Potion Miscibility: Cask-strength Laphroaig

My brother-in-law introduced me to scotch, and to this most strongly flavored variety, all at once. Pronounced something like “la-froyg,” this single-malt Scotch whisky is decidedly an acquired taste. I happened to acquire it on my first sip, but most people have an adversarial relationship with it for a while.

If you come around and learn to like it, though, you’ll probably put it near the top of your Scotch list.

My brother-in-law says drinking Laphroaig is “like drinking a campfire . . . in a good way.” It does taste like you’re pouring ash, cinders, flame, and smoke onto your tongue. But it also tastes as if you mixed all that with honey.

Several varieties of Laphroaig are available for sale in the United States, but I’ve only ever gotten bottles of my preferred kind, cask-strength, from my brother-in-law. He picks it up in duty-free airport shops or asks his coworkers to grab a few bottles when they travel.

The booklet that comes with the cask-strength bottles recommends adding water. In my experiments, I’ve added as little as one drop or as much water as the booklet recommends, diluting one part whisky with three parts water.

It’s always good, but I’m getting more and more partial to the more dilute mixes. At the 1:3 ratio, Laphroaig seems to become a Scotchy wine. Because your taste buds don’t get deadened by the strong alcohol and flavors, you can appreciate every nuance. The color rarefies to a paler amber. I can imagine Tolkein’s elves sipping a wine something like this. And perhaps some more exotic race that favors some fanciful acorn wine would find this pleasing.

I can’t see putting ice in this, ever. And using Laphroaig for a scotch-and-soda would be an abomination.

I do not drink alcohol to get drunk or even for its mild depressant effects when I’m stressed out. I grew up in a family that taught me mental exercises to deal with negative emotions, and those exercises almost never fail me. I do find the process of making a perfect martini very meditative (in fact, I enjoy the process of making one almost more than of drinking it), and I won’t pretend that I don’t sometimes enjoy the effects of strong drink.

But such effects aren’t the reason I drink, and if I ever find myself depending on a chemical such as ethyl alcohol to deal with life troubles, I’ll know I have a problem.

But when I played the “Robbing the Cradle” level of Thief III: Deadly Shadows in a darkened room with a top-notch set of headphones, I had to take a break for a couple of fingers of Laphroaig cask-strength. I credit that one computer game experience with showing me just how immersive a good game can be and, for the first time ever, teaching me to love the horror genre.

I was terrified. I actually trembled as I explored the abandoned insane asylum. And almost all the fear came from the sound itself. The terror of not knowing what was going on, wondering who or what made that noise, wondering why the place was so vast, so empty. And finally uncovering the source of all the madness, even as I became so trapped in it that I just couldn’t escape.

Thief III may have been the worst of the three magnificent Thief games (probably because they bowed to the Xbox restrictions), but it was still a damn good game. And “Robbing the Cradle” is a big part of the reason why.

Even now, sitting here in a brightly lit office, remembering the experience makes me wish I could uncork a bottle of Laphroaig in a warm room with a merry fire and good friends. We’d laugh. We’d sing. And then, as the fire died down, maybe one of us would tell the tale of the Cradle again . . .

Add comment August 24th, 2007

Resident Evil 4 quick play

While visiting a friend’s vacation home this weekend, I took the opportunity to play Resident Evil 4 on his PS2. I’ve never played any Resident Evil games (nor, for that matter, have I ever touched a PS2).

The game was definitely fun. Basically a first-person shooter, although it had that over-the-shoulder view. I found the control a little frustrating, as I’m used to being able to swing my view in any direction instantly with a mouse or second joystick. In RE4, this was a slow process and somewhat limited.

That said, I actually think this added to the feel of the game. A survival horror game should make me feel like I just can’t possible keep up with the swarms of zombies coming from every direction. A little more practice with the controls and I’d have been able to just have fun.

In my twenty minutes of play, I made it into the first village, ran around screaming for more bullets, and finally died to the brutal caress of a chainsaw in the hands of a maniac with a burlap sack over his head.

Not having enough bullets was deliciously terrifying, and I actually managed to survive for a while just with my knife. I even managed to deliver a skull-crushing kick to one persistent villager I’d stabbed a few times.

I see there’s a PC version of the game. I’ll have to get my hands on it and see if I can get it to run on my iMac using Parallels.

Add comment July 7th, 2007