgery.

Ireland

In Northern Ireland, same sex marriage only became legal in 2020 and the leader of the most popular party is homophobic transphobic racist and sexist af. In fact, the majority of the party are but some of the quotes from the biggest party leader are depressing.

Same-sex marriage was only legalized in Ireland in 2015. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1993. 

When Ireland legalized same sex marriage by popular vote in 2015, it was still something you got horribly bullied for in schools if you were out. Queer people got an apology from the Taoiseach in 2018, for the suffering and discrimination we faced from the State prior to the legalization of homosexuality.

In the case of trans rights, in 2015 the Gender Recognition Act was signed into law. It allows legal gender changes without the requirement of medical intervention or assessment by the state as long as you are over the age of 18. 

Ireland has fines and jail time for anyone found guilty of attempting conversation therapy. 

Ireland has seen a lot of progress in LGBT rights in the last 6 years but even up to the 2000s, citizens left their family members and friends to rot for being LGBT+. It still happens all over the country, especially in circles that are still fanatically Catholic. As the Catholic Church has lost the iron grip on the country, people have become more accepting of the LGBT+.

India

The Kamasutra(ancient text on sexuality etc.) has an entire chapter dedicated to homosexuality

The Arthashastra, a 2nd century BCE Indian treatise on statecraft, mentions a wide variety of sexual practices which, whether performed with a man or a woman, were sought to be punished with the lowest grade of fine. While homosexual intercourse was not sanctioned, it was treated as a very minor offence, and several kinds of heterosexual intercourse were punished more severely.

Sex between non-virgin women incurred a small fine, while homosexual intercourse between men could be made up for merely with a bath with one's clothes on, and a penance of "eating the five products of the cow and keeping a one-night fast"

Milk, curd (cheese), ghi (clarified butter), urine, and dung are the five products of a cow

The commenter adds that this is not a terrible punishment.

The Mughal Empire mandated a common set of punishments for homosexuality, which could include 50 lashes for a slave, 100 for a free infidel, or death by stoning for a Muslim

On 6 September 2018 the Supreme Court of India invalidated part of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code making homosexuality legal in India

Prior to the British colonization of India homosexuality was not all that looked down upon when compared to what happened when the British took over and instituted anti gay laws.

The Hijra (literally means third gender) were seen as normal and have been accepted since long before Christ, as evidenced by the Karma Sutra. The British took videos of them to take back to demonstrate how the Desi were “barbaric”.

Bonsia

In Bosnia, there was a one pride parade that ended with religious extremists ruining it and the police not doing anything. It was supposed to be 5 maybe 3 days long but ended in like 1 or 2.

The Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe mapped out the entire night sky with only his eyes. It laid the foundations of many later scientists, such as Isaac Newton. He was a very rich nobleman, so much so that he owned 1% of Denmark's money. He had a pet dwarf that apparently could see the future, which sounds pretty gay. He was also part of the Elefant Ordning, which consisted of rich and strong Danish men.

Philippines 

Despite many attempts to legalize same-sex marriage, the Philippines still didn't budge. Being gay in itself is legal, but same-sex marriage still isn't.

Philippines ,the most Catholic Country in Southeast Asia, has held the largest Pride Parade in Southeast Asia.

Serbia

Serbia didn't have history from about 16th century to 1800's when the 1st revolt happened and failed till 1813's... Then yet another in 1830's for semi independence from Turks, and full in 1836

During the last lingering Ottoman rule over autonomous Serbia, Serbia was one of the very first few countries to have legal mostly everything... it then got removed with like 3 constitution changes and then it didn't move forward for a looong time

Switzerland

Would you have thought that small, conservative Switzerland was a center of the international gay community during the mid-20th century? The magazine "Der Kreis"- the circle - was the only queer magazine in the world that kept publishing during WWII. It was edited in Zurich and distributed internationally, which often meant illegal smuggling, even into nazi Germany. The magazine's annual ball was attended by hundreds of gay men from all over Europe each year. The whole thing was kept strictly secret from the public, though it was known and tolerated by the police.

The Kreis club disbanded in 1967, as repressions grew heavier after a number of murders in the scene had caught the public's attention. By then, other European and American groups took its place, publishing their own magazines.

They made a movie about it.

More info about Der Kreis

As of today, Switzerland doesn't allow gay marriage. A country-wide referendum will be held this fall on gay marriage.

The commenter speculates that gay marriage will be legalized.

A few people expressed surprise that Switerland is socially conservative and several people explained that women’s right to vote was only place in the 70s.

There’s a movie about it

Turkey

A Muslim Persian (born in modern day Turkey) philosopher/mysticist named Mewlana who is known for his sayings on acceptance and love for one another was gay! He had exchanged letters with his instructor Shams and wrote homoerotic poems to him! In Turkey this is ignored by many due to the country's stance on homosexuality

More information

Norway

The commenter’s hometown and the neighboring town arranged their first pride parade/event in 2017, which is a big deal for a small place and one of the local priests went livid and went straight to the newspaper and social media to condemn it. A local rapper wrote a short and to the point article in the newspaper calling him out for all kinds of things which was a great read. Then to top it off, the priest arranged for a "Jesus Parade" in protest to be held the day before the pride parade. Only like five people walked in it, not including the priest of course because he happened to be on vacation in Spain that week. The pride parade itself was a success though! It's become an annual event. Covid has put some breaks on it though, but they're making a documentary this year about the pride celebrations.

Hungary

Hungary has no same sex marriage or transition rights

Police are unkind to protestors

During “commie times,” being queer was illegal so queer people went to the gulag

Belgium

Same sex marriage was legalized in Belgium in 2003 (right after the NL who were the first in the world). The commenter says that same-sex marriage has always felt possible and she is confused about other countries’ actions.

Poland

Polish president on public assembly: 'LGBT is not people, this is ideology'.

Denmark

WHO took their sweet time declassifying being transgender as a mental illness, so Denmark got sick of waiting and became the first country to stop classifying it as an illness.

Australia

In Australia same-sex marriage wasn't legal until 2017.

Portugal

Portugal is know for having one of the most (if not THE most) peaceful revolutions in history back in the 60's, with only 4 deaths total.

Canada

Operation Soap.

Mexico

To learn more, watch Dance of the 41 on Netflix.

Netherlands

NL was one of the first countries to legalize gay marriage in 2001

Sweden

In Sweden they used to classify Homosexuality as a disease during the 20th century so in protest people would call in too gay to work.

New Zealand

When same sex marriage was legalized, the parliament broke into song.

The song

Other

Homosexuality is illegal in 73 countries, some by death or life in prison.

Only one country in Asia has legalized same-sex marriage: Taiwan

FNAF is older than same-sex marriage in the US

Condor Operation

I think this is some important stuff so please reblog so more people can see! And, if you would like to add to or correct anything here, feel free to do so!

[sugainmycoffee]

Yoonmin Fandom Metrics

 Last month a survey was conducted to analyze the metrics of the Yoonmin fandom. Here are some of the responses:

Of these 903 responses, 826 of them (92%) of the respondents had selected that yoonmin are their only ship, their main ship or one of their main ships. This group is the one that will be focused on for the rest of this analysis. (Also was that one person lost? Did you get home okay?)

Of this focus group who mainly ship yoonmin, the bias distribution was:

Unsurprisingly, Min Yoongi and Park Jimin, the two individuals responsible for the YOON and the MIN in yoonmin, came out as the top two biases’. 

However, Min Yoongi, with a staggering count of 453 votes (55%) heavily outweighed all the other members, hereby proving that he was in fact not fucking around when he claimed “Sorry mom, your son’s too popular,” in his Mic Drop verse. 

As a follow up to these results, respondents provided their second bias (if any) to help the other members stand a chance against Rap God Min Yoongi. 

(He still took a whopping 23% of the votes). 

The most interesting part about these graphs is that it alludes to the fact that most yoonmin stans bias Yoongi (not Jimin, although he is obviously second in rank). This is probably due to the fact that of the “popular” bangtan ships, Jimin’s name comes up multiple times. Thus Jimin stans are more evenly split in who they ship Jimin with, but there are not that many “popular” Yoongi ships.

A little more detail on the focus group and how they came to stan bts and ship yoonmin is summarized in the following graphs.

BTS’ popularity has grown exponentially, with the greatest increase seen from 2014-2015 due to the release of their HYYH series. A parallel trend was observed in this analysis with the growth of the Yoonmin Fandom.

The next part of the survey focused on “Secondary Fan Creations” as Mr. Bang likes to call them. This includes but is not limited to: fan art, fan fiction, photo edits, video edits, blog posts, memes and so forth.

The results show that 99% of us are on Tumblr for the right reasons.

In terms of creating fan content, 31% of the respondents bless us on the daily with their contributions to the fandom. (Amen.) The rest of the majority enjoys and wishes to contribute to doing the lord’s work. 2% of the respondents who consider yoonmin their main or only ship do not create or want to create fan content because they think it is wrong (and that’s okay - to each their own). 

The next question was the most revealing and one of the most important to this analysis. Of the 861 responses, 640 voted that the reason they ship yoonmin is due to their relationship / interactions themselves. Only 2-4% of the respondents said they shipped yoonmin because of how they look together/aesthetics, fan content, external influences, or the availability of yoonmin materials in the fandom itself. This outright disproves the common (and tired) anti-yoonmin stan (and “rare pair” stan) claims that yoonmin is usually shipped for these reasons.  

Of the 30 respondents that chose “other” their reasons often eluded to specifics moments / interactions by yoonmin. Some of the more notable mentions are:

“They look like they understand each other’s struggles.“

“Their real and supportive friendship, they know each other's limits and share their vulnerabilities, so soft for each other, involve each other in the most intimate parts of their life.”

“Everything?? Idk they just vibe with me best, they're lovely and sift but also savage and have a really fun dynamic that i enjoy best.. they calm me when I’m upset as well which is like surprising bc I don’t calm down easily. +their soft moments like the earlier answer.” 

“Because Yoongi is so whipped for Jimin and they look at each other like they have galaxies in their eyes“ 

“They look like they are real / they act like they are married / they honestly seem like they’re in love.” 

“the way they are with each other in general. platonic or not, they love each other, care for each other a lot and it's nice to see. “

“From what I saw, it felt very real. Like yeah, I could get that super unbreakable bond with all of the BTS ships but for some reason, Yoonmin just stuck out for me and it felt really genuine and not just for fanservice.“ 

“Just...everything” (Many of you said this or voted for multiple categories from the above so everything x 10)

“You Know” (thank you Anonymous, I do know :’). 

There were so many other great ones yoonmin is such a soft ship with even softER STANS istg but I won’t post them all here but you can see them in this supporting post.

It is commonly believed that ALL yoonmin stans only ship them because of the “typical” subby bottom jimin/ dom top yoongi stereotype. The data below proves this is untrue - as 34% of respondents don’t care at all or like all dynamics equally, and 18% prefer a more balanced switch relationship dynamic. Combined, the votes for these categories make up over 50% of the responses, signifying that, no, not all yoonmin stans, in fact not even the majority of yoonmin stans, ship them for this reason. 

It should be noted though that, of the 48% of fans who expressed a preference for a specific relationship dynamic, 5% preferred top jimin and 43% preferred top yoongi (so yeah, top yoongi is more popular, but only to the minority group of the stans who actually have a specific dynamic preference).

Similar results were observed for which dynamics yoonmin stans feel are most realistic.

FANDOM FAVOURITES

Special thanks to my partner in research @syubd​ ♡ who organized and compiled the below lists of fandom faves.

Note, I have removed the “N/A” and “All” from the rank to more accurately reflect individual favourites. Furthermore, I have removed myself from the rank to eliminate an obvious bias as it is my survey most of the people who took it would be my followers (but thank you to all the people who chose me as their fave!)

TOP 10 FAVOURITE YOONMIN BLOGS

N/A - 260 votes

All YM Blogs - 107 votes

@yoonminist​ - 182 votes

@yoonmin​ - 97 votes

@foolsyoongi​ - 64 votes

@yoonminficrec​ - 48 votes

@parkjizzmin​ - 41 votes

@softeyoongi​ - 37 votes

@jimiyoong​ - 27 votes

@yoonminedit​ / @yoonminfiction​ - 25 votes (tied)

@mintysugasweet​ - 22 votes

@yoonminnet​ - 19 votes

Other - 217 votes - LIST OF OTHER MENTIONS

Comments: Congrats to all of the above! The real winner is “N/A” and “All YM Blogs” so tbh if you run a ym blog, don’t be discouraged, you all out here being amazing and we appreciate it!

TOP 10 FAVOURITE YOONMIN ARTISTS

N/A - 474 votes

All YM Artists - 107 votes

@knart95​ - 144 votes

@artofennun​ - 52 votes

@yuniizu​ - 42 votes

@kkumri​ - 30 votes

@finny-red​ - 22 votes

@NanoNoonie - 19 votes

@askjeon​ / @min_x_minmin - 14 votes

@kharys​ - 10 votes

@colorcalamity​ - 8 votes

@thaidesu - 7 votes

Other - 109 votes - LIST OF OTHER MENTIONS

Comments: Congrats to all of the above! Special shout out to literally all fan artists that share their talent with us on the daily. You make this fandom what it is!!

TOP 10 FAVOURITE YOONMIN AUTHORS

N/A - 342 votes

All YM Authors - 122 votes

@MissterMaia - 161 votes

@Sharleena - 71 votes

@sugamins/BabyLove - 70 votes

@mintsoda - 43 votes

@PrettyBoyKiller - 35 votes

@springrain21 - 29 votes

@momora - 28 votes

@staticscreen- 22 votes

@jflawless - 19 votes

@Elemir - 16 votes

Other - 475 votes - LIST OF OTHER MENTIONS

Comments: Congrats to all of the above! LOOK AT THE DAMN OTHERS LIST. SO MANY GOOD AUTHORS TO CHECK OUT!

TOP 10 FAVOURITE BTS SONGS

N/A - 9 votes

All -  23 votes

Spring Day - 41 votes

Intro: Serendipity - 24 votes

Tomorrow / Blood Sweat & Tears - 20 votes

Autumn Leaves / Save Me / Mic Drop 16 votes

Young Forever - 13 votes

Rain / I Need U - 11 votes

Pied Piper - 10 votes

Let Me Know / Baepsae - 9 votes

Lie / Sea - 8 votes

Love Is Not Over / House Of Cards / BTS Cypher 4 - 7 votes

Others - 140 votes

Comments: This category was added to the survery much later and therefore did not have as many responses as the others above. Nonetheless, there’s seems to a correlation between who you ship (yoonmin) and fave BTS song. Many of the songs on this list have “yoonmin parts in the MV/Choreo” like Spring Day and BST, or are song’s where the two have particularly shined and / or produced. (They might also just be on this list because they’re lit songs in which case truuuu I agree). 

DEMOGRAPHICS

YM SURVEY DEMOGRAPHICS: GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION

Overall, there were ym stans from 74 countries and/or regions that participated in this survey. The below countries were home to 10 or more respondents:

USA - 292 respondents

Germany - 44 respondents

Canada - 33 respondents

UK - 29 respondents

Brazil - 26 respondents

Australia - 24 respondents

Philippines - 24 respondents

England - 20 respondents

Indonesia - 20 respondents

Mexico - 20 respondents

France - 18 respondents

Portugal - 18 respondents

Italy - 14 respondents

Singapore -12 respondents

Sweden - 12 respondents

Turkey - 10 respondents

In addition 15 respondents declared “N/A” to opt out from providing their location information. 

Other - 195 respondents (Click To See Complete List of Respondent Countries)

Argentina - 5 Armenia - 1 Austria - 7 Bahrain - 1 Belarus - 1 Belgium - 2 Chile - 9 China - 2 Colombia - 5 Costa Rica - 3 Croatia - 5 Czech Republic - 5 Denmark - 5 Ecuador - 1 Estonia - 6 Finland - 9 Great Britain - 1 Greece - 6 Guatemala - 4 Hong Kong - 2 Hungary - 5 India - 8 Ireland - 7 Israel - 1 Jamaica - 1 Japan - 1 Kuwait - 1 Lithuania - 1 Macedonia - 1 Malaysia - 9 Maldives - 1 Malta - 1 Morocco - 2 Nepal - 2 Netherlands - 4 New Zealand - 5 Northern Ireland - 1 Norway - 3 Pakistan - 2 Palestine - 4 Peru - 1 Poland - 8 Romania - 6 Russia - 1 Saudi Arabia - 2 Scotland - 2 Serbia - 2 Slovakia - 5 Slovenia - 1 South Africa - 3 South Korea - 1 Southeast Asia - 1 Spain - 9 Switzerland - 4 Thailand - 3 Trinidad and Tobago - 2 Ukraine - 2 Vietnam - 2

THANK YOU ALL FOR PARTICIPATING IN THIS SURVEY!

[surly01]

The Week the World Changed: Feb. 2, 2020

Originally published on the Doomstead Diner on February 2, 2020

“Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.”

― Julius Caesar

Certain weeks in history resonate with a significance not always understood at the time, but made clearer as the days pass into months, years, and into history. The week of October 14,1066 the Battle of Hastings was fought, leading to the Norman conquest of England and the end of Anglo-Saxon rule. During the week of April 12,1861, Pierre Beauregard ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter, and with that act of sedition the beginning of America's Civil War.  The week of June 28, 1914 a Bosnian separatist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the presumptive Hapsburg heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and touched off a series of events that led to the first World War. One could make a case that the past week may join them in the ranks of infamy: the US Senate, for all intents and purposes, elevated a king; Great Britain left the European Union; and the Wuhan coronavirus, an agent of uncertain communicability but established lethality, was making its way across the globe via air routes.

After his return to Rome and settling the resultant civil war, Julius Caesar, noting the ranks of the Roman Senate had been depleted, appointed many new senators, partisans all. In this way did Caesar grease the skids for the exercise of unlimited power, to be checked only by one of history's most famous assassinations.The Senate had elevated Julius Caesar to "dictator in perpetuity" among the various titles and honors the Senate bestowed upon him, one month before his assassination in February, 44 BC.

This week we witnessed another wholly co-opted legislative body render itself impotent and hold another executive beyond the reach of law and accountability, as it decided to not entertain witnesses at Trump's impeachment trial. WaPo reports the Senate set to acquit Trump next week after bid for witnesses is defeated. Retiring 79-year old Lamar Alexander gave the game away when he folded his chin-stroking concerns. Lisa Murkowski did likewise. All 47 Democrats and two Republicans, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins, vote in favor of hearing witnesses in an impressive display of party loyalty.

Alexander thus explained himself:

I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the United States Constitution's high bar for an impeachable offense. There is no need for more evidence to prove that the president asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter; he said this on television on October 3, 2019, and during his July 25, 2019, telephone call with the president of Ukraine. There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a "mountain of overwhelming evidence."

But so what? Just to make sure you didn't miss it: Alexander (and the other Senate Rs) hold that bribery, extortion and misappropriating Congressionally allocated funds for foreign aid is A-OK. Likewise foreign interference in Presidential elections: the door is wide open. Alexander acknowledged the illegality of Trump’s actions while also concluding that those actions don't meet the standard for removal. He said there was no need to call witnesses, because the Democrats had already proved the facts of their case against Trump. It just wasn't impeachment-worthy.

One wonders what would be. It is clear, as The Guardian observed, Even a smoking gun would not be enough. House lawyers like Alan Dershowitz argued that if the President thinks that his actions are in the national interest, he can get away with anything that crosses his mind. Thus the unitary executive dream of Richard Nixon is realized: "If the President does it, it can't be illegal." The Trump team has out-brazened Nixon in withholding evidence, ignoring subpoenas, alternately bribing and intimidating jurors, and extending "executive privilege" well past all previous limits. And the Senate has effectively signed off on this, placing Trump beyond accountability or consequence.

One recognizes that A Trial Without Witnesses Is No Trial at All. Senate Republicans were quite clear that no amount of evidence was going to oblige them to remove an active felon from office, because judges, abortion, Israel, and most importantly, that sweet, sweet boodle flowing in from billionaire bunkers, Las Vegas casinos and St. Petersburg banks, all of it flowing over the body politic like a steady, soothing stream of warm urine.

In the New Yorker, Susan Glasser put the Senate out of its misery with a fine article, The Senate Can Stop Pretending Now.

Alexander’s late-night statement was no real surprise. The “closest friend” to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—as McConnell made sure to point out to the Times, earlier this week—Alexander ended up where most Senate Republicans were always expected to end up. He criticized Trump but refused to vote to remove him from office. After making that decision, Alexander went a step further and said that there was no real need to hear any of the evidence that Trump has so far successfully ordered his Administration not to provide. Even the last-minute revelation, on Sunday night, in the Times, of Bolton’s unpublished manuscript, could not sway Alexander; he knew enough.

When your mind is made up, who needs additional evidence? One marvels at the way that fear of Trump has knuckled these solons. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy noted on TV that there appeared to be two impeachment trials: for Democrats, one about Trump's crimes; and for Republicans, one about the malfeasances of the "deep state" and the "fake news media." Apparently "laws" only account when Repugs can use them as weapons on Dems. And while on the subject of "laws," let's not forget that Rand Paul, that human pustule with a bad toupee, tried to work the alleged whistle-blower’s name into a question on the Senate floor. John Roberts woke from his otherwise deep sleep to have none of that. So Paul took to a press conference and to Twitter to reveal the whistleblower's supposed identity. That used to be a crime.

And Charlie Pierce, in Lamar Alexander Has Ushered in the Age of Fearful Men, gets it exact:

Late Thursday night, Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, pretty much sank the effort to have witnesses testify in the impeachment trial of the president, and Alexander did so in a statement that is going to go down in the annals of unmitigated weaselspeak…  

Alexander is being a poltroon on so many different levels here. In addition to arguing that a guilty president* is guilty but should go unpunished, Alexander is claiming that the solution to a ratfcked election is to hope the next one isn’t ratfcked. Good Christ, what a waste of a handsome piece of office furniture in the Senate chamber this man has turned out to be.

As your government slips away as surely as a cabal murdered Caesar, keep in mind thst Trump and his minions have orchestrated a limited TV series for a remarkably uninformed audience: According to the Annenberg Civics Knowledge Survey, 1 in 5 Americans can’t name single branch of U.S. government. Other findings:

In 2019, 2 in 5 Americans (39%) were able to name all three branches of government.

More than half of Americans (55%) correctly said it’s inaccurate to state that people who are in the U.S. illegally do not have any rights under the Constitution. In other words, that people who are in the U.S. illegally do have some rights under the Constitution.

More than a third of those surveyed (37 percent) cannot name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

When my daughter was in high school, I was astonished to learn that she had NOT had a civics class. Apparently some of what we used to learn in civics is covered in "US History," and we all know how well history classes were taught. By high school football coaches reading from an open textbook. So a majority of people taking their place as adults have no idea how the government is supposed to work. And they vote. Enjoy your republic.

In Brexit news, The UK has now left the European Union, after 47 years inside the bloc. The Prime minister, a lower-octane Trump, rang the gong celebrating his own success and pledged to make no concessions to the EU in negotiating necessary trade deals as he salutes ‘a turning point in the life of our nation.’ And on Brexit day one: Johnson went for broke with hardline trade deal.

No sooner had the union jacks been lowered in Brussels and Strasbourg, after 47 years of tortured British membership, than Boris Johnson was preparing to launch the UK into yet another uncompromising battle with the remaining 27 nations of the European Union.

As he hit the gong with glee, he was just flexing his muscles for more combat with the UK’s now ex-partners. There now begins an 11-month transition period during which the prime minister and his government will face the herculean task of securing a future trading and security relationship with the EU. If there is no deal by 31 December, the UK will face a cliff-edge descent into the economic unknown.

Here is a summary of the yesterday’s events:

The EU will back Spain over its territorial claims to Gibraltar in the next phase of Brexit negotiations by giving Madrid the power to exclude the British overseas territory from any trade deal struck with Brussels. The Spanish government has insisted that the Rock be included in the EU’s opening negotiating position.

Boris Johnson intends to impose full customs checks on all goods coming into the UK from the EU in a break with previous government policy, according to reports. The government’s policy had been to waive customs checks and tariffs on 87% of goods coming into the country and only impose limited checks on goods.

You might be surprised to learn that, as the Wuhan coronavirus has claimed more than 300 people in China, and several Chinese cities, including Wuhan, are under lockdown and quarantine, China has erected a hospital in Wuhan to deal with the emergency in nine days. Cases have popped up all over the world via air travelers from China.Meanwhile, here at home, the United States has never been less prepared for a pandemic. Laurie Garrett in Foreign Policy reported that Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response—not just for the public but for the government itself, which largely finds itself in the dark.

In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure. In numerous phone calls and emails with key agencies across the U.S. government, the only consistent response I encountered was distressed confusion. If the United States still has a clear chain of command for pandemic response, the White House urgently needs to clarify what it is.

In a cost-cutting fury in spring of 2018, The Trump administration, reduced $15 billion in national health spending, slashed staffing and the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. The sort of wasteful expense that gets in the way of tax cuts for the rich.

In 2017 and 2018, the philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates met repeatedly with Bolton and his predecessor, H.R. McMaster, warning that ongoing cuts to the global health disease infrastructure would render the United States vulnerable to, as he put it, the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.” And an independent, bipartisan panel formed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that lack of preparedness was so acute in the Trump administration that the “United States must either pay now and gain protection and security or wait for the next epidemic and pay a much greater price in human and economic costs.”

The Trump administration has appointed a 12-member "blue-ribbon" commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the former pharmaceutical lobbyist and pharma CEO. No idea how this task force will function or when it will even meet. This ad hoc group[ is supposed to fulfill the function of lashing together the efforts of a number of different organizations and management layers.

Bess Levin reported in Vanity Fair that from the guy who brought you attacking another country as “after-dinner entertainment” and furloughed government employees unable to afford food should “take out a loan,” comes this:

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that the coronavirus outbreak in China will help “accelerate the return of jobs to North America.”

“Well, first of all, every American’s heart has to go out to the victims of the coronavirus. So I don’t want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease. But the fact is, it does give businesses yet another thing to consider when they go through their review of their supply chain,” Ross said during an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo….

The virus has killed more than 100 people and sickened thousands, and while the cases are mostly concentrated in China, it has been detected in more than a dozen other countries, including the U.S.

Happy days are here again. So we've got that going for us.

Surly1 was an administrator and contributing author to Doomstead Diner. He is the author of numerous rants, screeds and spittle-flecked invective here and elsewhere. He lives a quiet domestic existence in Southeastern Virginia with his wife Contrary. Descended from a long line of people to whom one could never tell anything, all opinions are his and his alone, because he paid full retail for everything he has managed to learn.

[bovariesme-blog]

thoushallfadenothere

replied to your

post

:

british muses are the reasons why i have trust...

I feel like a dick for being so judgemental of them but honestly I always find they either brush over imperialism as a whole or use it purely for romanticism and being ‘edgy’. I’d also like to point out the OC you read about is not an England, it’s a Great Britain, because apparently Wales and Scotland can just be mushed into one country now

im actually aware that they are not an england. im just saying that bc i do rp an england myself and do study the country (not on tumblr tho) and even that....im just wary of how ppl rp british muses (that including the english, scots, welsh n irish folks) because most of them end up exaggerating and romanticizing the atrocities the empire did or to each other. its usually people actually from the isles that are aware of how touchy these subjects are and are more likely to handle it tastefully from what i noticed. the whole slavery thing sounds like a disgusting tory bias thing and i could honestly go off about the various movements in the uk that were prominent in tackling child abuse and feminist issues and how its incompatible with such a character. also like. they seem to confuse english culture as the only thing britain has.......which is questionable in nature

[thegrapewizard]

  If you are ever lucky enough to drive down the motorway in the garden of England and turn off one of many roads then I’m sure you’ll experience quaint little England. Nice neat houses, quiet country lanes and maybe even a fabled sloe gin hedge! But one such village, Tenterden, is witnessing a revolution. Here lies Chapel Down.

Ever since the popularity of English wine Chapel Down has been at the forefront of consumers minds for its approachable price and pleasant characteristics. This mini industry from the 388 Acres is operated from 4 vineyards. Kits Coty vineyard, Court Lodge Farm, Street Farm and a newly acquired parcel of land near Boxley.

Having visited the estate this month I was impressed by the operations, by the enthusiasm of the staff and by the range of wines. Far to short an article to list them all here!

Two things that are evident in the industry today is firstly all producers do not lay their wines down for investment and as a result omit a vintage ratings system. Secondly due to the nature of youthful wines and the lack of oak the wines are intentially made to be drunk young.

So for the majority of still and sparkling wines they are void of oak. Very few will venture into Grand Cru Chablis characteristics. It’s almost a cartel of an Anti –Oak movement. It’s a brave producer that goes alone in this embryonic industry. On the flip side drink them young and you sell more and you avoid storage costs on older wines. Costs are also recouped quicker. Forward thinking for an industry on the up. So not only does Chapel Down have prime vineyards in the heart of the garden of England (Kent) but it also produces a world-class range of sparkling and still wines, together with the award-winning range of Curious beers & cider.

Trade body Wine GB has said that it believes the UK industry, which includes vineyards across England and Wales, could be producing 40 million bottles of sparkling wine per year by 2040.How could you disbelieve them. 2018’s bottle production was 15.6 million bottles produced up from 5.9 million in 2017. Quite remarkable!

Because of their brand they supply Gordon Ramsay, The Royal Opera House, The London Symphony Orchestra, No 10 Downing Street and are the official sparkling wine of the Oxford & Cambridge Boat Races ….but all this talk of British wines! Why do we like it so much and why is it so popular? Look at the White Cliffs of Dover and you see chalky soils. Perfect climatic conditions with perfect soils. This combination allows vineyards to produce world-class sparkling wines and dry aromatic still white wines. Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Bacchus all thrive on the South Coast

Chief grape varieties at Chapel down

Chardonnay:Grown largely for sparkling wines.

Pinot Noir: The variety thrives in cool climates (UK) & produces delicate thin-skinned grapes with low tannins & an abundance of red fruit

Bacchus:England’s answer to Sauvignon Blanc. Sometimes shows punchy tropical fruit to more restrained citrus and gooseberry.

Chapel Down has its own premium of wines range :

Kit’s Coty.

The Kit’s Coty vineyard has a lime-rich chalk soil and a unique microclimate on the North Downs. It is named after the monuments to the first settlers of Britain’s earliest farming society who recognised the fertility of the land in the third millennium BC. The expansive southerly aspect ensures the vines capture the sunshine all year long while free-draining chalk soils provide the perfect condition for producing well-balanced vines and intensely flavoured fruit. 3 notable examples include:

KIT’S COTY COEUR DE CUVÉE 2013. First British wine over £100.00 per bottle.

KIT’S COTY BLANC DE BLANCS 2014 Chardonnay 40.00 per bottle.

  KIT’S COTY CHARDONNAY 2016 Wild-ferment Chardonnay, which has been matured in old French oak for nine months. £30.00 per bottle.

3 grape varieties tried and tested and worth recommending.

ROSE BRUT

  GRAPE VARIETY 100% Pinot Noir

TASTING NOTES: Fresh strawberries, cherries and redcurrants with background notes of toasty shortbread. The palate is crisp and fresh, its fine mousse contributing to the light and effortless style.

SERVING SUGGESTION : Great as an aperitif or for pairing with light pasta dishes and summer fruit desserts.

 KITS COTY BACCUS 2017

  GRAPE VARIETY: 100% Bacchus

TASTING NOTES: This very ripe style of Bacchus has guava, melon and peach aromas with background oak influence. The palate is pure and focused with more tropical flavours and an exceptional length.

SERVING SUGGESTION: An ideal pairing to white crab meat salad, asparagus risotto and lightly smoked fish.

  CHAPEL DOWN TENTERDEN ESTATE BACCHUS 2018

GRAPE VARIETY: 100% Bacchus

VINEYARDS : Fruit is sourced exclusively from the Tenterden vineyard, which is home to the oldest Bacchus vines producing the lowest yields but finest fruit.

TASTING NOTES: Aromas of lime zest and elderflower followed by a refreshing palate of juicy citrus fruit and a pure mineral finish.

SERVING SUGGESTION : A great match with Pork Belly or pair with a wide variety of seafood dishes. An ideal alternative to New World Sauvignon Blanc.

  Music Pairing

Sometimes its not just the words that matter its the vibrancy and energy that is displayed. Still as fresh as it was all those years ago….. See where I’m going with this !

(and these two need no introduction!)

  Always remember you can email me at jason@thegrapewizard.com or sign up to my website following the links on my homepage

GW

Is Chapel Down becoming the frontrunner for the English wine industry…?. English wine is set to be as big as Oregon now; in 2040! If you are ever lucky enough to drive down the motorway in the garden of England and turn off one of many roads then I’m sure you’ll experience quaint little England.

[tebbyclinic11]

The Ultimate Whiskey Guide: Everything You Need to...

New Post has been published on http://kitchengadgetsreviews.com/the-ultimate-whiskey-guide-everything-you-need-to/

The Ultimate Whiskey Guide: Everything You Need to...

amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "a8415-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "search"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Shop Related Products"; amzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = "cooking"; amzn_assoc_default_category = "Kitchen"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "51fe4d035c7af8dc5928e6f5e5b79c4e"; amzn_assoc_default_browse_node = "284507"; amzn_assoc_rows = "4"; amzn_assoc_design = "text_links";

WELCOME TO WHISKEY 

If you’re a casual cocktail drinker you probably think whiskey is just another liquor that can bring on the tipsy — Jack and Coke just about covers it, right? No. That’s wrong. Very wrong. So wrong, in fact, we’re going to have to spend the next 8,000 words going ice balls-deep into some whiskey education (with some sexy infographics!) so you can hold your own if this topic ever comes up at the bar. And don’t come at us with that I can just look at the wiki for all this talk; we’ve cherry-picked all the crucial points you’ll need to know, and put everything together into one very smooth, albeit long sip of information.

In the following Ultimate Whiskey 101, we’ll be talking about Bourbons, Scotches, Rye whiskey, Irish whiskey, blended vs. single, malt vs. grain, where the various whiskeys are from, how whiskey is made, how to drink whiskey, how whiskey flavors break down, how whiskey nomenclature works, whiskey aging, when to spell it “whiskey” and when to spell it “whisky”  — by the time you’re through with this post you’ll be able to put “passed Tipsy’s whiskey course” on your résumé. So buckle up, people. It’s time to take a seriously deep dive into the world of whiskey; don’t worry about holding your breath though, the water of life tastes fine.

WHAT IS WHISKEY? 

The most succinct, technically correct definition of whiskey you’ll find on the internet is that it’s a distilled alcohol made from fermented grain mash. Which means that some type of grain — such as barley, corn, wheat, etc. — has been taken, encouraged to grow (or germinate) by being wetted, had its growth halted by being dried, then combined with yeast in order to turn the soluble sugars (produced by the grains’ stunted growth) into alcohol — specifically ethanol.

The real interesting part about whiskey, however, is in its distillation process and how it’s aged. Once the alcohol produced from the fermentation process is produced, that could theoretically become other types of consumable booze, such as beer. But with whiskey, after the alcohol has been fermented, it is distilled in copper stills, often multiple times, which increases its alcohol by volume (ABV). The concentrated alcohol is then put into barrels where it usually sits for years.

As the whiskey sits in the barrels, it interacts with the flavorful wood via chemical interactions. The ethanol in the whiskey (which is a solvent and also the compound that gets you tipsy) dissolves the wood and picks up various flavor compounds from it, such as whiskey lactones, which tend to give whiskey a woody, coconut flavor. Over time the alcohol takes on an array of the wood’s flavors by dissolving various chemicals, and also develops its distinctive brownish caramel color, as some of the chemicals the ethanol dissolves affect pigment. (Side note: Sometimes caramel coloring additive gives the whiskey its color, but that’s not really all that classy.)

Once the whiskey has been aged — which can happen over a couple of years, or even 57 years in the case of this Glenfarclas Single Malt Scotch — it’s ready to be blended with other whiskies, water, or taken as is, and bottled. And bang, you have yourself some drinkable whiskey.

A BRIEF WHISKEY HISTORY 

Now that we have the definition down, here’s a brief history of this institutional distilled spirit made from fermented grain mash. The story of whiskey goes back more than a 1,000 years, but in the following snapshot we’re only tackling a handful of the most crucial highlights from the millennium, especially those relevant to American history.

10th and 11th Century AD: First Appearance in Scotland and Ireland

Although the first distillation of alcohol is believed to have taken place in Mesopotamia around 2,000 BC (in order to make perfumes though, not booze), making whiskey out of alcohol really began 3,000-3,200 years after that in Scotland and Ireland. As itinerant monks began to spread distillation processes from mainland Europe to monasteries in Scotland and Ireland, they had to find fermentable substitutes for grapes, which were only prevalent on the continent. Consequently, they turned to widely available grains, and the origins of whiskey were born. (Side note: Both Ireland and Scotland like to claim that whiskey originated in their respective countries, although it seems that neither country can claim definitive proof.)

Early 15th Century: First Written Record of Whiskey 

The first written account of whiskey as a unique liquor was recorded in an early 17th-century text called the Annals of Clonmacnoise, which translated a lost Irish chronicle into modern English. In the Annals, translator Conall the Historian notes that “Richard or Risdard maGranell, cheiftaine of Moytir-eolas, died at Christmas by takeing a surfeit of aqua vitae, to him aqua mortis.” Aqua vitae was a term used in the middle ages and Renaissance periods to describe distilled alcohol. It was a recycling of the eponymous archaic Latin term, which also described distilled spirits. Also, yes, the first time whiskey is ever mentioned in writing, it was because it killed a dude.

16th Century: Whiskey Production Moves Out of Monasteries and into the Mainstream in England 

After King Henry VIII of England — you know, the guy who had a bunch of wives and declared a king’s sovereignty over the church ’cause it wouldn’t give him an annulment — was excommunicated by Pope Paul III in 1538, he abolished the church’s monasteries, sending a whole bunch of monks out into the world with knowledge of how to make whiskey and no jobs. To make a living, these monks began producing whiskey in their own homes, and using the yields from their own farms, resulting in whiskey being made available to the general public.

17th Century: Whiskey Comes to the New World 

During this period European colonists began to arrive in America, and brought along with them their whiskey distillation knowhow. Scottish and Irish immigrant settlers also started to set up their own distillation operations with the New World’s grains.

18th Century: The English Malt Tax of 1725, Moonshine, and Whiskey as American Currency 

Back in Europe, England and Scotland were joined together under The Acts of the Union. After the union, taxes were raised substantially, which included the English Malt Tax of 1725. This tax forced Scottish distillers to make their whiskey covertly, at night when smoke from their stills could be hidden in darkness. The term “Moonshine,” which originated in Britain in regards to various illicit activities undertaken at night, would be applied to whiskey in this context.  (Side note: At the beginning of the 19th century, at least half of Scotland’s whiskey output was illegal.)

In America, toward the close of the 18th century, whiskey actually became used as a currency as in the post-Revolutionary War period money became scarce. Many farmers turned their corn into whiskey, and used it as a form of monetary exchange in order to speed up their migration to the West. In 1791, the newly formed U.S. government under the administration of George Washington — who eventually built his own distillery at Mount Vernon, VA pumping out 1,000 gallons a month — levied a tax on whiskey. This resulted in the Whiskey Rebellion, which saw farmers rise up against the government in opposition to the tax, although it was quickly suppressed by Washington himself leading an army of 13,000 militiamen.

George Washington leading militiamen against the Whiskey Rebellion. Image: Wikimedia / Frederick Kemmelmeyer

19th Century: An End to Scottish Moonshine 

Back in Scotland and England, the UK government passed the Excise Act of 1823, which legalized distillation of alcohol for a more reasonable fee. Subsequently, Scottish Moonshine production was effectively ended.

20th Century: Prohibition in the U.S., “Medicinal” Whiskey, and the Branding of Bourbon as America’s Official Whiskey 

With the establishment of the 18th Amendment in 1920, prohibition of all alcoholic beverages was put into place until 1933. An exception was made for medicinal whiskey, however. (Side note: This helped out the Walgreens pharmacy chain, which grew from 20 stores to nearly 400 during this period.)

Then in 1964, Congress passed legislation declaring bourbon “a distinctive product of the United States,” and effectively gave the U.S. its own whiskey type that could only be produced on American soil.

Prohibition-era prescription for whiskey. Image: Wikimedia / U.S. Treasury Dept.

WHISKEY VS. WHISKY: WTF IS UP WITH THIS SPELLING? 

Location, location, location: That’s what “Whiskey” vs. “Whisky” boils down to. Basically, whisk(e)y makers in the U.S. and Ireland spell whisk(e)y with an “e,” whereas Scotland, Japan, and Canada drop the “e.” A quick rule of thumb for remembering which countries spell whisk(e)y with an “e” is to note that both Ireland and America have an “e” in their names. So if the country has an “e” in its name, then so does its whisk(e)y. Canada, Japan, and Scotland, which don’t have an “e” in their names, don’t include the “e.”

Note that there are exceptions to this rule of thumb, however. E.g. both Maker’s Mark and George Dickel, two American producers, don’t use the “e.” Other countries outside of these five big producers — America, Scotland, Ireland, Japan, and Canada — also almost always use the “whisky” spelling over “whiskey.” (Side note: plural of whiskey is whiskeys; plural of whisky is whiskies.)

In terms of why there are multiple spellings, that’s all about the origin of the word, which is rooted in the Latin aqua vitae. Aqua vitae was the Latin term for distilled spirits, and was spread throughout Europe thanks to the Roman Empire. Aqua vitae was then translated into Irish Gaelic as uisce beatha and into Scottish Gaelic as uisge beatha. When those terms were anglicized they became whiskey and whisky respectively. Sound out uisce in your head the way you would intuitively to hear how it became whiskey.  

HOW WHISKEY IS MADE 

Now that we’ve got the name and history down, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of how whiskey is made. And when it comes to the essential process, you’re basically looking at the six following steps diagramed below.

1. Malting: 

The first step in making whiskey is known as malting. This step is all about developing the enzymes (molecular catalysts), which will eventually turn the grain’s starches into soluble sugars, which will in turn be converted into ethanol by the yeast added later.

Basically what’s happening during this step is the encouragement of grain seeds to germinate, or catalyze the process of becoming a plant. Producers want the seeds to germinate because during this process the enzymes required to turn the seeds’ starches into soluble sugars (maltose) are created. (If you want to go really deep into the science here, this page is perfect.)

In order to induce germination, the grain is soaked in warm water for around two to three days, and then spread out on the floor of a malting house. In the malting house, the grain is regularly turned by dudes with shovels to maintain a consistent temperature — sometimes big turning barrel machines perform this function as well.

Once the grain has released the enzymes necessary to turn its starches into soluble sugars, the germination process is halted with heat. Drying out the grain occurs in various ways: Many Scottish whisky makers use kilns powered by peat fires, for example, which can add a smoky flavor to the final product. (Peat is a bunch of partially decomposed plant matter.)

Now that you’ve developed the enzymes required to turn the grain’s starches into soluble sugars, and dried everything out, you have yourself some “malt.”

Inside the malting house. Above image: Wikimedia / Lakeworther

2. Mashing: 

Once you’ve ground down your malt with a mill into what’s called a “grist” — a bunch of dried, de-husked seeds that have germinated — you’re ready to mash. In this step, the grist is mixed with warm water in giant insulated containers called mash tuns.

Inside the mash tuns, the warm water encourages the enzymes in the grist to break down its starches into soluble sugars. These soluble sugars are also extracted from the seeds and pulled into the warm water, and the result is a sugary, non-alcoholic liquid known as “wort.” The wort is then strained and drained out of the bottom of the mash tuns. (Side note: There are varied processes for mashing, e.g. decoction mashing, which takes a portion of the grains from the grist, boils them, and then returns them to said grist to raise the overall temperature inside the mash tun.)

Inside a mash tun. Above image: Wikimedia / Ikiwaner

3. Fermentation: 

Once you have the wort — the liquid infused with maltose sugar — you’re ready for fermentation. This process begins by cooling the wort and passing into washback tanks, which are pictured below. At this point the yeast, which is a single-celled fungus, is added into the mix.

The yeast begins to consume the soluble sugars and produce as byproducts ethanol and CO2. Although at this point, the ethanol-containing liquid, known as “the wash,” is only a relatively paltry 5-10% ABV. To increase the ABV, the wash needs to be distilled.

If you really want to get into more detail for the fermentation step, you can read about the multiple types of washbacks that distillers like to use — which are made of wood, stainless steel, etc. — as well as the varying types of yeast that can be used. But the most crucial point to understand here is that the yeast is turning the soluble sugars into ethanol.

Above: View of washbacks. Image: Wikimedia / Avarim, Below: Yeast fermenting sugars, CO2 byproduct creating bubbles 

4. Distillation: 

Now that you have the wash, a liquid that’s 5-10% ABV, it’s time to do some distillation to up that alcohol content. This process is somewhat complex, and varied, but the essential goal here is to increase ABV by getting rid of water.

In order to concentrate the ABV of the wash, it’s dumped inside of copper stills (pictured below), which basically act as giant kettles. The stills, which in the case of pot stills are kind of shaped like vuvuzelas with their necks bent, have their bulbous bottoms heated by some type of heating element (e.g. steam). The heat vaporizes the wash inside of the stills, but because different substances have different boiling points, the ethanol, which has a boiling point of 173.1 degrees Fahrenheit, is converted into vapor while the water, which has a boiling point of 212 degrees Fahrenheit, remains a liquid.

Scotch whiskey stills. Image: Finlay McWalter

The distilled alcohol compounds fire up the inside of the still thanks to all that heat energy, hit the kink in the still’s neck, move down the thinning tube — known as the lyne arm — that eventually runs, coiled, through a tank of cold water. The cold water condenses the alcohol vapor, turning it back into a liquid that’s then re-collected.

Note that this process usually happens twice, with the wash first being heated, cooled and condensed in a wash still, and then again in a spirit still; the spirit still performs the same function, but heats up the higher ABV liquid collected from the wash still. (Side note: after the liquid is distilled the first time, it has an ABV of about 25-35% and is known as “low wines.” After the low wines have been distilled again, even perhaps a third time in the case of many Irish whiskeys, the liquid has an average ABV of about 67.5% — although this percentage varies.)

Now, that’s the essential process here, but as with everything related to whiskey, there’s usually a lot more going on. For one, the reason the stills are made of copper, or at least lined with copper, is because copper removes sulfur-based compounds from the wash, which would negatively affect the taste of the final product — for example hydrogen sulfide, which is removed by the copper, would give the whiskey a rotten-egg aroma. Some of the other chemicals that would affect the whiskey’s final flavor are also removed at this stage.

On top of all that, differently shaped stills are used for different types of whiskey in different countries, a fact discussed further in the Four Common Whiskey Types section.

5. Aging 

Finally, we get to where the majority (somewhere in the neighborhood of 60-80%) of whiskey’s flavor, and nearly all of its color, comes from — barrel aging. Again, it seems like this is a very simple procedure that only consists of pouring the distilled grain alcohol into wood barrels and letting it sit there for a few years, or perhaps decades in some instances. But this is whiskey we’re talking about, so even this step involves a crazy amount of hidden science and technique.

Basically, as mentioned in the What Is Whiskey section above, the distilled ethanol is a solvent, so over time it’s going to munch off various chemical compounds from the wood barrel, which will affect the whiskey’s flavor and color. How this munching process takes place however, varies widely depending on the type of wood the barrel is made out of, if the barrel is charred, if the barrel has been used previously to store other alcohols, the climate of the region and warehouse in which the barrels are stored, and of course, how long the alcohol is stored in the barrels.

Image of the insides of both charred and uncharred casks. Image: Flickr / rick

All of these factors will affect flavor and color, and almost all of them change depending on where in the world the whiskey is being made. For example, in the U.S., whiskey must be aged in a new charred oak barrel by law to be considered a patented Bourbon. In Scotland, many distilleries will use used Bourbon barrels from the U.S. to age their Scotch. The list of variations in method goes on and on depending on the region and particular whiskey-making organization.

As far as the essential flavor and coloring process, the alcohol is poured into the barrels with a typical cask strength of 60-65% ABV, and then it all boils down to five essential processes: extraction, evaporation, oxidation, filtration, and coloration.

Extraction: Extraction is all about the whiskey seeping into and out of the wood barrels in order to grab flavor compounds. As temperatures change, so does pressure inside of the barrel. Warmer temperatures cause an increase in pressure, forcing the whiskey into the porous membrane of the wood, where it snatches flavor compounds such as vanillins (chemical compounds that provide vanilla flavoring) and tannins (chemical compounds that provide dry, sharp flavors similar to those of wine or black tea). When the temperature cools and pressure decreases, the whiskey drips back out of the wood, bringing along those flavor compounds. To imagine this process, you can think about the wood barrel expanding and contracting as it breathes the whiskey in and out.

(Side note: Because temperature affects pressure and pressure affects the rate at which flavor compounds are gathered by the whiskey, different climates will age whiskey at different rates. For example, whiskey often ages four times faster in Kentucky than it does in Scotland, as Kentucky’s climate has much more severe swings from hot to cold.)

Evaporation: Because the wood that the casks are made of is porous, some of the alcohol inside the cask evaporates — this evaporated alcohol is known as The Angels’ Share, and usually happens to the tune of about 2% every year. Which means if you barrel age a particular whiskey for 25 years, you could lose up to half the alcohol content. Note that water can and does also evaporate; higher humidity will cause more alcohol to evaporate, lower humidity will cause more water to evaporate.

Oxidation: Oxidation is another process that occurs during the barrel aging process, which also has an effect on the final product’s flavor profile. Because the porous barrels have permeable membranes, they allow in small amounts of oxygen, which in turn react chemically with some of the compounds in the whiskey. These chemical reactions lead to the proliferation of flavor compounds, especially a group of compounds called esters, which are created during fermentation and responsible for flavors that tend to be fruity, creamy, and floral.

Filtration: In terms of filtration, we’re again talking about the way the whiskey is breathed in and out of the barrel. Because many of the barrels holding the whiskey have been burned with a flame in some fashion — e.g. charred or toasted — the wood effectively becomes a big ol’ carbon filter. As the whiskey passes into and out of the wood, that carbon filter, which works much in the same way as your water filter at home does, smooths out the whiskey and removes more unwanted chemical compounds.

Coloration: Just as the whiskey picks up flavor compounds from the wood, it also picks up chemical compounds that affect the whiskey’s color. The coloring that’s picked up is again dependent on the type of barrels used — Bourbons will usually develop darker colors than Scotches aged in barrels previously used for aging Bourbons, for example, as the barrels used the second time around for the Scotches have already lost a portion of their color-affecting compounds to the first round of Bourbons.

Whiskey, unlike wine, does not age in the bottle. At all. Whiskey only ages in the barrel. So if a whiskey that spent 25 years in the barrel was bottled in say, 1970, you don’t have a whiskey that’s now 73 years old (as of 2018) — the whiskey is still only 25 years old.

Wooden cask used for aging whiskey. Image: Yves Cosentino

6. Bottling 

Finally! Now we’re so close to having our finished whiskey product you can taste it — literally, if you have a thief. And relative to the other steps, this one is actually pretty simple. Here, distillers pour the whiskey — which is at least 40% ABV by law in most prominent whiskey-making countries — out of the barrels, through a filter (in order to get rid of any barrel hunks that may have chunked off during aging) and then cut it with filtered water in order to bring down the ABV from somewhere in the neighborhood of 68-72% ABV to closer to 40% ABV. Not all whiskeys are diluted with water before being bottled however; some “cask strength” whiskeys are taken straight from the cask after filtration and bottled, giving consumers a chance to taste the whisky in its most natural, undiluted state.

(Side note: There is also an optional step that’s called Chill Filtration. Chill filtration is a process by which the whiskey is taken from the barrel, cooled down to very cold temperatures, around 0 to -4 degrees Celsius, and then passed through metal mesh or paper filters. The reason the whiskey is chilled is because the cold temperature hardens impurities such as fatty acids and proteins so that they can be strained out by the filters. This process is done for purely cosmetic reasons, so that when a whiskey is chilled with ice in the glass, it does not get cloudy.)

Bottling Bourbon whiskey. Image: Flickr / Paul Joseph

WHISKEY NOMENCLATURE 

Whiskey names sound fancy as hell, right? Like a bunch of words — single malt, blended, grain, scotch, bourbon, single barrel, straight, etc. — that somebody would say if they were trying really hard to show off their whiskey knowledge… hey, let’s learn those terms so we can do just that!

Whiskey names vary quite a bit, with two main components needing some explanation, a third that doesn’t really need explanation, and a few other frequently used terms:

NAME COMPONENT PART ONE: HOW MANY DISTILLERIES, YO?  

The first part of many whiskeys’ names has to do with how many distilleries donated the booze DNA to a given whiskey baby. So for example, if you have a Single Malt Scotch, that single denotes that a single distillery filled up that bottle with whiskey. If you have a Blended Malt Scotch, or a Blended Irish Whiskey for that matter — any whiskey with “Blended” in its name — then the whiskey in the bottle came from two or more distilleries.

NAME COMPONENT PART TWO: WHAT KINDA GRAINS, BRO? 

Now we look at that second part of the name, which often says either “Malt” or “Grain,” and is referring to the type or types of grains used — e.g. rye, corn, barley, wheat, etc. If the label says Malt, that means the whiskey is made from a fermented mash that’s primarily made of malted barley, or entirely made of malted barely. So if you see malt, think either majority barley, or entirely barley as the whiskey’s grain ingredient. (Note that a Scotch with Malt in its name must be made exclusively of barley according to Scotch regulations passed in 2009 in Scotland.)

Grain whiskey refers to whiskey made, at least in some portion, from grains other than barley. So if you see the word Grain on a bottle of whiskey, keep in mind that it’s either a mix of barley and other grains, or entirely made of other types of grains aside from barley.

NAME COMPONENT PART THREE: WHERE’S IT FROM? 

This part doesn’t need any explanation, but you’ll see it on tons of labels — where the whiskey was made. Japanese whisky is made in Japan, Canadian whisky is made in Canada, etc. You get the idea.

FREQUENT TERMS YOU’LL SEE ON LABELS: 

SCOTCH 

Scotch is only from Scotland. If it says Scotch, it’s from Scotland.

BOURBON 

Whiskey that is a “distinctive product of the United States.” If it says Bourbon, it was made in the U.S. Bourbons are at least 51% corn by law. (Further Bourbon details are given in the Common Whiskey Types section below.)

STRAIGHT WHISKEY

If you see “Straight” on a Bourbon’s label, that means the whiskey in the bottle does not exceed 80% ABV, has been aged for at least two years in charred new oak barrels (except for corn whiskey, which must be aged in uncharred or used oak barrels), and entered the cask at an ABV not exceeding 62.5%.

SINGLE BARREL 

A whiskey that’s been taken and bottled from a single barrel — note that this different from taken from a single distillery — and not mixed with any other whiskeys.

Various whiskeys. Image: Flickr / Zach Marzouk 

BOTTLED IN BOND 

Bottled in bond is a term that’s only applied to whiskeys made in the U.S. In order for a bottle of whiskey to be labeled as Bottled in Bond (or bonded), it must have: been distilled in a single season by one distiller at one distillery, aged in a federally bonded warehouse under government supervision for a minimum of four years, and bottled at 50% ABV. A bottled-in-bond whiskey’s label must also display the name of the distillery where the whiskey was distilled, as well as where it was bottled if that happened at a different location.

CASK STRENGTH/BARREL PROOF 

If you see “Cask Strength” or “Barrel Proof” on the bottle, that means that you’re getting a completely undiluted (no water added) whiskey from the cask. So if you see either of these terms on your whiskey, expect a significantly higher ABV than normal.

SMALL BATCH 

Small Batch, a term almost, although not entirely exclusive to American whiskeys, just means that the whiskey was mixed from a relatively small number of barrels. This label is a bit nebulous however, as there is no strict government regulation regarding how many barrels must be used to qualify a whiskey as “Small Batch.”

SOUR MASH 

Sour Mash is a term you’ll see on Bourbon labels, and simply means that the whiskey producer used some amount of “spent mash” (previously fermented mash) in the new mash used for the Bourbon in the bottle you’re holding. (This is done to affect flavor and PH balance.)

NON-CHILL FILTERED 

This just means no chill filter process — which is explained above in the Bottling section — was applied to the whiskey. This is noted because chill filtration can sometimes be seen as negatively affecting the taste of the whiskey.

CARAMEL COLORING 

Exactly what it sounds like — caramel coloring added.

COMMON WHISKEY TYPES 

Now let’s get an overview of some of the most popular whiskey types, briefly breaking down the processes and regulations that are required for each category.

SCOTCH WHISKY (NO “E”!) 

Scotch is malt or grain whisky made in Scotland. By law, Scotch must be aged in oak barrels for at least three years, and must also meet several other requirements regarding the distillation process. Remember that if you see “Malt” on a Scotch label, that means, by law, that it’s made from 100% barley. The age on the bottle denotes the youngest whisky in the bottle.

Single Malt Scotch = 100% barley whisky from a single distillery

Blended Malt Scotch = 100% barley whisky from multiple distilleries

Single Grain Scotch = Mixed grain whisky from a single distillery

Blended Grain Scotch =  Mixed grain whisky from multiple distilleries

Some of the most popular Scotch brands are: Johnnie Walker, Ballantine’s, Chivas Regal, Dewar’s, and Label 5.

BOURBON WHISKEY (WITH AN “E”) 

Bourbon is made, by law, only in the U.S., made from at least 51% malted corn, distilled at no higher than 80% ABV, aged in new charred oak barrels, and barreled at 125 proof (62.5% ABV). Keep in mind that to make a Bourbon, there is no aging requirement. (Below is a brief GIF showing how the barrels used for aging Bourbons are charred.)

Some of the most popular Bourbon brands are: Blanton’s, Woodford Reserve, Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, and Wild Turkey

RYE WHISKEY (“E” IN U.S., NO “E” IN CANADA) 

According to U.S. law, rye whiskey must be made from a mash that’s at least 51% rye, distilled to no more than 80% ABV, and aged in new charred oak barrels in the U.S. with an initial cask strength no greater than 62.5% ABV. Rye whiskey that’s been aged in this fashion in the U.S. for at least two years and not blended with any other whiskeys can be legally labeled “Straight Rye Whiskey.”

For Canada’s version of rye whisky (no “e” up north), see below.

Some of the most popular rye whiskeys are: WhistlePig, Bulleit Rye, Redemption Rye, and Knob Creek 

CANADIAN WHISKY (NO “E”!) 

Canadian whisky is generally considered to be a rye whisky, although that’s a bit of a misnomer, as Canadian whisky mash bills — the makeup of the grains used to make the whisky— don’t need to be made up of 51% rye, or any rye at all. In fact, they’re often made with a large percentage of corn mash. Why are Canadian whisky and Rye whisky used interchangeably in Canada then? Because when whisky makers first added flavorful rye to their mashes, it became popular amongst consumers, and now many Canadian whiskies are at least flavored with rye.

Also, by law, Canadian whisky must be aged in wood barrels in Canada for at least three years, and the finished product must be at least 40% ABV.

Some of the most popular Canadian whiskies are: Lot 40 Canadian Rye Whisky, Stalk and Barrel, Danfield’s, Pike Creek, Collingwood, and WhistlePig 

TENNESSEE WHISKEY (BOTH SPELLING VARIATIONS OCCUR) 

Tennessee whiskey meets all of the requirements of a Bourbon, but in order to qualify as a Tennessee whiskey, it must meet two additional criteria: It has to be made in Tennessee, and it has to undergo The Lincoln County Process. The Lincoln County Process is simply an additional filtration step for the whiskey before it’s placed in the casks, where it’s steeped over or passed through charcoal chips in order to remove impurities.

Wood being burned in order to make the charcoal that will be used for The Lincoln County process. Image: Flickr / twinfountain

Some of the most popular Tennessee whiskeys are: Jack Daniel’s, George Dickel, and Benjamin Prichard’s (* Prichard being the one Tennessee whiskey maker that doesn’t currently use The Lincoln County Process.)

CORN WHISKEY (A.K.A. WHITE LIGHTNING OR MOONSHINE) 

Corn whiskey is made in America, made from a mash of at least 80% corn, and distilled to a maximum ABV of 80%. If corn whiskey is aged — it has no aging restrictions — it must be in uncharred or previously used oak barrels. It also has to be pumped into the barrel at a max ABV of 62.5%. Corn whiskey is usually only aged for six months or less, although straight corn whiskey is aged in new uncharred oak barrels for two years or more.

Some of the most popular corn whiskeys are: Firefly Moonshine, Midnight Moon, and Balcones 

IRISH WHISKEY (WITH AN “E”) 

Irish whiskey is usually triple distilled — although it doesn’t need to be — and must, by law, be made in Ireland (obviously), have an ABV of at least 40%, be aged in wooden casks for at least three years, and have its coloring adjusted with either water or caramel coloring only.

SINGLE POT STILL WHISKEY 

Single pot still whiskey is a type of Irish whiskey — made in Ireland only! — that’s made from a mash of malted and unmalted barley distilled in a pot still (sometimes small amounts of raw oats and wheat are also added). The unmalted barley tends to give this type of whiskey a spicier flavor and thicker texture than normal single malt whiskeys.

Some of the most popular single pot still whiskeys are: Midleton Barry Crocket Legacy, Green Spot, Yellow Spot, and Red Breast

WHISKEY FLAVORS 

(VERY) GENERAL FLAVOR PROFILES OF DIFFERENT WHISKEY TYPES 

RYE WHISKEY

In general, the higher the rye content of a whiskey, the spicier its flavoring is. Rye whiskeys tend to have less sweetness and more peppery flavoring, and are also bready (i.e. tastes like rye bread) and earthy, with hints of dry herbs. Grass notes and fruity aromas are also often present.

TENNESSEE WHISKEY 

Tennessee whiskey is corn-based like Bourbons, so it shares many similar flavors, including many sweet tones of vanilla, sugar, honey, maple syrup, and caramel. Because Tennessee whiskey is required to undergo charcoal filtration via The Lincoln County Process, however, subtler flavors tend to emerge as well, like licorice. That charcoal filtering also tends to create a softer, drier, profile.

SINGLE POT STILL WHISKEY 

Single pot still whiskeys — which are, again, only made in Ireland — tend to have spicier flavors, and even cereal flavors that have been described as “funky” thanks to their inclusion of unmalted barley. Single pot still whiskeys also tend to have tones of apricot, peaches, tropical fruits, and cocoa, and they often have a leathery finish.

BOURBON WHISKEY 

Thanks to their being aged in new charred oak barrels, Bourbons tend to have flavors such as vanilla, honey, and caramel, as well as woody, nutty tones. You also get lots of floral aromas (especially citrus), as well as hints of vanilla, caramel, and even chocolate.

CORN WHISKEY 

Corn whiskey tends to have a sweeter flavor, which leans toward vanilla and even maple syrup. Because corn whiskey is generally unaged, or aged in used barrels, you can taste much more of the corn-related flavors, as there are much fewer flavors coming from the barrel, or none at all. If a corn whiskey is aged in a barrel for a significant period of time, as with straight corn whiskeys (which are aged for two years), then you obviously get more barrel flavoring.

MALT (BARLEY) WHISKEY 

Although whiskeys made from barley (malt whiskeys) have a very extensive range of flavor profiles, they often have sweeter flavors with hints of brown sugar and caramel. They also tend to have roasted and toffee-like cereal flavors.

WHEAT WHISKEY 

Wheat whiskeys tend to have more cereal, earthy notes, with slightly sweet brown bread tones. They also tend to have gentler aromas with grassy notes, which have been described as smelling of the outdoors.

HOW TO DESCRIBE WHISKEY FLAVORS 

Note that many of these terms are umbrella terms for tons of subtle flavors, which can be explored further in this awesome little graph from whiskygals.ch. Although there is a metric ass-load of terms to describe whiskey flavors, what seems to be useful is going by the eight main categories outlined by the Pentlands Wheel, which was the first systematic attempt to categorize whiskey flavors undertaken by a group of scientists in Edinburgh, Scotland in the ’70s.

WHISKEY BEST PRACTICES: HOW TO SNOB IT UP

OK, now that we have all of our whiskey knowledge down, it’s time to have some fun and taste some damn whiskey already. But wait! You can’t just pound the whiskey or use is it as an ingredient in a crazy-ass whiskey cocktail. Well, you can, of course, but not if you want to truly enjoy the whiskey like a connoisseur (read: snob).

While there are many rules floating around the internet regarding how to drink your whiskey, we like the idea of following the rules laid out by Scotland-based Master Distiller Richard “The Nose” Paterson. Paterson began tasting whiskey when he was just eight years-old, and his nose is even insured for $2.5 million. And while the following guidelines aren’t exact transcriptions of Paterson’s style, he still is, we think reasonably, our biggest influence when it comes to whiskey tasting.

THE GLASS 

First of all, let’s talk about the glass you should use while snobbin’ like a pro. And yes, only glassware is acceptable here — no drinking out of a coffee mug or 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup.

If you really want get the best shot at properly tasting a whiskey, you’ll want to go with a tulip-shaped glass (a.k.a. a copita-style glass or dock glass) that has a base on which to hold — a glass like the Glencairn whisky glass shown below, for example. Drinking whiskey out of a tulip-shaped glass with a base is good for multiple reasons: First of all, that concave closing means that more of the whiskey aromas are trapped in the glass: Because whiskey is constantly evaporating into the air, a glass with a wider opening that doesn’t taper inward at the top will let out more aromas, which won’t have a chance to hit your nose.

Glencairn whisky glass. Image: Wikipedia / Amiko82

Second of all, a glass like the Glencairn whisky glass allows you to keep your damn hand away from the whiskey. If you hold the whiskey glass by the bottom of the glass instead of the base, you’ll warm up the whiskey, thusly changing its flavor profile. You’ll also want to be looking at your whiskey, and you can’t do that if your hand is blocking it. So remember, pick a glass that will let you keep the aromas in, and keep your hand out of the picture.

There are, of course, a bunch of other acceptable glasses you can go with, including: the whiskey tumbler (good for whiskey on the rocks and cocktails, shown in the GIF below), the highball glass (allows for plenty of ice and mixer, is preferred in Japan), the snifter (makes you look fancy, but releases a lot of ethanol evaporation due to that wide mouth), and the NEAT whisky glass (a new type of glass that was made by accident at a glass-blowing factory, which happens to direct ethanol vapors away from the nose).

ON THE ROCKS OR NEAT? 

According to Paterson, you basically want to avoid ice in your glass like it’s the plague. It chills down the whiskey too much and also dilutes it, subsequently muting some of the flavors. But, if you’re willing to defy The Nose, try to keep the ice to a minimum, with just a few blocks. Also aim for blocks that have a relatively small surface area, as that will dilute your whiskey more slowly, but chill it at the same rate as blocks with larger surface areas.

DRINK IT IN WITH YOUR EYES 

OK, now that you have your whiskey in your glass, it’s time to swirl it around and take a good look at its colors and the way it adheres to the glass. In terms of the color, what you’re basically trying to look for are signs regarding the whiskey’s aging process.

In general, you’ll see whiskeys take on darker colors the longer they’ve spent in the barrel. This isn’t necessarily true in all cases, however, because the barrels vary. For example, Bourbons will take on a darker color over a shorter period of time relative to Scotches because they’re being aged in new charred oak barrels that can give away a lot more pigment-affecting compounds. If you’re a real expert, you may even be able to determine if caramel coloring has been added. (Also keep in mind that with a whiskey that hasn’t undergone any aging, such as some corn whiskeys, you may not see any coloration at all.)

The legs (or tears) of the whiskey — the whiskey that runs down the inside of the glass after you’ve swirled it — aren’t too important for judging quality, but they can tell you a little about the whiskey’s texture. If the whiskey has short, slow-moving legs, it’ll probably have a thicker texture in the mouth. If it has thinner legs that move relatively fast, that could imply less texture.

ADDING WATER

When you order your whiskey, you’ll also want to order a glass or pitcher of distilled water — or even a bottle of water. Why? Because diluting your glass of whiskey just a bit with the right kind of water will drop the ABV, and more importantly, help to bring out all of the flavors. If you have two fingers’ worth of whiskey in your glass, try pouring in a couple of thimblefuls of water. Paterson says you want an ABV of about 35% for perfect tasting, although it’s hard to say exactly how’d you know that if you’re just chilling in a bar with your amigos.

NOSING THE WHISKEY

Now it’s time to stick your nose in your glass — and according to Paterson, that means really sticking your nose in there. You want to be very cautious with this step however, as when you stick your nose in a glass of whiskey and take a deep breath, you’re basically taking a big whiff of ethanol vapors along with the aromas, and they could cause you to literally pass out.

So what you’ll want to do is lift the glass up to your nose as close as is comfortable (more experienced drinkers will be able to basically stick their whole nose in the glass, whereas novices will want to hold it a bit further away) and then take at least a few whiffs before you start sipping — quick whiffs so that they’re pleasant rather than sharp. Paterson likens this step to a conversation where you’re getting to know the whiskey. This step is all about identifying aromas, so take your time and try to figure out what you’re smelling. Are you getting hints of chocolate or tangerines or honey or anything else?

TASTING THE WHISKEY

Holy sh*t people, now is the finally the time for the whiskey to hit your tongue! But as much as you want to, don’t just throw it back and feel the burn. Now that you’re sipping, you’ll want to let the whiskey sit on your palate for around seven or so seconds before swallowing so you can savor all of the various flavors.

According to Paterson, the first sip is really just to cleanse your palate, however. It’s the second sip that will really allow you to experience all the flavors the whiskey has to offer. Then there are all the others, and those pretty good too.

WHISKEY STONES

Whiskey stones are cubes — or alternatively shaped objects — made of solid soapstone that can be chilled. Because they’re non-porous, and because they don’t melt, they can chill your whiskey without diluting it or affecting its flavor. Whiskey stones also stay colder for longer relative to ice.

Whiskey stones Image: Flickr / Srslyguys

HOW TO STORE WHISKEY

Here’s the really great news about the logistics of whiskey: Even though you may have to shell out a solid chunk of change for a nice bottle, it’s very low maintenance once you have it at home.

As mentioned earlier, whiskey only ages in the barrel, not in the bottle. It can also be opened, and thanks to its high ABV, not spoil or take a hit to quality. You’ll still want to store your whiskey in a dark place, out of direct sunlight, as the heat could negatively affect the flavor.

THE FUTURE OF WHISKEY

It seems that the future of whiskey most likely lies in the expansion of current whiskey markets, the establishment of producers in nations not previously considered top-tier players in whiskey — such as Germany, Australia, and India — and one form or another of “rapid aging.”

As far as growth throughout the world, things are looking extremely bright for the future of whiskey. The whiskey market in the U.S. grew to $3.4 billion in 2017, with domestic production volume increasing to 23.2 million cases. Worldwide, the whiskey market is expected to be valued at about $7.4 billion by 2023, with a big hand from a burgeoning middle-class market in China. Millennials are also apparently driving growth in the whiskey market, displaying a preference for high-end and super-premium Scotches.

In regards to rapid aging, that seems like it could go either way right now. That is, it could explode in popularity, or die out completely. If it does catch on, we’re basically looking at a few different options for how to fast-age whiskey, including: using much smaller barrels, oak infusion spiral systems, or even “sonic aging” methods — a.k.a. music.

SMALLER BARRELS 

Using smaller barrels is probably the least heretical way out of the three to speed up the aging process, as the proponents of this method point out that using smaller barrels simply increases the rate at which the ethanol chunks off flavor compounds from the barrel thanks to there being less volume that needs to be infused with flavor compounds. Some companies are even going so far as to simply make thermos-like containers out of oak, which could age — or at least add lots of flavor — to whiskey in just a matter of a few days.

THE OAK INFUSION SPIRAL 

The oak infusion spiral is another pretty low-tech product that aims to achieve barrel-aged flavors over the course of a few days. The infusion spiral, which looks like a tall stack of wooden coins all stuck together, works by being placed in your container of whiskey so it can interact with the ethanol and give up some of its flavor compounds. The spiral shape also allows for the whiskey to penetrate the oak much more efficiently than it would in a barrel; the grain direction of barrels is such that the whiskey comes into contact with it at a perpendicular angle, as opposed to the infusion spirals, which allow the whiskey to pass through its membrane top to bottom. (If whiskey barrels didn’t have the grains of their wood sides moving in the direction they do, the oak would absorb too much liquid and they would start leaking.)

PRESSURIZED CONTAINERS AND SONIC AGING 

Finally, there’s the really sci-fi aging techniques that use pressure aging and/or sonic aging. Basically, with pressure aging, you’re talking about sticking the distilled grain alcohol in a giant steel container with a bunch of tiny oak barrel chunks. After you’ve done that, you apply force to the steel container — squeezing and expanding it — thusly forcing the distilled alcohol into and out of the barrel chunks so it can quickly pick up their flavor compounds. Like the oak infusion spiral, this is another case of “putting the barrel in the whiskey” rather than putting the whiskey in the barrel, and Cleveland Whiskey, a pioneer in this field, says it can go from distilled alcohol to bottled whiskey in one week flat.

With sonic aging, it seems that folks are basically just setting up big-ass sound systems in their warehouses, and letting bassy music vibrate the hell out of the casks in the hopes that all that movement will cause the whiskey to pick up flavor compounds from the barrels more quickly. That literally seems to be the long and short of this strategy.

OUR FAVORITE WHISKEY DRINKS

Now that all your whiskey knowledge is in order, take some time to check out a handful of our favorite whiskey drinks. And while yes, some may think it’s a complete dishonor not to drink your whiskey untainted by other ingredients, we think these classic cocktails would earn the approval of even the most staunchly conservative whiskey aficionados — maybe even The Nose himself.

See recipe.

See recipe.

See recipe.

All GIFS: Giphy

Original Tipsy Graphics: Shina Kim-Avalos

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s) if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments); if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0'; n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window,document,'script', 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js'); fbq('init', '793761667474626'); fbq('track', 'PageView'); amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; amzn_assoc_search_bar = "true"; amzn_assoc_search_bar_position = "bottom"; amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "a8415-20"; amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "search"; amzn_assoc_ad_type = "smart"; amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; amzn_assoc_region = "US"; amzn_assoc_title = "Shop Related Products"; amzn_assoc_default_search_phrase = "cookware"; amzn_assoc_default_category = "All"; amzn_assoc_linkid = "b45319dac495d29e17b5eff312392025"; Source link

[ancestryadventures]

Stone Circle: Castlerigg, Cumbria

The next step on my journey takes me further north in the Lake District, and further back in time.

Castlerigg Stone Circle, Cumbria. Jan 2017

Stone Circle History

Stone circles exist throughout the world, however, they are best known for their creation in the UK throughout the Neolithic and early Bronze Age (approx 4,500-2,000 BC). This period was the crucial turning point of homo sapiens, when we moved away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and adopted agriculture and animal domestication.

In Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, he argues that the unique capacity of homo sapiens to communicate abstract concepts and build belief systems is what set humans apart from previous human species (such as Neandertals and Homo Erectus), and ultimately lead to their survival and expansion.

Stone circles are an example of this, and over 1,000 of them stand in the British Isles and Brittany today. Common belief is that they were used for ceremony, astrological and possibly negotiation purposes.

Location of Castlerigg Stone Circle, Cumbria

Because of its irregular shape and large size, Castlerigg is considered one of the earlier stone circles created by farming communities who settled in the northern Lake District hills. It contains a square enclosure which archeological studies suggest were done at a later date, suggesting it was used over a long period of time.

Castlerigg Stone Circle, Cumbria. Jan 2017

Castlerigg Stone Circle, Cumbria. Jan 2017

My Ancestors

But is it possible to find out if my ancestors created these timeless structures?

Well until fairly recently it was fairly unlikely. However now, thanks to the invention of widely available DNA tests, it is possible to gather clues as to where one’s family came from, further back that any census record.

DNA Tests

In November, I took two separate DNA tests which give insight into the ethnicity and origin of my ancestors. It works by sending off a saliva sample to a lab, where they compare your DNA to thousands of other samples from around the world, including indigenous groups, to create an informed estimate of your ethnic makeup.

I am quite skeptical, and so decided to take two tests. One with Ancestry and another with 23 and Me. I was excited to receive the results:

DNA Results from Ancestry

DNA Results from 23 and Me

As you can see, my DNA shows that I am almost entirely European, much in the UK, Northwest and Scandinavia. At a glance, however, the percentages don’t seem to match. Upon closer inspection, though, the 23 and Me test groups Anglo-Saxon and Viking descendants in with the British and Irish grouping.

From my limited understanding then, it appears I only have a small percentage of Celtic blood in me - groups which would have used stone circles for ceremony, astrology and trade. Instead, much likely comes from the Anglo and Saxon invasions of the early 5th century when the Romans left Britain, and the Viking and Norman (or ‘North-men’, also Viking descendants) invasions between 793 and 1066 AD.

This is fascinating to me as I can begin to piece together a puzzle of my possible ancestors’ migration from Scandinavia down to England, and eventually into my family tree. And it provokes the questions, what was Viking culture like? What was their mythology and spirituality? Questions as I continue on my journey.

Staff Addition

There was not a lot around the bare landscape to borrow as a keep-sake from the stone circle. Castlerigg become one of the first stone circles to be protected by the National Trust because people would chip off parts of the stones as souvenirs!

In the middle of the circle, however, I did discover this twig. The next addition to the staff, as I walk on my journey towards my ancestors.

The adventure continues...