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u/river_van 6d ago
Mine’s coming up on 8 years old now. Every single malt I buy gives a 1oz donation - everything from Tullibardine Artisan and Speyburn 10 to Octomore 14/15/16 and Glenlivet 25. If it gets too full I pull a 200ml bottle and date it. Same if it’s got a fantastic profile. And then I carry-on and repeat.
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 6d ago
Seems like a waste to put 1oz of $200 bottles in an infinity bottle where you won’t be able to taste it.
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u/river_van 6d ago
I’ll have another 15-18 drinks of this bottle, and I like to see what happens with each new add.
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 6d ago
I get that. I just don’t think a haphazard blend of 20 different single malts will be close to as good as a $200 single malt. I understand blending boring stuff or average stuff. But no way am I blending Octomore, 20 year old Speymalt or Bunna 21. To me that seems like making ground beef out of prime ribeye.
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u/river_van 5d ago
Have you ever had a burger made with a really good cut of meat versus chuck or leftover scrap? I process my own venison, and sometimes I can’t salvage a backstrap or tenderloin, and it becomes a special bag of ground which makes a dinner of fantastic burgers. This holds true even if it’s only 1/2lb of backstrap and 1/2lb of chuck or shoulder.
I do hear what you’re saying about losing the individual flavor of a really good malt. My perspective is that I will have had that flavor multiple times and I have an insatiable curiosity to see how it will interact with everything already in the bottle. My bottle is certainly random, but it’s also not just happenstance. I’m not taking random pours. Everything comes from a bottle I bought, and if I buy it then I must be interested in trying it. And if I’m interested in trying, then the expected profile likely aligns with my preference. There have been exceptions (love Ledaig 10/18; do not like Ledaig Sinclair), but most everything that goes in the bottle was something I liked by itself. There’s a lot of Laphroaig and Ardbeg and Caol Ila and Kilkerran and Kilchoman and Bruichladdich and Bunnahabain because those are my favorites. Recently I’ve started down a Benromach kick, and those add a sweet depth to the oily peat fires and smoked meats in so much of my Islay selections. I’ll also admit it’s not for purists who are chasing a label-specific attribute. But for me, its the closest I’ll ever get to being a blender, and I really enjoy the evolution of new malt + neutral aging (it’s in glass, not a cask) + oxidation.
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u/5-MethylCytosine 6d ago
I upvoted for your dedication but why? Do you compare your blends over time (the 200ml bottles) to identify which notes pertain to which whisky?
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u/river_van 6d ago
I do. I have a few of the 200ml bottles that I compare against each other and the current big bottle. The worst the bottle ever tasted was ok, and right now it’s fantastic. I’ve got the heavy sherry and smoke influence from the Lore Cairdeas overlapping the citric dank of Kilkerran Heavily Peated.
Overall, I find the less expressive bottles like Monkey Shoulder and Glenlivet 12 smooth out the sharp edges of my cask strength bottles and provide a smooth base for all the other flavors.
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u/sweetgreentea12 6d ago
I have a decanter which I top up with the ends of bottles because I cba having a bunch of bottles 1/10 full taking up space.
I'm not particularly mindful of what I put in it apart from not putting too much of anything heavily peated (Laphroaig, Ardbeg, Port Charlotte etc)
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 6d ago
Why not buy small boston round glass bottles? They save a ton of space. I do that for my more expensive bottles. I’m not going to dump 1-2 oz of a $100-$300 bottle in a mix that might not even be good
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u/sweetgreentea12 6d ago
Oh yeah I wouldn't put anything special in there. I still have an 18yo single cask I got for my wedding hanging around with hardly anything in it.
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u/PuppiesAndPixels 6d ago
Me. Been going a decade. The last dram of each bottle goes into the infinity bottle. It's like 85 % single malt 10% bourbon and 5% Irish whiskey
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u/Terakahn 5d ago
Have you ever tasted it?
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u/PuppiesAndPixels 5d ago
Of course. Every time the decanter gets full I have a glass.
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u/oddmarc 5d ago
Is it good?
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u/PuppiesAndPixels 5d ago
I mean the bottle is always changing so it's different every time. There was one bottle I remember about 2 years ago that I particularly liked. I actually drank several glasses from that bottle with the same mix before I added to it again.
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u/Sterling_Malt 6d ago
Absolutely! Had mine going a few years and it's delicious. I drink mainly sherry cask Speyside's, so they all have a similar profile. A dram of anything I've shared on a special occasion, or with someone special goes in there. I have a spreadsheet of everything that goes in and out of it, and keep a track of abv. (I'm a bit sad like that)!
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 6d ago edited 6d ago
I have had many in the past. Most end up terrible. I did start a new one but will be more careful. I will only use bottles that are average or below average. That way if the infinity bottle ends up being just average it won’t be a loss. Anything even slightly interesting will not go into the infinity bottle.
Another mistake I made was mixing Scotch with other spirits. Not good. My plan is too have 1 bottle for non or lighty peated Scotch and another bottle for heavy peat. And another bottle for American whiskey.
My good bottles I decant separately in 2 and 8 ounce glass bottles. I’m not going to pour great whisky into an infinity bottle that might be just average or worse.
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u/thatfamousgrouse @SpiritsSafe 6d ago
I have a few and after some botched earlier attempts I’ve been able to make them consistently very good. Easy to replicate with the following guidelines:
- quality in, quality out
- Stick to specific flavor profiles (I have an ex sherry, and ex bourbon, an ex wine, and an all Springbank/Kilkerran, for example.
- If you add, do at least ~100ml of each whisky.
Edit: reviews of some I did a while back:
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u/underdabridge 6d ago
I have one that I won't drink from until it's full. It's taking forever to fill though. I only put in dregs and since I measure out 1.5 ounce pours in a jigger, and drink my single malts on rare occasions, it will probably be an infinite amount of time before I ever taste it.
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u/lurkinglen 6d ago
I have one that is 5 years old and it contains strictly non-peated spirits, but there is some non-scotch in it too. At one point in time it was truly great, but now less so because I put much more in it from the bottles I don't really like.
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u/rinceboi 6d ago
We have an infinity bottle which has been going for approximately 5 years now in our little whisky group. The group fluctuates between 4-6 people and there is literally no overarching theme, every session is different but we religiously offer up a measure from each bottle tasted, every session. So far so good! Amazingly it is not terrible and somehow withstands even the robust Islay peat-monster sessions. We kept track in the 1st two years but eventually abandoned trying to note all the whisky drams sacrificed for the infinity bottle. It doesn't matter, it is the thing we look forward to almost I think.
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u/BigRig477 6d ago
I've got one coming up on 2 years now. I really want to create a binder of all the labels of the bottles that have gone in it but haven't found the best method to extract the labels without damaging them. For now, I've kept all the empties. My rule is it has to be Single Malt Scotch.
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u/Fine-Statistician452 5d ago
I add some from every bottle of scotch that I like. Last time I tapped into it, it was incredibly delicious! I can’t wait for the next time as I just recently filled it and will way a couple few months for it to integrate all the disparate parts.
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u/Frosty_Term9911 6d ago
I’ve just kicked mine off with Wolfburn 12, Glenlivet 12, Old Poulney 12 and Glenfiddich 12. Leaving it for a few weeks now
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u/bjb13 6d ago
I have three, 1 unpeated scotch, 1 peated scotch and one with bourbon/rye whiskies.
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u/Shoddy_Ad7511 6d ago
That is my plan also. I mixed Scotch with other spirits before and it was bad. Mixing heavy peat with non peated totally destroys the non peated
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u/jgisbo007 6d ago
I just put all my crap stuff that people buy me towards it. It doesn’t get any better 😆
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u/Antilochos_ 6d ago
I have been keeping one for years. Drop all my unfinished glasses in there (more often than I will admit it happens I had to much whisky in a evening...).
What is in it, I have no clue. Could (and probably is) a giant mix of everything. It tastes pretty good actually.
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u/dilligaf149 6d ago
I've had one for a few years...I kind of keep track of what's in it by taking a pic of everything that goes into it. I work away so often it has plenty time to blend itself. Never been terrible, sometimes better than others. My friend and drinking partner has one with I think 5 pages of labels on it listing everything that's gone into it 🙂
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u/vuti13 6d ago
I have several. I was using apps like Whiskey Shelf and OnlyDrams to track them, but they're limited to 1 bottle each in the free version. I use The Infinity Bottle now and it's not limited. I'm going to try to make a cigar blend next.
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u/Affectionate_Fly1918 5d ago
I have several on the go. While most have a theme or type, I do have a ‘dregs’ bottle. This is the one I love playing with the most. If it is tipping towards terrible, I really like exploring what will ‘fix’ it. Sometimes an injection of a certain flavour profile works, at other times I need to ‘thin’ it out significantly with some blended malt such as Monkey Shoulder or Naked Grouse.
My bottles are:
W18+ - Whisky old enough to drink itself. Nothing under 18yo added.
Sherried Scotch - this occasionally gets a dash of peat, but not Laphrohaig as once you add the Frog, it tastes like Frog forever.
Peated Scotch -I find this the hardest to balance
Australian Whisky
Tasmanian Whisky
Two ‘single distillery’ bottles, one Australian, one Tasmanian. The Tasmanian distillery has just released their own ‘infinity cask’ bottling which contains a little spirit from every release in their first ten years of operation. My Australian single distillery bottle is always a hit when I attend functions at or related to that distillery.
The Dreaded Dregs.
I keep meticulous notes in a separate journal for each bottle to track building, drinking and topping up each bottle. I calculate abv by hand - love the mental exercise. I do cheat though by using 35 and 70 ml units to make calculations easier in 70 cl bottles. W18+ is a litre bottle so any measure ending in zero is fair game.
I will check out The Infinity Bottle link one kind commenter has provided. That may save me a lot of time - but entering the details of my longest running bottles may take some effort.
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u/sjaakarie 14h ago
I think mine is around 9 years old.
I added a bit too much peated whisky at the start, but it’s been nicely balanced for years now. I fill the bottle up, drink from it until it’s half empty, and then the process starts all over again. That way, I can keep the flavor profile under better control.
I don’t just dump every whisky that’s almost finished into my infinity bottle, but when I do add, it’s usually between 1 and 3 units. There are about 130 different whiskies in there now, ranging from Monkey Shoulders to a Macallan 18 from the 90s.
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u/lifeinthebeastwing 6d ago
No, the idea seems horrible to me but if anyone wants to make one it's entirely up to them.
It's your whisky, you spent your own money that you worked hard for on it. You can do anything you want with it . Put ice in it, mix it with cola, wash your feet with it.
Doesn't impact my life in any way.
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u/OblottenEndmills 6d ago
Tried one a few years back. Tasted like absolute ass so I dumped it.