Irish, I Was Drinkin!: What's the Crack?

Hello friends,

The lads excited for the tour!

Fig. 1 Color Difference in Whiskey over an 18 year period, Left to right

The first part of my blog post is a little story about Irish Whiskey. The Jameson Whiskey Factory is located in Middleton, Ireland, a small town outside of Cork, Ireland. The Middleton factory produces every drop of Jameson Whiskey in the universe. Upon coming here I have been curious about the hearty tradition of distilling Irish Whiskey so last week I went to the source. My companions and I traveled to the factory and took a tour. We learned that Irish whiskey is distilled three times instead of scotch whiskey which is distilled twice and american whiskey which is distilled only once (gross).

Brass Still for Whiskey Making

Now for all you whiskey drinkers out there go pick up a bottle of 18 year Jameson and enjoy.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_whiskey

Very cool sandstone layer in there

The second half of my blog is about turbidites, turba-whats? They are essentially giant landslides create massive sheet deposits of interbedded sand, cobbles and mud. Now, turbidites are a good source rock for hydrocarbons so when we went on our Petroleum geology field trip we looked a some turbs. Turbidites look really cool in outcrop becuase they have really well defined beds and look awesome.

The pair of lines are faults from when the turbidite was just starting to compact and the weight of the front got to heavy and the front half slide down. Then you can see the new layer on top were the are no lines! Super Geology

A turbidite deposit protruding into the ocean, the shadows are for scale. Thats one big turbidite deposit I would have to reckon.

The rest of the trip was a real crack. No sleep, lots of spirits, and swiming in the Atlantic ocean. My favorite memory of the trip was having my professor Ed Jarvis leading our class on a late night beach walk after we got kicked out of the pub. Not a bad way to spend three days.