Spew: Artic Regurgitation

[Capn Jimbo]

Note: the following post is not suitable for small children or gastricly challenged readers...


Artic wolves live a challenging life. They are forced to hunt in packs, and most of their hooved prey escapes. Accordingly they are forced to eat the young, the sick, the stragglers - when they are lucky enough to find one. Upon doing so they gorge - up to 20% of their own weight! For we idiots this would be like eating 80 hamburgers at a sitting. And then?

When their whining pups appear, they regurgitate. Tasty treats for all.

The Artic Wonder, the Frozen One, the Wolfboy is no exception. In little more than a year, I once estimated that this avowed "hobbyist" had regurgitated hundreds of reviews, recipes and sometime borrowed articles. But as it turns out my amazing estimates were wrong.

It was far more.

A more recent analysis found 241 reviews of rums, whiskeys, teguila, vodka and liqueurs. A fair and random sample of these revealed approximately 1 to 1.5 recipes per review, for another 240 to 360 recipes. The estimated total...

Let's call it 540 reviews, recipes and articles. Are you impressed?

I sure am. When a rank amateur posts this much material in not much more than year I've got to wonder. This is way, way, way beyond hobby status. This is more production than most of the other rum review sites combined (I'm including the Dood, Scotte, RnD, Count Silvio, el Machete, the Bilgemunky and even me!)!! This is not to mention his frequent postings at the Shillery and around the net.

Simply fuckin amazing.

Let's continue. He then claims to do multiple tastings of each spirit (up to six), but let's be conservative. At just 3 tastings per spirit that'd be 723 tasting of spirits, plus say another 450 mixed drink experiments. Are you still with me?

Call it a possible 1180 tastings a year or about 3 tastings a day. But we're still not done...

You have to make notes, then compose, edit and post each review, article or recipe. Take it from me this is not easy or quick. I can easily spend an hour or more on just one review. A good tasting takes at least 20 minutes, often more. Conservatively a competent website production equivalent to this would take me probably 3 to 4 hours a day, 365 days a year.

And that my dear idiots, is not a hobby. It is an obsessive occupation. How does the Wolfboy run his sports memorabilia business? How much family time is left? Is he jaundiced? But I digress.

Do I doubt the Frozen One? Not for a second. It helps that he's an amateur taster who can simply blow through a spirit, review and posting in short order, in alcohol assisted stream-of-consciousness fashion. The fact that this reviewer finds bitterness in more than half the rums tasted is hardly reassuring. Impressive, but in the end...

It's still just bitter spew. But lots of it.

[Capn Jimbo]

It gets even worse...


The mountain of bitter spew is more like a volcano. Although I've read that the Wolfboy admitted tasting a spirit up to six times, that just seemed, well, excessive. So my estimates were based (conservatively) on just three tastings before publishing a review. But researcher that I am...

I finally found the answer.

Wolfboy: "The sample was smaller than my normal 200 ml minimum sample size, and the reader should be cautioned that I was not able to give the sample my normal rigorous tasting regimen of five independent tasting sessions."

Aha! We now learn his "normal rigorous tasting regimen" is five "independent" tastings. Considering the massive number of published reviews and recipes this must require an absolutely mindboggling amount of time and effort.

This Lone Wolf has outreviewed and outpublished almost all the other rum review sites combined, including this one. Is this realistic or credible in not much more than year, by a new and inexperienced reviewer starting from scratch?

You decide. I have...