Help! There's been a break in.

Sorry to shock you, but we’ve been contacted. Bus Distillery in the Netherlands was broken into on Wednesday night and 2000 rare bottles were stolen. They’re offering a barrel of whisky (10,000 Euros) for information that leads to an arrest.

If anyone is offered the opportunity to buy one of the rare bottles, they want to know. Thank you for your help. Our thoughts are with the distillers at this time.

I was going to say '“on a lighter note” - but todays article is titled:

What happens when Whisky meets the Occult?

Unfortunate but very interesting.

Irish names are beautiful when said aloud, but can be tricky to pronounce if you’re not used to them. Niamh. Saoirse. Colm. You just pronounced all those wrong. Which is why the Americans changed Scáiltín to Scalteen. Out of laziness.

If you haven’t heard of it in either form, Scáiltín is a whisk(e)y based drink that is described on many cooking websites as ‘hot Irish milk punch’. It has a history intertwined with both Christmas and the Occult. The origin of the drink is hazy, but it is believed to be medieval at the least.

First off, the recipe. It’s not particularly difficult – milk mixed with Irish whiskey and NEVER Scotch. Ideally, the milk will be frothed like in a latte. It is often enriched with added butter, sometimes sweetened with honey, and sometimes mixed with brown sugar. The important bit (other than the whisky) is the spice. Generally, it’s caraway, a niche but surprising spice that is often used in sauerkraut, goulash and a litany of other European and Middle Eastern dishes. The link to Christmas is recent, derived largely from the creamy similarity to egg nog. But it’s got whisky instead of brandy, which improves it, wouldn’t you say?

The most interesting part of the drink’s history, however, is its connection to Dublin’s Hellfire Club. This has nothing to do with Stranger Things, and is instead what Gulliver’s Travels author Johnathan Swift described as “A brace of monsters, blasphemers and bacchanalians”. 300 years ago, this group wriggled away from the shadow of the mainstream and began to lead men through clandestine rituals and ceremonies. Whisky was held in high esteem, with the cultists believing that it could alter consciousness and even invite the existence of alternate realms and devilish entities. Essentially, they got so hammered that they started to see things.

Scáiltín was their tipple of choice during these rituals, because you can’t drink enough to see the devil without a mixer. In their case, milk. Scáiltín’s existence is therefore forever tied to this group of monsters, who sought to control black magic and had a leader known as ‘The King of Hell’.

So why not brew some for the family this festive season?