DRAMMING YOUR AGE
(DYA)

Dramming Your Age (DYA) is another malt whisky extremist practice developed by PLOWED through the Ardbeggeddon venue.  At Ardbeggeddon I in January 2000, many of the dispersed PLOWED clan met for the first time and we were astonished to find we shared so many similarities in lifestyles, noting that not many of us were typical of our peers of similar chronological age (~35-50).  Someone (this may actually be documented in the holy PLOWED books - need to check) observed the following late one evening while totally immersed in the water of life:

"If you can't act your age, then you should dram your age."

Well, this lit a fire in my feeble consciousness and I immediately tried to achieve this goal the next night but failed at the high 30's.  I realized this was not a task to be taken lightly and success would be dependent on focused preparation.  I came into Ardbeggeddon II with the full intent to make this goal and achieved  it in a mere 15 hours or so with the judicious application of preparatory sleep, food, water and vitamin B-1.  Here's my DYA Dramming Log from AII.  The second time I drammed my age was at Ardbeggeddon VI in 2005 which shows how hard this feat actually is.

Since that time, many others have achieved this goal, these are some of those whose success  I can confirm at this time:

Port Alan - An amazing malt athlete - Olympic Caliber.  He's done this many times.  He always drams me under table when I visit.  (Come on Alan, you don't need to hide the rare Springers when I visit...  I'll be good!  I promise!)

Sir Dave of the Local Barley - a true obsessive compulsive - a simple task for such an exploding talent. 

S'tan - duh, this is a no brainer...   We really have no statistics on his capability in this arena.  

Nano - LIT (Lunatic in Training) - as he succinctly put it last year...  "heck, I've drammed my age many times but I'm just a young buck so it doesn't mean much..."  A true contender with a leg up on the rest of us "late-starters".

Lex - Achieved this status at least at Ulf's Mastadon Macallan tasting that I know of...  probably other incidents as well.  May well even hold this record using his collection of the wide selection of terrible single malt whiskies from locations outside Scotland - one of his strong interests.  On second thought, that would make him more evil than S'tan and this thought is so horrifying it just can't be possible.  Nevermind!

...and I'm sure many others who I haven't listed here.  Please send me the details of your attempts/successes at dramming your age and I'll move this entire definition over to a new DYA achievement roll when I have enough entries.  (apologies to any PLOWEDsters I've missed here...  drain brammage...)

I realized that this was an achievement that needed documenting when I received this  birthday card from my 8 yo niece last year.  Still waters (of life) run deep...

FAQ for Dramming your age:  Lots of folks also interested in the DYA lifestyle had asked about how a neophyte might attempt to accomplish this feat.  Here are the DYA Rules

Evolution of DYA at AX - January 2009

There were just so many astonishing drams at AX that it looked to me like all the Ringleaders indulged more intensely than at previous Ardbeggeddons.  Many Ringleaders DYA'd at AX, some for the very first time so it's safe to say that there was a strong odor of DYA in the air...

Here are some new DYA concepts we came up with at AX:

DYA² - Dram Your Age with all different Ardbeg Expressions!

This was awesome!  We ended up with 68 Ardbegs on site during AX so everyone who wanted to could spend an entire day dramming ONLY different Ardbegs.  Here's the Ardbeg dramming table - it brought tears to my eyes!

Here's a list of the Ringleaders who achieved this milestone at AX and I'm sure I missed some here:

Doctor Entropy (my only DYA at AX)
Sister Haggis (she did the table and raised a few eyebrows...)
Richard - actually he also D²YA this day - see next category... 
Todd
Port Alan

  who else am I missing here?

D²YA - Double Dram Your Age

Yikes!  This is a REALLY scary proposition for us old timers and really completely out of the question.  This is a game for the young bucks with robust livers!

Richard created this monster on day 2 of AX which was also the day most of us achieved DYA².  As an aside, this holographic maniac DYA'd ALL FOUR DAYS AT A10!  We'd come up with a term for this but the concept is so horrific that it's name can't  be mentioned.  Here's his photo the morning after he D²YA at around 9 am celebrating his success with Davin and Peter (holding him up from the looks of it)  and

immediately after this we had him check his blood alcohol content and after sleeping for 8 hours or so he logged in at 0.09 - still over the legal limit.

Proud to be PLOWED!

If I remember correctly he wrapped up the second half with other distilleries although I have no clue what he was tasting after 65 Ardbegs (the amount on site that day - 3 more came in later).  I suppose if he did that would naturally have given him the designation of:

D²YA² - Double Dram Your Age with Ardbegs

Andy from LA came in on Sunday and almost Triple Drammed his age but he's a young buck and only had a few more than Richard did on Friday.

This is one PLOWED Practice I'll never make because my liver isn't THAT evil and I don't believe in capital punishment. 

NYA - Nose Your Age 

Another deviation of the DYA concept concocted late one evening while under the complete influence of the water of life.  This concept is still in its draft stage and I vaguely remember something about how detecting this practice would be a way to weed out minions and microdrammers lurking in our midst.  I think it's a bit harsh on the microdrammers but the Ringleaders are not to be denied and I am simply their online tool.  Never easy when everyone's a Ringleader when it comes to rulemaking and subsequent enforcement.

stay tuned - we'll figure out what NYA REALLY means in the near future. 

Ardbeggeddon (source of much of this material)
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Last Update on 01/25/2009