Pine Street – Compass Box Transistor

I am a big fan of Compass Box Whiskies. So, when they teamed up with Brewdog, another innovative brewery / distillery, I just had to try their whisky. The Compass Box Transistor was especially designed to work as a Boilermaker with the Brewdog Punk IPA. Apart from the Boilermaker, I also took inspiration from the White Boulevardier when coming up with a new cocktail. On top of that, the recipe also features two other unusual ingredients.

The  Compass Box Transistor was created together with Brewdog’s Master Distiller Steven Kersley. The whisky is a blend of grain and single malt whisky aged in first fill American oak casks. On top of that, Compass Box also uses hybrid casks made from American and French oak. The blend is supposed to consist mainly of Clynelish and Linkwood in terms of malt whisky and Cameronbridge for the grain whisky part. Contrary to the usual full disclosure, I could not find any more information on the whisky itself from Compass Box. Nevertheless, let us see how it tastes.

A bouquet of blend Scotch

To be honest, I did not expect that much from the Transistor. After all, it is reasonably priced for a Compass Box whisky, and it does only come at an ABV of 43 %. Yet, I was completely taking by surprise. The Transistor delivers everything you could ask for in a blended Scotch. You get, apple and pear notes, vanilla, caramel and some perfumed notes. For me this blended Scotch is quite complex with even a slight hint of smoke.

White Scotch Boulevardier?

While the White Negroni might already have caught on with cocktail enthusiasts, the White Boulevardier has not. However, a similar cocktail also was mixed in the Bar Gabányi, and they just used regular bourbon. So, I basically made a twist on that drink using the Compass Box Whisky. Instead of Suze I used the high quality Ciane liqueur from the Armand Guy distillery. On top of that, I went for the new Gölles Alfred vermouth as a fortified wine. The two friends Manfred Tement and Alois Gölles created the Semi-Dry Vermouth together. They use grape eau de vies and wine together with seven herbs for the production of the vermouth. The botanicals used are wormwood, cardamom, thyme, fennel, coriander, rose petals and orange peels.

The “Pine Street” clearly reminds me of the White Boulevardier cocktail. However, the drink is more refined as the Boulevardier. The Ciane and the Gölles Vermouth work perfectly well together. The combination of ingredients form something bigger than the individual ingredients separately. On top of that, the Transistor whisky forms the base for the other flavours to play out.

High quality Boilermaker

Obviously, I also had to try the Boilermaker. The Brewdog Punk IPA is a fruity beer with quite a lot of bitter notes. The whisky nicely contrast the flavours of the beer. At the same time the bitterness of the hops cut through the lavish notes of the Compass Box Transistor. However, in my opinion the IPA would also be a good fit for even more strongly flavoured whiskies, for example peated ones.

*The fact that I received a product reviewed in this article for free, did not – in any way – influence the rating of said product. The Ciane was provided by Lion Spirits and the vermouth by Gölles.