Batshit Mental Ideas Clynelish Aged Gin: Seriously, you'll Lose your Freaking Mind!

This week we’ve lost our marbles and delved into the devilishly, stir-crazy world of Master of Malt’s Batshit Mental Ideas to review one of their deliriously insane cask aged gins. And as booze ideas go, this is certainly batshit crazy without a bloody shadow of a doubt! So amongst the pickings on offer (and there are a fair few), we succumbed to the villainous depths and got our gin-loving lips around their Darkness! Clynelish Aged Bathtub Gin. And after sipping, we definitely felt like we’d let Satan seep into our souls and you guys need to welcome him in too! But we’ve wanted to get our hands on this for a while now, ever since the murky darkness flooded into our inbox and attracted us more than a bald guy attracts combovers! The idea of aged gin just simply excited us, and it’s fair to say we were certainly not disappointed. This gin has been pimped. Seriously pimped.

So before we get sampling, let’s delve a little deeper into how this sheer madness came about. The story isn’t all that complex really, but certainly one that conjures up images of unhinged, white-coat-wearing scientists pouring feverish potions into bottles, all the while cackling wildly at their devilish inventions. And in a way, we hope that’s what actually took place! Now if you are familiar with Master of Malt's Bathtub Gin you’ll know it kicks some serious arse, and with that as a starting point for this aged gin we knew we were already on for a winner. So with Bathtub Gin at the centre, the guys at Batshit Mental Ideas simply used a left over Oloroso Sherry cask that has been used to finish Darkness! Clynelish 16 year old Single Malt, and knowing that cask-ageing gin makes for one pretty damn awesome dram, they simply put two and two together and spawned this insanely delicious and wonderful creation. A creation that has made these madcap nutters raise uniqueness to a whole new bloody level!

So before we get mentally hospitalised, we’d better get stuck in to this. And for the love of Merlin’s beard, this aged gin ridiculously excites the senses! Zesty, cake-like lemon aromas hit our noses immediately, battling it out with sweet spices of cinnamon and clove that makes us feel like we’ve just landed in Jim Carey’s house during his Christmas celebrations! It really is one intensely, intriguing gin. We soon found wicked hits of sugared vanilla strolling in, riding high on the heels of orange essence. Compared to the Bathtub Gin, we can really detect the added complexity that the ageing of this gin delivers and the extras it has picked up from the cask. Citrus is still prominent, however the aged gin has more depth and we found that the juniper sits on the fence and is less involved, allowing the other spices to take centre stage.

But once we had got this down us, we could definitely tell this gin had corruptly waltzed over to the dark side! And with citrus peel very much leading the pack we were most certainly now back in the realm of gin, it just carried with it a bigger and more intensely bold flavour. It’s really intriguing as we can obviously tell it’s a gin but it’s just more beefed up, like it’s spent a few weeks hanging around with Tony freaking Soprano! Again, unlike the Bathtub Gin, juniper makes it’s entrance on the finish. It unquestionably takes a back seat to the caramelised spices which whipped us up into a delectable frenzy. But there is no doubt where this gin has been resting it's weery, botanical-filled head. The flavours from the cask are well integrated with this gin and we got an enticing dept of flavour that the original Bathtub Gin didn’t deliver. We got more sweetness and a more intense, rich marmalade flavour that carries with it darker caramels and sharper spices. It’s a sipping gin, well it is for us, and one we will happily sip all day.

But what we love so much about this aged gin is simply the crackpot mindset behind it. We all already know how utterly spine-tingling gin is, but the guys at Batshit Mental Ideas wanted to explore that to an unprecedented level. They wanted to pimp that shit up, crazy style! And it is these out-of-the-box thinkers that really bring uniqueness and diversity to the table and deliver us spirits that you would never think up in a million bloody years! That is what makes this so great. The fact that it tastes so freaking delicious is purely a wonderful thing, but these guys experiment and they experiment well. So to all you lads at Batshit Mental Ideas, never take off those scientist jackets and never stop cackling like a bunch of crazed mental patients, because you guys are the creators of some damn fine, and albeit deranged, alcoholic inventions. We can’t wait to try the others now.

You can pick it up here, at Master of Malt.

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