1) - A Beginner's Guide to Single Malt Scotch Whisky

The Beginner's Guide was one of the first additions to this web site in the 1990's.
Over the years it has grown into a modest Scotch whisky encyclopaedia with 10
pages with useful information for (relative) beginners that are taking their first
shaky steps into the confusing malt whisky world. The first chapter deals with
the malt whisky fundamentals (what is single malt Scotch whisky exactly and
why is it special?) while the second chapter looks at the whisky vocabulary
(terminology and pronunciation). Chapter 3 about the geography of Scotland
deals with the various Scottish malt whisky regions, the 4th chapter 4 focuses
on the distillation process of whisky and chapter 5 looks at the maturation
that changes  the fresh spirit needs to evolve into real whisky is time - lots of it.

That's quite enough theory, so the 2nd half of this guide has a more practical focus.
The topic of the 6th chapter about the bottling of whisky may seem mundane - but unless you prefer to buy your whiskies by the cask, you should appreciate this logistical innovation. The chapters about shopping for whisky (how to spend your hard earned cash wisely on whisky), enjoyment (on glassware, adding water, temperature and many other little details) and practice (now it's finally time to actually pour yourself a glass or two of whisky, preferably a single malt. I've tried to share a few final words of whisky wisdom in the conclusion - as well as a review for an e-book that inspired me to start work on ... (drumroll) ... an "Advanced Beginner's Guide".
However, I'm afraid that the 'Advanced Beginner's Guide' is not quite finished yet at the moment...
 

2) - Scotch Whisky Distillery Data & Malt Whisky Map

During the early 1990's, the only country that seemed to be producing
single malt whisky was Scotland. I later learned that people have been
producing excellent malt whiskies in Japan for at least a few decades
now. In fact, they also distil malt whisky in exotic countries like India,
Brazil and Australia these days. However, when I launched the site
in 1995, I had only sampled malt whiskies from Scotland. So, that's
also the focus of the Scotch whisky distillery data section, which
contains profiles for over 100 different malt whisky distilleries.
The whisky distillery profiles take the readers on an alphabetical
journey from Aberfeldy to Tullibardine and contain statistics like
region, neighbours, the foundation year, capacity, water source,
number of stills, etc. Each profile also provides an overview of
the distilleries' history and contains tasting notes and ratings.
 
Apart from the profiles themselves, the DD section also contains an
overview of malt whisky brands (you won't find the Port Charlotte or
Stronachie distillery anywhere in Scotland for example), an overview
of independent bottlers of Scotch whisky and pages for the different
whisky regions of Scotland. You can use the regional pages to locate
all distilleries in a particular region - which could be useful if you still
consider the 'terroir' aspect of Scottish whisky production relevant.
I must admit that I personally feel that modern distillation practices
and the economies of scale that determine today's whisky business
have made the concept of whisky regions pretty much obsolete.

Nevertheless, there's a Mega Malt Map of Scotch malt whisky distilleries.
My brother Franc (smarter than he looks) and I (probably not quite as smart as I'd like to think I am, because my psychologist told me an IQ of 100,000 is physiologically impossible) decided to combine our JavaScript talents to build an interactive map of Scottish whisky distilleries. For one thing, such a map might be inspirational for people planning a trip through Scotland. If you think about visiting a handful of distilleries, the map will show you where they are, so you can set out a route. What's more, the whisky map provides an alternative interface to browse through the more than hundred distillery profiles in the Distillery Data section.

You can click on the name of a distillery in the distillery navigation menu in the upper left corner (toggle with the 'D' key) to reveal it's location. Selecting a distillery will make the focus of the map 'fly' to its location. Alternatively, it's possible to use the minimap in the upper right corner (toggle with the 'M' key). The rectangular selector on the minimap indicates the part of the map that is currently visible in your browser; simply drag around the selector to explore the area you'd like to see. You can toggle some useful help instructions with the 'H' key and move around the map with your mouse. The arrow keys allow you to move the map up, down and to the left or right. Moving the mouse over a distillery label will reveal some basic details about that distillery. Clicking on a label opens the distillery profile in the Distillery Data section. Just keep in mind that the map uses a background image of more than a megabyte, so loading might take a while. Also, that means it's not meant for mobile devices. Feedback via e-mail or the Twitter is very welcome.
 

3) - Scotch Malt Whisky mAlmanac

The name mAlmanac is short for 'malt almanac' - a pocket-sized guide to malt Scotch whisky.
It started out as a failry simplified shopping guide with an overview of some recommendable and
especially affordable whiskies, but over time a few other pages were added to the mix as well;
 
1) The Hot List - the most interesting new malt whiskies that were released (fairly) recently
2) The Hit List - my all-time favourite malt whiskies which I would recommend to anybody
3) The Shit List - my least favourite malt whiskies and whiskeys which I would not recommend
4) The Bang-For-Your-Buck List - a small selection of malt whiskies that offer the best value
5) The Reading List - a overview of the 10 most recommendable whisky books that I know
6) The Whisky Industry List - a matrix of all Scotch malt whisky distilleries and their owners
 
Last but not least, I've managed to reconstruct a few of the most ancient parts of the site that
seemed lost after the big crash of this web site in 2006. So far, my Little Black Book (tasting
notes on the first 500 Scotch single malt whiskies that I seriously sampled), the Stock List (the
contents of my liquor cabinet around circa 2005) and the Track Record (scores for the first 2000
malt whiskies I've tried) have been restored to part of their former glory.

4) - A Liquid Log about Scottish whiskies

This part of the Malt Madness home page used to show the latest entries in my Liquid Log, but since that log transformed into an external Google Blogspot Blog, that's no longer technically possible. So, please visit my 'internal' Liquid Log for an overview of the log entries covering 1997 to 2009, or the new Google Blog for all fresh reports and other whisky rantings & ratings. You can find and overview of the entries covering 1997 to 2009 in my 'internal' Liquid Log while fresh tasting notes will be added to the various distillery profiles in the Distillery Data section of this site from now on.

If I would have received a penny for each time I've told colleagues at work and clients that they needed to work SMARTER instead of harder, I would have been able to buy a bottle of whisky by now. Granted, it would be a bottle of very cheap whisky (a blend, and not an enjoyable one), but still...
Perhaps it's about time I started to follow my own advice. ;-)

During the first years of Malt Madness my particular 'skill set' has allowed me to poorly mimic the functionality of a content management system - mostly by simply throwing lots of time at a problem until it eventually went away. However, I feel that this approach is starting to severely limit the potential of Malt Maniacs. Even with some maniacs picking up some of the work involved with the site (for example Serge and Luca who have taken care of the MMMonitor recently), I felt we needed to streamline some processes. Fortunately, junior maniac Rich Howard was inspired by our plight and we're now working on our very own database.
Join the MMMailinglist if you want to stay updated...
 

5) - Deviant Drams, a.k.a. "other drinks that get you drunk"

I must admit that I haven't done a lot of work yet on the Deviant Drams section - the section of this web site that will deal with other types of whisky like blended whisky and vatted malt whiskies. This also includes whiskies that were produced in other countries like Ireland, Japan, India, Taiwan, Australia and America. Furthermore, other spirits like cognac, armagnac, rum, wodka, gin, tequila and grappa will be featured.

All in all, there's a LOT of work to do on Malt Madness in the months that lie ahead - so I'll wrap up this explanation for now. Join the mailinglist or follow me on Twitter for updates on the progress.

Sweet drams,

Johannes