Community Updates - ASW Barrel Pick

As voted by the Whiskey Noobs Crew, we are picking a barrel of ASW’s The Fiddler. We will most likely be picking their Toasted Rye whiskey, which is one of the longest finished Toasted Ryes in the industry! I have heard really good things about it, so I am super excited to taste some samples. Keep an eye out for an email from me to purchase it because this one should be available pretty quickly! If you want to make sure you have a chance to buy it, I highly recommend joining the Whiskey Noobs Crew - they will get first dibs in order of tier!

Know the Terms - Proof

I remember when I was very first getting into whiskey, the term “proof” confused me. I could never remember if it was exactly double the percent-alcohol-by-volume, and I didn’t really understand why we would use it when ABV seemed to get the job done. As it turns out, there is actually a pretty cool history behind it. As with so many of alcohol’s quirky traits, it comes from a government tax (of course!).

As explained by Cydney Grannan on Brittanica.com, “The word proof is used in the sense of showing that something is true or correct. The English government would test the amount of alcohol content in a liquor by soaking a gun pellet with it and attempting to light the wet pellet on fire. If the wet gunpowder could be lit, the alcohol was said to be a proof spirit and would therefore be taxed higher.“

Grannan then goes on to explain that this method was eventually replaced with a more accurate one, where a proof spirit was determined to be “a liquor with an alcohol level 12⁄13 the weight of an equal volume of distilled water at 11 °C (51 °F). This specific gravity corresponds to about 57.06% ABV.“

Okay, now that is all an interesting (and confusing) origin story, but how does it relate to the “proof” you see in a liquor store? The British proof scale ends up being close to (but not exactly) double the percent ABV, so when the US adopted proofing, it simplified: proof would be exactly double the percent ABV. If you have a spirit that is 50% alcohol-by-volume, it is a 100 proof spirit.

Just keep in mind that it isn’t quite the same as what England historically used, and that both of those are different from the proofing scale that France historically used… but that is a story for a different day.

If you want to be completely certain that you know how strong a whiskey is, percent-alcohol-by-volume should steer you in the right direction!

Merch Release!

That’s right, there is new merch available now! This time around, I actually got some help from a real graphic designer, and I am loving the results. Check out all of these items and more at NoobsMedia.com!