Happy Birthday!

BBQ goes great with a Stout. Single malt has plenty of backbone to stand up to even a strong sauce, but I think I'd have a cheaper single malt because, like you said, you would lose some of the nuances.

We just had a single malt Islay tasting at my buddy's birthday party. We ran off a bunch of the whisky tasting mats from the Laphroaig website. We had Bowmore, Laphroaig, and McClelland's. I'll post pics and our tasting notes in a different post tomorrow.