Between 1924 and 1932, a series of studies were carried out in Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory outside Chicago. The aim was to test if workers were more productive in brighter or dimmer lighting. Over the course of the study, a pattern emerged. When the lights were raised, the workers were more productive than […]
Category: Whiskey
Articles written about and on whiskey.
The Moebius
Shift work is inhuman. There is something utterly unnatural about being awake all night. There are some who thrive on shift work, but they are a minority – most of us do it for the money, or because it suits our homelife, but very few do it because they like it. I only did nine […]
Bowing out
I loved Dublin. It’s the city of my birth, where my wife and I fell in love, and where we became parents. I spent four great years there from 1999-2003 and it broke my heart to leave. But I had to face the fact that I am a culchie. Like the salmon swimming back upstream […]
Caledonia calling
Three years ago I flew home from the Spirit Of Speyside with a heavy heart. After spending a week there, I was going back to the real world in the knowledge that I would never have the time or, more importantly, the money, to come back. I went back home, wrote a piece for the […]
Blogging – your pathway to success
Loving whiskey can be a bit lonely. It’s a bit like trainspotting – both involve a love of history and engineering, lots of note taking and bringing a camera everywhere. Granted, whiskey is a lot more fun, as you get to do all those things whilst half cut, but you get the idea – it […]
The Watchers
In the original ending of The Emperor’s New Clothes, there was no child. Hans Christian Andersen had written the story as an adaptation of an earlier folk tale, where devious tailors play on the insecurities of a vain emperor, telling him that they have made him an outfit that is visible only to those of […]
Great heights
Not far from where I live is a little village named Ardmore. Just over the county line (and the River Blackwater), it is a pretty little spot, once dependant on fishing but now surviving well on reeling in the tourists instead. It’s home to the Cliff House Hotel, which has one of the better whiskey […]
Today in ‘Things I Was Actually Invited To’
Agmondesham Cuffe was quite the operator. As detailed in Turtle Bunbury’s excellent work on the Irish aristocracy, Cuffe knew which way the wind blew. Cuffe disliked the policies of James II, who had plans to make Ireland a Catholic stronghold, as per the plans of the Catholic Earl of Tyrconnell, who wanted to strip the […]
The end of the beginning
It’s hard to say if 2017 was what you would call a great year. It was certainly one of changes – we settled into our new home (my old home) and learned to adapt to terrible broadband (PS4 games take a week to download), rubbish windows (we all wear parkas indoors) and beautiful scenery (it […]
Altered states
A few years back, I was talking to a distiller about gin when Peter Mulryan came up in conversation. I asked what he thought of Mulryan’s approach to gin making – his wild experiments. The distiller admitted he admired Mulryan, but simply said ‘he’s gone too far’. It reminded me of Eddie Jessup, the scientist […]
