READER UPDATE: A QUICK NOTE TO ALL OUR SUBSCRIBERS.
First, to all you wonderful people who subscribe to this newsletter and read it, thank you from the bottom of our hearts! It means the world to us. We wanted to let you know that we’re in the process of switching our web hosting service. We now have a store and can offer you helpful whiskey tasting products! Check it out here. As a subscriber, do you have to do anything? Absolutely not. All you have to do is sit tight, keep reading Whisk(e)y Wednesday, and we’ll make sure these whiskey tips and tricks keep getting delivered to your inbox. We’ll be slowly phasing out the old site and moving everything to our standby URL WhiskySmiths.com. In the meantime, there are two Whisk(e)ySmiths websites. Now, onto our topic!
MOUTH BREATHERS GET MORE FROM THEIR WHISKEY
If you’re a fan of Netflix’ show Stranger Things or if you follow certain etiquette, then you know that breathing with your mouth open can have a negative connotation. But I’m here to tell you when it comes to nosing whiskey, who cares what the squares say? Get more from your whiskey. Breath with your mouth open!
Keeping your mouth open a little while you smell your whiskey is probably the fastest and easiest way to better your nosing game. Try it. You’ll be instantly glad you did. You’ll start picking out aromas you didn’t have access to before.
Why does this work?
It has to do with taking advantage of ethanol’s good qualities while venting off the bad. Good ol’ ethanol. It makes you feel good. It even helps carry aromatics up into your nose. But once it’s there, it absolutely gets in the way of smelling things. That’s because ethanol has an anesthetizing effect on your nose. It dulls and numbs your sense of smell. How do you stop this from happening?
This is where being a mouth breather comes in handy. When you nose whiskey with your mouth open it vents the ethanol vapors out. Like smoke rising out of the chimney of Laura Ingalls’ little house on the prairie. No more vapors. No more nose numbness. (Say that five times fast)
— Zac Smith