‘Cask strength’ or ‘barrel proof’ is the strength of whisky while its maturing in the cask. As we all know that when Whisky is taken out of Cask, its diluted with Water, typically spring water. The dilution is not necessarily done to decrease the strength but also to bring out the flavor.

Bottled Whiskey is usually at 40% Alcohol-By-Volume so you can imagine that the strength of Alcohol while its in the Cask is more than that. Its not very common to find bottles which are directly from Cask but sometime you do get one, for a very niche segment. But this is not very common, for variety of reasons. Probably one of the reasons is around the laws where you would need to mention the exact % of Alcohol and you would not want to print a new set of labels for every cask.

Also as the Whiskey ages in a Cask, its strength decreases and it may make more sense to not dilute it further if the strength has already gone down.

I could find this link – http://www.maltwhiskydistilleries.com/Distilleries/CaskStrengthEditions/tabid/99/Default.aspx, which has a mention of some of the popular ‘Cask Strength’ Whiskeys which have been released in market. By the way, I do not how much aged the above link is.

Enjoy your drink and have a good day.

We had lunch at Food Court in Shoprix Mall, which is located in Sector – 61, Noida. Its right on the road which connects the GIP with NTPC and goes all the way till Flex. I never too much admired the ‘Food Court’ of Shoprix because its very noisy and overall ambiance is more like a open food street. I like that ambiance but it has to come at a cost which suits it, at Shoprix the prices are still of that of a restaurant. So anyway, it was a large group and some of us chose to have Indian Mughlai.

We ordered food from Kabab King and it was awesome. These days they are giving a deal where 3rd dish is free. We order a chicken-based platter, a mutton-based platter and we got a ghost-biryani free. For each platter, we got 2 rotis/naan , a bowl of Dal Makhani, a small potion of Kabab (Burra or Kathi) and a small potion of Tandoori chicken/mutton. We ordered more Rotis since we were a group of four and we had a full meal. The total damage was Rs 420 including tip. Not only it came with a reasonable price, the food quality was super, it was served in clean plates and it was very fresh. Interestingly, it was funny to see that people who have ordered thing like Pizza from other counters had to wait more.

I am going to go there again soon.

Chopin is a new bloke in the world of Vodka. Named after Frédéric Chopin, the famous Polish Romantic composer, Chopin was introduced in North America in 1997. Unlike most of the other Vodka where typically multilple grains are used, here a single ingredient is used and that is potato.

I have written before on how Vodka is made. In case of Chopin, its said that potatoes are sourced from Podlasie, a region in Poland and then its distilled as many as 4 times. It is produced by Siedlce-based Podlaska Wytwórnia Wódek Polmos company.

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Krolewska is a Vodka from Poland which is grain based. Poland and Vodka are linked and the association probably goes as back as 8th century. It is believed that initially Vodka was used as a form of medicine. Krolewska is a very premium Vodka and it comes in a stained glass bottle which is tall and slender.

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Russia and Vodka are synonymous with each other and when you bring in something which is as old as 300 then its has to be really big. ‘Jewel of Russia’ is truly a jewel vodka from this land and for apt reasons its called ‘The drink of the czars’.

Jewel of Russia – Classic
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