Beijing Boyce

Five-kuai beers at Kro's Nest? Count me in!

We haven’t had a really good contest since the Celebrity Pub Crawl series and The Haiku Challenge months and months ago. In the spirit of the times – the increasingly hard times – I’m getting back to it with some free stuff.

The contest: Leave a comment about the best deals in town for those on an increasingly tight budget. It could be a happy hour, a weekly special, or a one-off event.

My pick: The weekly “We Hate Tuesdays” event at Kro’s Nest, where the first keg opened at 6 PM is free and then it’s RMB5 per pint to 10 PM. Plus, the pizza is huge: you can take some slices home for breakfast, thus saving more).

The prizes: Some stuff I get for free at tastings and events as well as a few items from my own personal stash (I’ll be adding to this list during the next few days):

• One bottle of Wolf Blass Gold Label Shiraz 2005
• One Riedel glass (drink that Wolf Blass in style)
• One Yunnan Red Wine corkscrew (from my trip outside Kunming – love these things)
• Two Dewar’s snifter and mini Whisky bottle sets
• One Blu Lobster apron (very nice, very blue, and looks like it can absorb a lot of foam)
• One Frank’s Place mug
• Two Four packages of Tim Hortons coffee (for use in that mug)
• One package of Beijing Devils rugby team coffee
• One XL T-shirt from Blue Frog (described as “very, very nice”)

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The nitty-gritty

Everyone who leaves a reasonable comment gets his or her name entered in the draw. This is all about helping out fellow readers, so please make useful suggestions (“eat chuan’r” doesn’t cut it).

It’s winner take all, i.e. one person gets all of the items listed above.

You need to be in Beijing to win, either able to pick up this stuff from me in Sanlitun-Workers Stadium or have a reliable daytime address to which I can courier it.

The deadline for entries is next Thursday at 5 PM. I’ll find some respected member of the community to pull the winning name and will announce the winner next Friday.

Four neat things Peter Kendall, brand ambassador for mega alcohol firm Diageo*, told a group of budding single malt aficionados at Aria last Saturday:

- Each of us has 2.5 million sensors in our nose.

- To smell single malts without “burning” those sensors, place your nose partly into the glass and inhale through your mouth. (Note: I found this tedious and preferred grand sniffs that I guess figuratively created forest fires in my nostrils. But that’s just me.)

- The age on a bottle refers to the youngest Whiskey inside. Thus, a 12-year-old bottle contains Whiskeys at least a dozen years old. Older Whiskey might be added to adjust the taste and maintain consistency.

- About 90 percent of Whiskey made in Scotland is used for blending in brands such as Johnnie Walker and J&B.

Then we got drunk silly.

Seriously, tasting single malts – made from a single distillery in Scotland and with no grain other than malt – is not that different from tasting wines. You take a look at the color, then smell and taste the booze to find aromas and flavors such as butterscotch, vanilla, dried fruit, chocolate, smoke, honey, grass, nutmeg, iodine, baijiu (blame last night’s binge) and, according to one tippler, “my grandfather” (yikes!).

We tried nine single malts from throughout Scotland, all of which are available at Aria in flights of 30ML pours. Kendall himself will be there every Tuesday and Thursday this month from 8 to 10 PM to talk about single malts and make cocktails. The lineup (numbers denote age in years):

Glenkinchie 12 vs. Royal Lochnagar 12 (RMB150)

Clynelish 14 vs. Glen Elgin 12 (RMB160)

Singleton 12 vs. Singleton 18 (RMB230)

Caol Ila 12 vs. Talisker 10 vs. Talisker 18 (RMB330)

My pick: Clynelish (Coastal East Highlands) vs. Glen Elgin (Speyside) because, well, I liked them. They are on the lower end of the cost spectrum, have plenty of flavors to spot, and Glen Elgin has a nice long finish.

The Caol Ila vs Talisker flight is also intriguing, due to the stark contrast between Talisker 10-year-old (enough iodine to outfit an emergency room) and 18-year-old (much more rounded and honeyed).

And for those who want to try something really special, Aria has pours of Bowmore 1957 for RMB998.

* Kendell works for RESERVE, “the Luxury Collection by Diageo”