HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVE!!!!!!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Dave,
Happy birthday to you!

I hope you've had a smashing birthday & associated parties. 40 is it already? :O Congratz my friend, here's to many more years! Lol

Now go drink your whisky! All of it! TONIGHT! Get some friends and get ON IT!!

Hope you've had a good one anyway mate, you're a top bloke.

Cheers Jordan.

Birthday celebrations have gone well so far. Huge family and friends meal on Sunday with over 40 of us there. Carried that through to an evening drink, so consumed huge quantities of Jack Daniel's. Yesterday I drove down to a brilliant little country pub for a superb lunch, and stopped off at a smokery on the way back to pick up some more provisions. More celebrations on Friday night, and yet more this Saturday.

So it's all good.

As for finishing all the whisky, I don't think even I could manage that. And there's some very nice stuff in there. One bottle is one of only 400 in existence, so that needs to be kept for a special occasion.

Sounds like you had a good one, glad to hear it. Throw back a shot for me

Where did your limited edition whisky come from? How much per sip does it cost? What makes it so unique?

Its one of the Scottish Malt Whisky Association's Single Cask selection for the year. Each year they try a large range of whiskies and select only a couple to be their choices for each age point. Most malt whiskies, though from a single distillery and single year, are a mix of casks from that year - partly so they can mix consistent colour and flavour, but also simply because of the quantity needed for bottling.

Single cask is different - its that one cask. Its the purest form of whisky, and you can only have as many bottles as they can squeeze out of the cask. Due to the nature of evaporation as whisky ages in the wooden barrels (roughly 1.5-2.5% of the content per year) you never know exaclty how many you will get. This year it was 466 bottles of their chosen whisky at this particular age.

They don't reveal what distillery it is on the bottle, so its a nice mystery as to what they have actually chosen.

But they are always good.

Nice. I'm not a big fan of whisky myself. I think it's a bit of an acquired taste. Like olives perhaps. I like my alcohol weaker and sweeter. Cider is my drink. But I'm from the west country so that's only natural I suppose. Is your palate so refined that you can tell what whisky is in your particular bottle? I think I could make out a few ciders from taste alone but only the common ones I reckon. And Natch. Can't beat a coupla cansa Natch.

Did anyone buy you Arkham City for your birthday? I hear that's pretty good

I'll be getting Arkham City this weekend.

I can usually tell roughly where a Scottish whisky was made, in terms of the region, as they tend to have different characteristics (for instance they use more peat in the whisky in Ireland, and on the west coast of Scotland, so it tends to be smokier, whereas Speyside malts will be lighter) I can also tell whiskies matured in sherry casks rather than bourbon casks, and certain whiskies that I like simply by the taste. I can also tend to pick up the background notes in a bottle (chocolate, caramel, citrus fruit, etc).

However, I'm by no means any sort of expert. I just know what I like.

Wow really? Well fair play, at least you know what you like.

I always thought the "citrus twist with a strong hoppy finish" and all that shit they write on real ale bottles was a load of bollocks, but then I'm not a real ale drinker. I dunno why you drink whisky with peat in it though!

Peat is used to various degrees as a fuel when they dry out the malt in order to make the whisky. It's a readily available source of fuel up in Scotland. Some distilleries use more peat than others, as it's mixed with wood and other fuels. But peat smokes more, so the more peat used, the more smokiness gets into the malt and into the whisky.

And I used to be a bit more sceptical myself. I still am where wine is concerned as I can't tell sod all with wine. But as you drink different whisky, you do pick up the variances. You also learn where different tastes appear in the mouth. Some don't appear for several seconds after you swallow the stuff. It starts to click and you go "bloody hell, yes, I can taste chocolate. And yes, there is that hint of orange"

I think I am going to get Arkham City next month. (When I can afford it, i'm flat broke right now)

I have seen some gameplay of it, read about it, watched some cutscenes and it looks astounding.

So much so, that I am actually changing my mind on a Dragonball Z game that I previously had my heart set on (after I noticed just how pathetic the character roster was), and picking of Arkham instead.


Also, as mentioned before on Facebook, happy birthday, David.

I'm actually glad that I came back to this community, and that I had the chance to say that.

Actually, I should thank Chris for being able to say Happy Birthday to Shand, because if it wasn't for him recommending me to get on Facebook, I wouldn't have gotten to come on back and made CXA, or been able to return to David and the rest of you guys again.