Exorbitant pricing; too-short pours; sad, melty ice: These are problems we whiskey fans know all too well.
We've collected the most common -- and infuriating -- situations whiskey-lovers run into. Click through and commiserate. It's nice to know there's someone else who understands.
Which of these situations have you experienced? Did we miss any?
1. Bad Ice
This isn’t something we typically have to worry about at a fancy cocktail bar with high-tech ice machines or hand-carved cubes. But there’s nothing worse than ordering a bourbon on the rocks and having it come out filled with tiny pebbles that will melt in a grand total of five minutes. It leaves you with a watered-down, tasteless drink—and no one wants that. Plus, who knows when that ice maker was last cleaned? When we’re out at our favorite dives, we always go neat.
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2. Stingy Pours
Two fingers isn’t too much to ask. It’s only reasonable to expect a heftier pour when it’s the only thing in the glass. But when you get just enough to barely moisten the bottom of a rocks glass? Unacceptable. You’re paying for it, right? Which brings us to our next point...
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3. High Prices
A glass of good Scotch or small-batch bourbon is generally going to cost a pretty penny. You are ordering a (hopefully) healthy pour of straight-up spirit, after all. But we still want to cry when the total for one glass comes in over twenty bucks. And don’t even get us started on Pappy Van Winkle.
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4. Lectures
Yeah, yeah, we get it, malt snobs. You don’t like your whiskey mixed with anything except more whiskey. But that doesn’t mean you need to lecture us on ordering a cocktail made with bourbon or Scotch or taking it with a little ice or water. We should be able to order whatever we want without a random barfly complaining in his best crotchety-old-man voice about how we’re doing it wrong.
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5. Soda-gun Water
Sometimes a stronger whiskey needs a little help opening up in the glass, and you don’t want an ice cube in there diluting it too much. So you’re in a tight spot. Some bars will give you a shot of “water” from the soda gun that’s laced with corn-syrup sweetness or the distinctive artificial-citrus tang of 7UP or Sprite, and there goes your perfectly balanced glass of whiskey. What’s a whiskey-lover to do?
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(Photo by Denise Mattox via Flickr)
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(Photo by Denise Mattox via Flickr)