Is there caramel coloring (E150) in... ?

@Nozinan yes I believe they want to make their product as natural as possible. Ralfy has a nice YouTube series about them where he visits the distillery.

Made me want to buy their 10y. Excellent clean Whisky.

They use barley from Campeltown, don't chill filter and don't use additional coloring. Also they keep local people employed in the packaging line, in stead of using a machine to cut costs.

I recommend you all to watch the video and try the Whisky! youtu.be/ffIDf_WtKpk

@wtrstrnghlt

It was the Ralfy series (7 parts if I recall) that encouraged me to by my first bottle, 12year CS. Then I read a good review of the Claret wood. I believe I tried the. Both at the third meeting of my Whisky club. Unfortunately I tasted the Claret wood after an A'Bunadh batch 33 so I wasn't impressed. It was probably over a year before I really appreciated it

Springbank is a high quality producer. I'm even tempted to try a non CS dram sometime.

I'm not entirely sure how adding a little bit of (quite bitter tasting) burnt sugar to some whisky makes it any less natural than forcing barley grains to undergo partial germination, before drying and crushing them, steeping them in heated water, adding yeast, fermenting the combination, boiling it in copper stills, collecting the alcohol and then putting the results in a wooden cask for a number of years does...

If you think you can taste a sweet caramel flavour in your whisky then it's almost certainly not E150 that you've detected.

I guess the problem from people with E150 is not that it's unnatural or unauthentic (it has been a common practice in Scotland from the early 20th century to add colouring). It has more to do distilleries lowering their quality in an age of increasing mass-production and younger NS bottlings and trying to mask their shortcomings by adding more caramel and giving it a rinse with cheap sherry.

@cowfish If it were naturally procured burnt sugar that would be one thing. However my understanding is that the e150a used in beverages is produced with chemicals, not heat. Yuck

In case this is interesting to anyone: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E150

Natural caramel from wood tastes neither burnt nor bitter. Wood caramel is natural. Added burnt caramel is an additive. To me if you add anything, you don't have a whisky, you have a cocktail.

@Victor Given that the scotch industry rarely uses virgin casks, that would make 99% of single malts a cocktail by your definition :)

@Pandemonium, I suppose that if you consider bourbon barrel residue, Tennessee whiskey barrel residue, or wine cask residue to be an additive, then I suppose that I would agree that 99% of Scottish malt whiskies are not strictly speaking whisky in the purest sense. That said, standards have flexed to allow more than the purist "grain plus wood" to define Scottish whisky. I understand full well why people have wanted heavy peat and brine, and wine cask and bourbon cask influence to give more flavour to barley-malt whisky. In my book, only the best quality barley has enough chops to hold a whisky without the add-on flavours. Some do work well without the add-ons, though. Highland Park, Bruichladdich, Bunnahabhain, and Linkwood could, if they want to, put together whiskies built on nothing beyond barley-malt and wood. You can lose almost all of the bourbon, Tennessee whisky, or wine cask influence by using 5th fill casks, but then you lose most of the wood influence as well.

What really disturbs me is caramel added to Scotch, or any of that sweet or winey crap that is frequently added to Canadian whisky, and nowadays even to adulterate some American whiskeys.

I'm with Victor on that

Macallan 12 Cask Strength?

@rigmorole My understanding is that Macallan never uses colouring. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that. I do know for sure that their current range (Gold, Amber, Sienna, Ruby and M) are non-coloured.

@talexander - not necessarily. If it doesn't say, like the Glenlivet Nadurra, which claims non chill filtering but says nothing about colouring (or Bowmore Tempest, where Batches I and II were coloured, Batch III wasn't, but Batches IV and V seem to be), or with some of the independent bottlers, just send them an e-mail and ask - they'll usually be able to answer the question. Or, you can go to www.whisky.de and look up various expressions.

@YakLord Except Macallan clearly states that their whiskies are natural colour with nothing added.

@talexander True...I only realized after the fact that it could be construed that I was responding to the most recent post, when in fact I was responding to your earlier post where you mentioned that if there is no 'natural colour' claim on the bottle, it is likely coloured...even with Macallan, you have to do some research, as the bottles make no claim to natural colour...the same with Hart Brothers.