Daily writing prompt

Share a hobby you’ve picked up recently — what got you into it?

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I have a hobby. Unfortunately, it is bourbon.

There are certainly more expensive hobbies. Yacht ownership comes to mind. Collecting vintage Ferraris would probably put a larger dent in the checking account. But bourbon has one particularly dangerous feature: It comes in bottles that individually don’t always seem that expensive. And that’s how they get you.

Every so often, I look at what I’ve accumulated and announce, with conviction, “I’m not buying another bottle anytime soon.” That sentence now requires an addendum: “And this time I mean it.” I usually mean it the other times, too. That’s the problem.

But somewhere along the way, simply collecting and tasting bourbon turned into something even more interesting. I started experimenting with aging whiskey myself, and that’s probably the real hobby.

I have a small oak cask that I’ve been filling with different whiskey, letting the barrel work on it, then bottling the result and filling the cask again. Each fill changes because the barrel changes. The fresh oak that had a powerful influence on the first whiskey has already surrendered some of what it had to give. With each new fill, the interaction becomes different and the experiment gets a little more interesting.

I’m now about to bottle the fifth fill from Cask #1 and put the sixth — and final — fill into it. At that point, I’ll have six different whiskeys that have passed through the same little barrel at different stages of its life. That’s the part I find fascinating. I’m not just drinking bourbon. I’m watching what oak, time and whiskey do to one another.

And then, naturally, I have to taste the results. For research purposes.

It’s a fun hobby. It’s a tasty hobby. It satisfies both the part of me that enjoys bourbon and the part that wants to know, “I wonder what would happen if…?” It’s also an expensive-as-hell hobby.

Which is why I’m not buying another bottle anytime soon.

And this time I mean it.

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