StillSmart

...are you more likely to occasionally spend big on top shelf spirit? Or less likely?

Now that I'm learning just how much effort and time goes into making top notch spirit, I'm not quite as alarmed by the prices of them.

As my spirit drinking cost per bottle is way low now, I'm thinking that say an extra £100 or so a year on excellent spirits might be in order.

I forget the brand right now but there's a reverse engineered Absinthe made as close as possible to a certain top shelf Absinthe before the ban. Am I never going to enjoy the real thing because I'm too mean to spend £70 on a bottle?

Then there's those well aged Scotch and other Whiskeys that I could keep in reserve for a very special occasion as I'll have plenty of house spirit.

There's lots on my wish list for when I'm done spending on equipment and my stocks are high.

John this is exactly what I do. I have no issue with paying for top shelf, it's very difficult to replicate something that has been aged for 15 years and reusing feints for decades in your home.

I also splash out on the ocational premium gin to compare my product to. I also recently bought a £33 bottle of potato vodka, that was voted the best in the world to compare my potato vodka to.
Their's was better (as you'd expect), but there really wasn't much in it, and I have a few ideas of how to bring mine on a par with it.

I know if I paid my self a wage of making booze, I probably could afford to drink the product often, even before the tax man got his hands on it..

I know if I paid my self a wage of making booze, I probably could afford to drink the product often, even before the tax man got his hands on it.

True that! I don't buy top shelf stuff very often, but I do buy good versions of things that I make (mostly gin and bourbon) to benchmark mine to.

Chuck

I was posting on my phone, I meant to say If I was paying my self an hourly rate I COULDN'T afford to drink the product often.

I spend a lot of hours from start to finish, if I was paying my self I'd be better off buying it. But its my hobby and I like doing it.

What is funny, is that I read it as you intended it, not as you wrote it! I too spend a great many hours on this and at my hourly work rate, make some exceedingly costly drink. But I'd much rather be doing this than working.

Chuck

Well I can't even afford "the good stuff" for my preferred schlurp, it tends to be well over "a ton" a bottle.

It would be fair enough to pay top dollar for something good, but when you not only read about the planets biggest distiller boasting that if it wasn't for the tax, they'd be able to.sell you gin and vodka for about £1 a bottle, but you then factor in how much excise duty and VAT is charged, not only is the poison dwarf on a winner, but the big distiller is too.

After all, its a relatively recent thing that the major brands are now sold at 37.5% ABV, instead of the "old industry standard" of 40% ABV. The bastards haven't reduced the price have they, so we still end up paying for silver at gold prices.

So I'm quite pleased at finding a few "staples" that I can make and enjoy, as it makes me want to cackle like some sort of deranged loon, while flicking the V's in the direction of Westminster......

Too true about the hourly rate. Learning and planning time for my diy still @ minimum wage is so far about double the cost of a T500. Then again, who is going to pay me to think about still building.

Phantom, what's the ton a bottle stuff?

When I gave up smoking, many many years ago, my lovely wife, who has a better head than me for these things, opened a savings account and put away the price of a pack of cigs a day for two years and on my 50th birthday presented me with 6000 Euros in cash. Half the cash was promptly blown on a holiday to Holland and Germany - both of us. The balance has been financing this hobby for almost three years now.

Last May I suggested to my wife that as we were both getting our spirits from my hobby and as a bottle of spirits costs, on average over here, 25 Euros, that we should each pay 5 Euros into the same savings account, for each bottle we take out of stock, to fund future development costs and future hols.

We routinely toss a tenner into the account smiling in the knowledge that for each tenner put in we've saved another 40 Euros from the taxman plus we both really prefer the spirits I have learned to make. Now that puts a big smile on my face.

My time for My Hobby is free, what I get paid in kind is way better than cash.

AM

John51 wrote:-----%<-----
Phantom, what's the ton a bottle stuff?

Decent armagnac. I don't mind some of the better cognac's but armagnac is preferred.......

There's a couple of cheaper ones that are drinkable IMO, but a number of years ago, I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time to taste some excellent ones, and of course, once spoilt, forever a brandy snob