will do, and don all you have to do is order it online and put my address in, then you dont have to deal with the hassle. :p Would it be weird if I drank scotch alone? I dont have friends that do much liquor drinking. Atleast not scotch.
There's nothing stopping you from either drinking alone or with friends. If they drink at a bar, it's a non-issue. If you're in someone's home, bring a bottle as a gift and pour your drinks from that, or if you know the host to be fussy about that kind of thing, just bring a small bottle for your personal consumption. For that, a flask might look a bit classier than using a bottle in a paper bag, but you shouldn't drink straight from it, instead pouring it into a glass (avoid plastic; some plastics will mess with the flavor of your beverage in no good ways).
A single drink, standard strength, would be an ounce - just barely under 30 ml. Bars may pour lighter of heavier depending on their standard shot size. Bottles sold in the US typically come in these sizes and yield roughly this many drinks:
Mini - 50ml - 1 strong or 2 standard.
"Half-Pint" - 200ml - about 6-7 drinks.
"Pint" - 375 ml - about 12-13 drinks.
"Fifth" - 750 ml - about 26 drinks.
Liter - 1,000 ml - about 33-34 drinks.
"Half Gallon" - 1,750 ml - about 55 drinks.
Larger bottles cost less per ounce, so if using a flask, go large and save a few bucks. The typical wide hip flask hold 8 ounces - more than enough to keep you going for the evening. If you don't have or want to deal with a flask, don't buy larger than a half-pint unless you're planning to share among your friends.
Another thing about the flask is that you can "pre-water" your Scotch so it's ready to pour over ice. AVOID doing this. Water's cheap, booze isn't and it evaporates over time, leaving you with a weaker drink minus the aromatic flavor. (Yes, sealed flasks are liquid-tight - but they tend not to be perfectly gas-tight, especially when it comes to alcohol vapors.) They should, whenever possible, be blended only as you're about to drink.
Avoid going too far overproof on any beverage - I've seen liqueurs at 101 proof (50.5% abv), bourbons as high as 114 proof (57% abv) and rums can hit 151 proof (75.5% abv). The math is easy, each "proof" is half-a-percentage-point alcohol by volume. US beers usually clock in at around 5%, wines at 15% and liquor at 43%. I say this not because I think they taste bad or anything, but because it can do terrible, horrible things to your digestive tract. If you do drink these, do so with a lot of mixer and only infrequently.
As a matter of fact, I don't know if they still make this, but the Jack Daniel's Distillery used to make a "green label" Jack Daniel's that was UNDER-proof - only 80 proof. It was considerably smoother. An increase in alcohol content does nothing whatsoever to improve the flavor - in fact, the purer it is, the less flavor it has. Everclear, at 190 proof, is nearly devoid of taste - it's essentially moonshine in a bottle.
Avoid sugary mixers - it's where most of your hangover headache will come from. Impurities in general make for a bad hangover, though one can't neglect the aftereffects of killing thousands of brain cells, either. I saw a science show test various hangover remedies - the best was a dose of acetaminophen with a pint-glass of water taken before going to sleep. NEVER take aspirin or ibuprophen or any other NSAID pain reliever with alcohol - both react in the blood stream to thin out your blood, can turn ordinary heartburn into ulcers and do nasty things to your liver. Get a cut when drunk and you bleed like a stuck pig - add NSAIDs to that and you have the potential to lose a LOT of blood.
