Review: Liquormen’s Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky   68/100
a review by Chip Dykstra (Aka Arctic Wolf)
March 14, 2018

Liquormen’s Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky is a celebrity branded whisky which celebrates the classic Canadian television Series Trailer Park Boys, as well as a the Liquormen of the old West.

According to the Liquormen’s website, there was a group of ruthless bandit’s called the Liquormen in the late 1800’s. They weren’t interested in gold or jewels, rather they stole liquor. Ricky, Julian, and Bubbles (the Trailer Park Boys) launched Liquormen’s Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky in 2016 to honour the legacy of those Old West Bandits.

This Canadian whisky is bottled at 40 % alcohol by volume.

In the Bottle 3/5

A bottle of the Trailer Park Boys whisky is shown to the left. It is a standard tall long-necked bottle made to be easy to grab of the bar shelf, easy to open and most importantly easy to pour into you glass without spilling.

The bottle is fine, however both the label and the overall brand messaging follow the path of romanticizing the negative aspects of our history (thieves and bandits). I always find such marketing practices questionable. The company website goes even further reveling in the dark side of the English language using foul expletives to describe their product as well as to direct the consumer to its retail locations. I found the experience of visiting the website distasteful to the point that I do not even want to provide a link.

In the Glass 7/10

Getting beyound the messaging, the Ol’ Dirty Whisky displays itself as a straw coloured liquid. When I tilt and twirl my glass I see that the spirit leaves a thickened sheen on the inside of my glencairn. The crest of that sheen soon releases a multitude of slender legs down the inside of the glass. The immediate nose is fruity with a penetrating sweetness and a dank quality of and sour fruit.

There are some corn and rye scents as well as a light dusting of wood spice, but these scents are to large extent ambushed by the building sweetness and the dank sour fruitiness. There is also a firm hint of alcohol astringency and a light grassy quality in the air which each warn me that the spirit is quite young and immature. Hints of perfume and incense dissuade me from any further examination.

In the Mouth 42/60

The penetrating quality I noticed in the breezes manifests itself as a penetrating sweet flavour of canned apricots and peaches.  Unfortunately there is also that dank sour component which reminds me of sour fruit juice. Some youthful astringency gives the spirit a bit of a bite which is reinforced by light wood spices and citrus zest. I also taste sugared Corn Pops cereal and some bitter oak and rye spices. Frankly the combination doesn’t appeal to me. Maybe this will work as a mixing whisky ….

To that end, I mixed a little of the Liquormen’s Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky with ginger-ale and was disappointed with the mixed drink that resulted. I tried some cola which usually always seems to be a better mixer for me when I taste this much corn, however, I was again unenthusiastic with the result.

This seems to be an odd interpretation of Canadian whisky.

In the Throat 10/15

The finish is sort of sickly sweet and sort of sour. On the positive side there is some peppery oak spice that freshens the palate after the swallow. The second sip revealed an aftertaste that was somewhat bitter with pithy rye grain appearing for just a moment. True to the rough and tumble story-line, the whisky burns a little at the back of the throat and kicks the tonsils around a little with its youthful alcohol astringency.

My feeling as I swallow the whisky is that his whisky and I may actually have a mutual disregard for each other.

The Afterburn 6/10

We are in a renaissance of sort with respect to Canadian Whisky. Brand owners have come forward with many exciting new expressions which are raising the profile of the Canadian Spirit on the World stage. I suppose Liquorman’s might have missed the memo.

Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky was a disappointment in every stage of the review.

You may read some of my other Whisky Reviews (click the link) if you wish to have some comparative reviews.

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As always you may interpret the scores I provide as follows.

0-25 A spirit with a rating this low would actually kill you.
26-49 Depending upon your fortitude you might actually survive this.
50 -59 You are safe to drink this…but you shouldn’t.
60-69 Substandard swill which you may offer to people you do not want to see again.
70-74 Now we have a fair mixing rum or whisky.  Accept this but make sure it is mixed into a cocktail.
75-79 You may begin to serve this to friends, again probably still cocktail territory.
80-84 We begin to enjoy this spirit neat or on the rocks. (I will still primarily mix cocktails)
85-89 Excellent for sipping or for mixing!
90-94 Definitely a primary sipping spirit, in fact you may want to hoard this for yourself.
95-97.5 The Cream of the Crop
98+ I haven’t met this bottle yet…but I want to.

Very loosely we may put my scores into terms that you may be more familiar with on a Gold, Silver, and  Bronze medal  scale as follows:

70 – 79.5    Bronze Medal (Recommended only as a mixer)
80 – 89.5     Silver Medal (Recommended for sipping and or a high quality mixer)
90 – 95         Gold Medal (Highly recommended for sipping)