Talk:Poitín

message: I'd like to see more in this article about what makes poteen separate from other whiskeys.  I've read other places that poteen is often manufactured from potato, but I'd like to get some authoritative confirmation on this before making an edit.
:Incorrect. Poitín is made the same way as whiskey. It is grain alcohol and is not produced from potatoes. My head is swimming with it right now. Jm butler 17:30, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Old topic, but to clarify, it entirely depends on the definition being used.  I've found numerous reliable sources that say poteen is traditionally made from malted barley, later in history it was sometimes made from potatoes, and later it was potentially made from anything high in saccarides (sugars/starches).  I believe it is a common misconception that poteen is, by definition, made from potatoes, and I'd love to find a source that confirms the existence of this misconception. -Verdatum (talk) 17:50, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Suggestion

message: http://www.thedrinkshop.com/products/nlpdetail.php?prodid=1583
This looks to be quite strong, I don't think you can get much stronger. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 195.40.118.79 (talk) 13:51, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: someone may be confusing %ABV and %proof - 95 proof would be about 55%ABV and so easily within reach for a home distiller.  62.196.17.197 (talk) 12:23, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  'legal versions' of potín are of a greatly reduced volume?  

message: "In 2008, Irish Poteen was accorded G.I. (Geographical Indicative Status) by the EU Council and Parliament, under EU Regulation 208/2008."
As far as I can tell, Regulation 208/2008 is this document here: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:063:0001:0002:EN:PDF which discusses import values for certain fruits and vegetables.  The document makes no mention of poteen with any spelling, nor any other distilled spirit.  Can anyone clear this up? -Verdatum (talk) 14:39, 12 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geographical Indicative Status 

message: I was reverted, so here is my justification.  The article currently makes a claim "The beverage is distilled in a small pot and is among the strongest alcoholic beverages in the world." the two facts are unrelated, so I believe compounding them is a bit silly.  I think the fact about pot distillation is better explained in the same breath as the etymology of the word.  As far as it being among the strongest alcoholic beverages in the world, this is highly contentious.  As with moonshine, poteen is produced by private distillers.  They can make it any strength they like.  Regardless, by nature of it being a pot-distilled beverage, the waste involved in achieving higher concentrations generally makes it unreasonable to achieve the higher percentages found in column distilled (non-anhydrous) pure grain alcohol (95%).  Since the statment can be considered redundant with the previous claim of being 90%-95% alcohol, and the statement cannot currently be verified from a reliable source, I believe it should be deleted. -Verdatum (talk) 15:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If considering the "Licensed" poteens, those actually range from 80 proof to 180 proof (40% to 90% ABV).  This is where the definition of poteen becomes extremely garbled.  If there is no contention (or novelty) in the inferrence (see WP:SYN), there is no point in writing it out.  The claim does not add anything to the article, and instead, vaguely comes off as WP:PEACOCK. -Verdatum (talk) 18:53, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Strongest" 

message: Assuming the title of this article remains Poitín (see alternative suggestion above), I would assume the IPA pronunciation would reflect the Irish pronunciation of Poitín, rather than the English pronunciation of Poteen or Potcheen (though perhaps I'm wrong in this). If it is so, I would suggest [ˈpˠitiːn] would be closer to what I've heard and how I would naturally pronounce the Irish spelling. I have never studied IPA in any way so pardon me if I'm way off the mark with those but I was directed here by someone who reads IPA who had got their pronunciation (which I thought sounded wrong) from here. The o in the Irish spelling serves to velarize and doesn't really come out too much in pronunciation; I imagine the o in the English spelling is derived mostly from looking at the Irish spelling rather that listening to it's pronunciation. Does anyone fluent in Irish/IPA know what I'm saying, or am I as I said off the mark?
Also, I suppose this could count as original research so it might have to be justified with a reference? Or would that be overly pedantic... ɹəəpıɔnı 11:15, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Poitín and poteen are pronounced identically: "putcheen" or "put-sheen" (same sound with alternate spellings). I speak both languages. — O'Dea (talk) 08:43, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation 

message: Given that a significant proportion of this article appears to be an infomercial for knockeen hills and bunratty poteens, I would be interested to know whether either of those drinks are made in pot stills. My guess is not. Either way, as the name poteen would suggest, it is not produced on an industrial/commercial/legal scale anyway.
I am also interested to know if "poteen" is a protected status (or whatever you call it), how come it's also made commercially in Wales?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.166.225.254 (talk) 18:17, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  informercial 

message: Poitin/poteen is, as the name suggests, is distilled in a pot-still. Neither of the producers of "legal poteen/potcheen" use pot-stills to distil their product. I would thus posit that neither are really producing poitin.
Further to that, I can assert with confidence that "poteen", in the traditional sense, does not come at a strength higher than 70%, 50-65% being usual and standard for any pot-distilled spirit, wherever it might come from (the laws of physics, dontcha know?).
I would be also interested in seeing a citation for the "opposition" that Irish customs & excise "withdrew" to allow poteen to be manufactured.
Lastly, the fake "poteen/potcheen" legally manufactured in Ireland are also legal in NI, so the distinction as it stands, semantically, in the article, is bogus.
I am the same person who wrote the section titled "infomercial".
Further to my last edits, I have taken out the sentence in the "production" section where it states that a wash would be made of ingredients x y & z, as it is just one of thousands of recipes, and not necessarily one representative of the norm.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.115.178.220 (talk) 13:52, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  bunch of guff 

message: I see Cooley has entered the Poitín market with release of it's new "Cooley Single Pot Still Poitín". This is basically unmatured whiskey, in a couple years time (3+) some of the same batch of production will be sold as "Single Pot Still" Irish whiskey.
http://www.irishwhiskeynotes.com/2011/11/new-cooley-poitin.html
http://forum.irishwhiskeysociety.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1291
http://cooleypoitin.com/
I don't know whether it's double distilled or triple distilled in their pot stills.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.123.243.220 (talk) 12:23, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Cooley Poitín

message: I've added a picture of some Poitin/Poteen Bottles and this is now in the infobox - I think actually seeing some Poiten, rather a cultural piece of artwork is more helpful for people seeking some initial information. the paining by Brian Whelan has been moved further down the page. --Ethanbentley (talk) 11:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Pictures

message: I removed the following paragraph "The quality of poitín was highly variable, depending on the skill of the distiller and the quality of his equipment. If poorly produced, it can contain dangerous amounts of methanol and can blind or kill.Irish Independent Saturday, November 24, 1984
Page: 6 "Two deaths from poitin - inquest told""
Because there is no possibility of producing methanol in dangerous amounts when fermenting sugar with yeast. The article is inaccessible but the deaths obviously results from people drinking industrial methanol that someone told them was poitin.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.235.253.150 (talk) 13:29, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you will agree that toxic levels of methanol can be produced in the presence of pectin. How could pectin be present in the fermenting liquor? The same way any contaminant could be introduced into an entirely unregulated manufacturing process. RashersTierney (talk) 17:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I have modified the disputed sentence in to three referenced statements. /1 poitin can kill /2 it has been claimed to cause blindness /3 but blindness is possibly due to adulteration.  I have used your cite for the adulteration claim. I think we've covered all angles here.--Dmol (talk) 07:51, 10 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Impossible claim

message: Okay, I changed some things here.
In the opening section, I removed the references to "the strongest" and "highly alcoholic" (or whatever it was), for reasons of factuality. It is a distilled spirit. The production methods are/were variable, too much so for subjective exclamations such as those I removed.
I also removed the reference to poteen being made from whey. Producing alcohol from whey is an industrial process that was developed to make money from a otherwise unusable byproduct of the cheese industry. It was developed in the 1970's at the Carberry dairy plant in Cork. Google "Carberry Process". It is simply not something that could have ever been done "traditionally".
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-iBd2mplgQwC&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=whey+ethanol+ireland&source=bl&ots=gclCulU1-F&sig=gHpnJf1JkOlCHPWyTGfQWM66BUg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Z2rFUqOcJLGc0wWIyIDADw&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=whey%20ethanol%20ireland&f=false  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhasmanath (talk • contribs) 15:07, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some changes, and can we please not allow this to be an advertisement for commercial "poteen" any more. 

message: I have removed the reference to poteen being made from whey, as it is not possible that whey was ever illicitly processed into alcohol due to the complexity of the "Carberry Process", as mentioned before. 
Also sugar beets are not made into poteen, but sugar made from beets can be, so I have removed the reference to poteen being made from sugar beets. To elaborate, when "Dave" procures a 25kg sack of sugar "off the back of a lorry", you would say that the poteen he makes from it is made from sugar, not sugar beets.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhasmanath (talk • contribs) 20:59, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whey and beets 

message: First off thanks to all the contributors who are constantly helping to improve the quality of the article and improve its objectivity.
There seems to be a question about whether or not this article should only be concerned with what is considered to be historical production of poitin or whether it should include all poitin available today, regardless of provenance. 
My view is that it should include both because:
1) Wikipedia is a modern day source and will evolve as time goes on.
2) Given the illicit nature of poitin (you could argue that "legal poitin" is something of an oxymoron) it is very difficult to find definitive proof for was/was not "traditional".  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ethanbentley (talk • contribs) 10:04, 10 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Traditional Poitin vs  Poitin Today 

message: I've added a few details regarding the new technical file (2015) - although I think this area could be expanded to give a little more detail without the article becoming overwhelmingly tehcnical. Ethanbentley (talk) 10:53, 17 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: GI and Technical File

message: The file :c:File:Erskine Nicol - A Nip Against the Cold.jpg has been nominated for deletion on Commons 
 Reason: One of these was tagged as a duplicate of another, but none are exact/scaled-down duplicates. :File:Erskine Nicol.jpg appears to be the highest quality original, but it has a border which should be cropped as a separate file. I propose that we delete the other two and replace all usage of them with a slightly cropped version. 
 Deletion request: link 
Message automatically deposited by a robot - -Harideepan (talk) 05:15, 21 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  File nominated for deletion on commons