And I do like sports. Well.... some of them. And when I say I like sports, I mean in the role of an active
participant. I've never seen the point in planting my fat ass on a couch on front of a television set or on
a seat in a stadium to watch other people play. Every once and again, I indulge in a game of squash or
a bit of ploughing through the mud of a rugby field - in the role of 'hooker'. I'm not offering professional
sexual services on the field or anything like that - the 'hooker' position is in the mid-front of the scrum.

Well, that would be me - living my life 'to the max' here in Amsterdam, Holland. Next to sipping and sniffing single malt whisky I do enjoy reading, writing, music and movies. I'm also blessed with a brother and friends who enjoy meaningless philosophical & political debate as much as I do. And I love to just sit and think about the meaning of life and other trivialities - preferably with a malt and a cigar in my hands. My favorite thinking chair faces my single malts bar, so I have a stimulating view whenever I'm engaged in creative and intellectual processes.

I'm a big fan of British comedy as well - Blackadder, Brass Eye, Alan Partridge and Coupling
are a few television series that spring to mind. I enjoy some off-beat American comedy
shows too; 'Get A Life', 'Newsradio', 'Ren and Stimpy', 'The Colbert Report' and 'South Park'.
Basically, like many Dutchmen I just like dry, surreal and slightly black humour, I guess.
 
The picture at the right from the British show 'Brass Eye' (UK, 1997) is a case in point.
Just a little 'thought experiment' about what our archeologists might have missed so far,
buried beneath the ancient pyramids in Egypt, but stuff like that cracks me up every time. 

I try to live my life by 'the pleasure principle', so I love a good meal. The fact that I'm a 'hit-and-run'
shopper forces me to experiment a lot in the kitchen. The results are usually mixed at best, but through
sheer luck (or was it divine inspiration?) I managed to compose some gastronomically groundbreaking
appetizers and late night snacks. I've published a few of them in my 'Liquid Log' so you can try them.
Let me know if you would like to see some more of these recipes published on Malt Madness...

Ah, yes - and then there's parapente - a bit like parasailing, but instead of hanging behind a speedboat you jump off mountains and make actual flights. I made my first flights in the year 2000 and I've been addicted to the sensation of freedom ever since. Everybody should give this a try, trust me - if only just once in their life! The picture at the left shows the first flight of ' the amazing flying Johannes' above Mieussy, France.
See log entry #51 for more details on my experiences.

So, whenever you see 2 groups of 8 men stampede towards each other during a rugby match, think of me...
Another favorite outdoors activity is skiing. My style is very crude but effective. It's a good thing I travel to the slopes only once a year, though, because my body wouldn't survive the punishment much longer. The older I get, the longer I need to recuperate from my skiing trips.

Oh - and I almost forgot: I love movies. Good movies, that is. In fact, in the 1990's I also launched a 'Movie Maniacs' website along the lines of the Malt Maniacs site - but I didn't have the time to keep all those sites in the air. Dutch 'homegrown' cinema usually sucks big time, but fortunately most major international releases are available here in Holland as well. Some of my personal favorites are Brazil, Blade Runner, Le Cité des Enfants Perdu, Dark City, Apocalypse Now, Reflecting Skin, Memento, Pi, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs and Barton Fink - anything by Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers, really. Some other favorite directors are Alfred Hitchcock & Stanley Kubrick.

And I guess chess is a sport too, isn't it?
It may not be a 'high impact' sport like rugby (or, if you
screw up, parapente ;-) but losing a game can be just
as devastating. The fact that it's one of the few sports
that allows the players to enjoy a glass of single malt
whisky during the game makes it one of my favourite
pastimes. Just try having a nice glass of whisky while
playing soccer or basketball - it just isn't the same.
A few single malts (just a few, mind you) work wonders
on the chessboard. Well, probably not if you're playing to win,
actually - but it makes waiting for your opponent's move more fun...

Music is very important to me. I love classical music in general & opera in particular.
Some of my favourite composers are Arvo Pärt, Josquin Desprez, Guillaume Du Fay, Gabriel Fauré,
Giovanni Pergolesi, Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar - to name just a handful. There's a lot of contemporary music that I like as well, but whenever I'm dramming I usually tend to go for the classical stuff. My own attempts at composing haven't been very successful, but in my youth I have been the lead singer in the amazingly crap band 'Dr. Decibel & The Explosions'. It's not that they really needed another singer, but I was the only one who knew how to operate all the equipment. We played during the aftermath of the punk era and I guess we sounded 'punk' sometimes. Unfortunately, that wasn't really our intention ;-)  We actually knew we stank; we were just in it for the free drinks and female attention...

And what about my work? Well, that's an entirely different story. I've worked as a marketeer and editor for the Dutch Yellow Pages for a decade before somebody invented the internet. I liked what I saw, so I started dabbling with websites in my spare time. Things gradually evolved into my own little NerdQuake web agency. If you're interested in the 'work' aspect of my life (which often blends into my personal life) I suggest you check out the NerdQuake website. Apart from the internet projects I'm working on together with a few of my nerdy friends, I also dabble in screenwriting for television and I write columns and articles for magazines. And after writing about whisky on the web for over a decade, I finally assembled the courage to start writing a book about whisky. And then another one...

So - how's that for a lot of boring information you didn't really need, eh?
I suppose that we have been properly introduced now - maybe it's time to explore Malt Madness a little further?
The sitemap offers a complete overview of everything that this site has to offer, so that would be your next logical
step, I guess. Well, unless you're a novice in the world of whisky - in which case the Beginner's Guide is as good a
place to start as any to start your explorations. It features ten chapters, filled with all the information you'll need.

The advantage of books (as opposed to many movies) is the way they stimulate the brain
and imagination to do some actual work. My favorite authors in this part of the world are
German author Herman Hesse and Dutch writers W.F. Hermans and Harry Mulish. As far as
English literature is concerned, Edgar Allan Poe, Philip K. Dick and Jack Vance are particular
favorites. Occasionally I even like to engage in heavier material by Nietzsche, Kant or Jung.
Not too often, though...  I wouldn't want to overexert my brain - it might just explode...

Is this your first visit to Malt Madness? Well, that calls for a proper introduction...
On this page I'll try to tell you a little bit more about myself and the malt mania that
I'm suffering from. If you're not to keen on the whole background story right now I
suggest that you click onwards to the sitemap where you'll find an overview of all the
available pages on this website. Here I'll try to paint a picture of the first malt maniac.
 
Well, the first 'certified' malt maniac anyway. There had been people who were crazy
about malt whisky before (especially in Scotland and Italy), but until the middle of the
1990's the single malt world was a relatively small 'niche' market. I stumbled into
that world on a hot summer night in August 1991. I was invited to a 'wake' of a bar
in Amsterdam that was forced to close down. After a long and embarrassing night
(you can find the sordid details in my very first Liquid Log entry) the bartender pulled
a bottle of Lagavulin 16 years old malt from behind the counter and the rest is history.
 
These events inspired me to begin my quest to find the perfect malt whisky in 1995.
It took me almost a decade to realise that this quest was actually a fool's errand...

After my 'amazing discovery' of single malt Scotch whisky in 1991 I went a little bit mad. Malt mad... By the time I had learned that the perfect
single malt whisky doesn't exist I had sampled over 2,000 different Scotch single malt whiskies and written 300 entries for my Liquid Log.
The first symptoms were relatively mild, though - I felt compelled to sample more single malt Scotch whiskies and increase my liquor budget.
 
Gradually more and more single malts appeared on my shelves, but it still seemed innocent enough at first.
By 1995 single malt whiskies had taken over my shelves almost completely and I felt an irresistible urge to
reach out to fellow victims of 'malt madness'. So, I started this website... In retrospect, that might not have
been the best way to alleviate the symptoms of my malt madness, but at least I've had more fun with it... ;-)

And as these 'Before' and 'After' pictures demonstrate,
malt madness can be a relatively benign affliction that
sometimes comes with a few positive side effects as well.
I may have lost most of my hair in the process, but I got
over some of the anti-social tendencies from my childhood
as well. Not all of them mind you; I still have my 'off days'.
 
This introduction focuses on Malt Madness and yours truly,
Johannes van den Heuvel. But over the years our virtual
whisky universe was expanded with two sister websites.
The group of Malt Maniacs that shared their passion for
malt whisky via this site since 1997 evolved into an active
on-line community with a separate website. The third site
within the trinity is WhiskyFun by Serge Valentin, France.

Of course, you can also use the search box at the left or contact me directly with any questions you
might have. At least... With hundreds of messages in my inbox almost every day, I don't always have
the time to properly respond to all of them. Please check out the Frequently Asked Questions page
first, because I might not even bother to reply to questions that are answered in quite some detail
already on the HELP page, accessible from each page via the question mark at the top left.

Sorry, but that's just the kind of insensitive bastard I am sometimes (depending on my mood, the circumstances and the weather)...