Last year I put together a single malt Whisky guide to help me understand the different Whisky experiences you can have. Hopefully that’s encouraged some people to have their own Whisky adventures. I’ve put together this short guide that you can use to have your very own Whisky tasting session.

To have a rewarding Whisky tasting you should line up 3 or more different drams that allow you to experience the differences between them.

Equipment

It’s important to have a correctly shaped glass to taste the Whisky, don’t go in for the crystal tumble numbers you see in films, go for something Tulip shaped like a Champagne glass. These allow you to take in the aromas of Whisky a lot better.

Good!

Bad!

Serve a single shot (dram) of each Whisky in a room temperature glass.

The Process

My process for tasting Whisky is:

• Selecting Whisky
• Eyeing the Whisky
• Smelling the Whisky
• Tasting the Whisky

Selecting Whisky

To get the most out of a Whisky tasting you should try to have a number of differing styles available to try. You can do this by region or by selecting based off tasting notes.

Try to have one Whisky from Sherry casks, a smoky Islay and two lighter Whiskies. Maybe even a sweet one. You can consult my guide to help you here.

Eyeing the Whisky

Start off by having a look at the colour of the drams you have. You will be able to see a difference in colour which reflects the sort of oak barrel the Whisky was aged in.

Whisky is matured in previously used barrels from American or Spain. The American barrels tend to be from Bourbon so they add a light colour to the Whisky. The Spanish barrels have had Sherry in them which creates a darker, reddish colour. If the Whisky is reddish in colour you can expect a medium-sweet fruity Whisky.

Smelling the Whisky

Cover your hand over the glass and swirl the Whisky around a bit. Open up part of your hand and take a sniff of the Whisky. Don’t try to smell it like Wine as the alcohol will burn your nose. Move the glass towards and away from your nose to get used to the smell of the first Whisky.

Don’t taste the Whisky yet! Pick up a second Whisky and do the same. Notice the differences between the two, then go back to the first glass. There are many different aromas present in Whisky but they tend to fall within a few major styles.

Try to notice if the Whisky seems Sherried, floral or peated. You might be able to detect traces of honey, spice, nuts or fruity notes. The more you do this, the better you will be at detecting the subtleties between drams.

Tasting the Whisky

Finally, you are ready to taste the Whisky. Take a small drink and hold it in your mouth for as many seconds as the Whisky has spent years in the barrel. Move the Whisky around your mouth and draw in a little air to enhance the flavour.

Once the time has elapsed; swallow and take in some air. This will finish you off with a warm and slightly burning sensation.

In between trying Whiskies be sure to cleanse your palate with some water or an oat biscuit. Enjoy!

As a Liverpool fan I have shared the ups and downs of Liverpool FC with Rafeal Benitez at the helm. We’ve had massive highs like the Champions League win (I still remember my celebration pose) and the FA Cup triumph. I’ve always admired the Liverpool FC style of play and their crowd atmosphere.

I’ve even been lucky enough to get down to Liverpool for a holiday and many LFC games. It’s a lot like Glasgow and I love how they’ve developed their dockyard post-empire.

Benitez, like Houllier before him, spent a lot of time developing a paranoia against the board and the media. He won many public battles with the club. Though without new ownership coming he lost the war.

Here is my favourite Benitez moment:

In his parting words from the club; he has says everything you need to know about the man:

I leave you with my favourite Liverpool moment under Benitez. 1 minute left to go and 1 goal needed to progress to eventual Champions Leagure glory:

Last year after watching children run around laughing, Alison and I decided it’s time to have our own kids. A few months later we were checked in to get our first baby scan.

At this point the baby is the the same size as an Apple pip or a Marble.

Fast forward 6 weeks and we are talking Baseballs and Avocados:

The baby (we don’t want to know the sex) is due on the 26th June. Right during the knockout stages of the World Cup. Alison says she’s going to wait for an England game to give birth!

Baby Instructions

To help me not make some common mistakes I was helpfully given this picture guide.

I’ve been running Coding Dojos for the Tech community in Glasgow for a while now. A Coding Dojo is a 2 hour coding session where programmers of varied skill levels come together to work on a common task. The task is simple in scope and difficulty. The goal is to learn, teach and improve with fellow software developers in a non-competitive setting.

I was approached by Adrian Mowatt and Rob Lally from AgileScotland about the prospect of getting involved with a whole day coding event in Glasgow. I eagerly joined these two pioneers and we are happy to announce the first Coding Retreat in the UK.

We will be getting 20 keen software developers together in a room, putting them in pairs and seeing what they can achieve in 40 minutes. Every 40 minutes the pairs change and we start again.

We have selected the Ruby programming language to be used by pairs on the day.

It’s happening on Saturday the 21st November 2009 at Glasgow Caledonian University from 9am to 5pm. Tickets are completely free and available from EventBrite.

We’ll be providing breakfast and lunch as well as drinks throughout the day. After 5pm we full intend to retire to a nearby watering hole.

We are limited to 20 people. So please sign up quickly as we won’t be able to increase the amount of tickets!

One killer feature on the Mac that I desperately craved on Windows was the Spotlight feature. If you press Apple+Space it gives you an option to type some text. This text is then used to search through all the applications and files you have. It searches your email, music, dictionaries, basically everything on your machine. I use it as the primary way of opening applications and files on my MacBook.

I still use a Windows XP machine at my work, which means I have to manually search through the Start Menu for whatever application I need. You can use the quick launch bar but that tends to get filled up fairly… well… quickly. Launchy solves this problem.

Launchy starts up when you log into Windows and offers you an on-demand dialog from a key combination. This dialog allows you to launch any application on you machine.

You simply hit Windows+Space (default is Alt+Space) to see a dialog, type ‘f’. and press return to load Firefox.

It remembers your previous choices and quickly becomes optimised for the way you think.

Windows Vista has a similar feature but it only works on whole words, which makes it pretty unusable. Luckily Launchy works on XP, Vista and Linux.

If you work in a job which requires you to use the Start Menu to launch applications, you can become much more productive (and happy) by using Launchy.

Other tools you need to use

• Twitter
• Delicious
• Google Reader