Talk:Malt whisky

Merger proposal

Seeing as there is very little difference between a blended malt whisky and a single malt whisky - certainly in Scotland, the only difference is that the whisky must all come from one distillery, so it's made in exactly the same way - wouldn't it make sense to merge the page single malt whisky into this one? Jellyfish dave (talk) 15:03, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Oppose, per the reasons I gave at Talk:Single malt whisky; the term "malt whisky", from a US regulatory standpoint, includes whiskies that are made from a majority of, but not exclusively, malted barley, and would include one made in the style of single pot still whiskey or one made from a 60/40 malt/corn mash, which was somewhat common before Prohibition. Subsequently, the term "malt whisky" has too broad of a meaning to merge the subcategories of single malt and blended malt into it. oknazevad (talk) 18:59, 29 May 2014 (UTC)

New barrels

It says in the article that neither Scotch or Canadian whiskies require new barrels, but it was unclear to me why this was relevant or what the situation was for American whiskies. Reading around, it's apparent that it's that American whiskies have a requirement for new charred oak barrels (American_whiskey#cite_note-cfrb4-2). Since Scotch whisky often uses old bourbon barrels, someone more knowledgable should alter the text to explain the difference and relationships more clearly and with less of a US focus. -- 2601:7:1580:668:E0C0:491A:99CC:CBE1 (talk) 04:47, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

It is relevant here because it is a requirement for making "malt whisky" in the U.S., and it is not a requirement for all whisky made in the U.S. That may be something you weren't aware of. For example, Early Times is a major brand of U.S. whisky that does not fulfill that requirement. It is not labeled as a "malt whisky", of course, but that is one thing (among others) that would prevent it from being labeled as such if the product's manufacturer wanted to use that phrase.

The type of barrel significantly affects the taste – and the color. A new barrel has a stronger coloring and flavoring effect from the wood (e.g. hints of caramel and vanilla tastes from the sugars), and is generally associated with a shorter aging period (e.g., Scotch is often aged more than a decade but bourbon seldom is, and the spirit can start to taste "woody" when aged too long), while a used barrel imparts some of the taste of the prior contents (e.g., rather dramatically for whisky aged in sherry or brandy or umeshu barrels). Some of the dark color in Scotch and Canadian whiskies may be from additives rather than from the barrel, but such additives are not really needed for an American straight whisky – because of the use of new (charred) barrels.

I agree that it may be helpful to identify sources that discuss the subject and use them to improve the article's content. However, I think that detailed commentary about barrel effects might better be placed somewhere else – e.g., in the whisky article, as I don't see it as being any more relevant to malt whisky than to other whiskies (except, of course, that the type of barrel is part of the regulatory definition of a "malt whisky" in the U.S.).

Regarding the notion of U.S. centrism, I certainly agree that we should try not to focus too much on the U.S. However, it is one of the countries that establishes a clear legal definition of what a "malt whisky" is, and its definition is a bit complicated, so it takes some space to explain. I actually just removed the discussion of Canada from the article, since I don't see any real relationship between "malt whisky" and Canada. I don't think the Canadian regulations even contain a definition of "malt whisky" (at least there was no such definition in the part of the regulations that the article was citing). Malt whisky can presumably be made anywhere, and we should only discuss country-specific issues to the extent that they relate to the subject of the article (and Ireland, Japan, and India aren't discussed in the article).

—BarrelProof (talk) 17:37, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

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