Now that I think about it, it seemed like they were pretty inconsistent about this. There was the aforementioned generic “whiskey” order that evidentially produces some unspecified default whiskey. But then there there was the time Barclay asked the replicator for water, which has to be the simplest beverage one could ask for, and it prompted him to specify the temperature. If there is a default whiskey, why isn’t there a default water temperature? And although I can’t think of a specific example, I seem to remember times when someone asked the replicator for something like, say “chocolate cake”, and the replicator would be like “There are 324 recipes for chocolate cake. Please specify.”
It’s not like programming all that would be difficult. Hell, today in some casinos they have menu boxes on the slot machines so you can punch in your drink order. Not only are there plenty of preprogrammed options, but there is a “Make it your way” option as well. Trivial to the computers of the Enterprise, whatever letter. Whenever a new crewman/woman/thing transfers aboard the computer reads her/his/its comm badge and downloads the totality of the wearers preferences since they entered Star Fleet. When said crew thing places an order at the replicator, the computer looks up their preferences and reacts accordingly. If no modifications are asked for, the replicator produces the average cheeseburger this being has ordered in the last yahrn or three. An afternoon with a PADD and you could lock in specialty items, just the way you like them.
Both of those make sense to me, as those are situations where there may not be one default that most would like. There’s still this huge debate about whether drinking water is better cold or room temperature. And there are many different kinds of chocolate cake.
And if it does sometimes ask and sometimes not for the same item, that’s where the idea of personal presets come in. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is why fans came up with it. Out of universe, I expect it would just be whatever the point of the scene is. They could be, for example, showing off the replicator, showing how technology can be impersonal or even just using it functionally to get the item into the scene in a believable way.
Even today, you can train a neural network on text-image pairs, and subsequently be able to give it prompts like “draw me an armchair in the shape of an avocado”, and it will do it and moreover give you a dozen slightly different variations if you want. It is not difficult to imagine that in the Star Trek universe the computer can figure out how to put together a satisfactory cheeseburger, cup of tea, or cocktail, either without any further specification or according to a precise order.
Yes, what I got to understand from it is that something about synthehol makes it so metabolically however much you intake, you never exceed the equivalent of 0.08 BAC (and it’s not habit forming for those with the predisposition).
As to Scotty telling the guy in 10-Fwd that that was not scotch, I must presume him to be a man who’d be able to tell from which bog they got the peat for the particular batch he’s drinking, and the “rail brand” in the replicator is so utterly generic and weak the barkeep’s lucky he merely used words. But the average person would just say “eh, cheap rail drink, what do you expect in the ship’s lounge”.
Doubtless Scotty would be well acquainted with the nuances of many different types of scotch. But he’s also, in the end, satisfied with a drink about which he knows nothing other than “It’s… green”, and it’s alcoholic. I can’t see him having the reaction he had, to merely bad scotch.
He was bombed out of his skull and on a mission when he did that. Any number of us can relate tales of our younger days when we, no matter how developed our taste buds, drank foolish stuff when we ran out of the stuff we liked. “Satisfied” isn’t a word I would use here.
I still remember all the Purple Passions I had at Minnecon '77. Yeccch! 
I don’t think Chronos is talking about his past. He’s talking about the callback when Data offered Scotty the “green” drink after he rejected the scotch.
That said, I always interpreted it (both in the original and in the callback) as just being very alcoholic. And that Scotty’s main objection was just how weak the fake scotch tasted.
Yeah, it’s at least implied, if not outright stated (it’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode) that the green stuff was the only actual alcoholic beverage available on the ship, and that the initially-sober Scotty accepted it in preference to the synthehol-based “scotch”, based purely on that fact. He wasn’t drinking it because he was already drunk on the stuff he preferred and ran out of it; the stuff he most highly preferred wasn’t available at all, and of what was available, it was his first, last, and only choice.
If you are a knowledgable enthusiast of Scotch whisky (or any other aged liquor), a poorly made product is gag-inducing, in no small part because every sip is an expectation of a good drink and the result is something grotesquely, horribly wrong. If you’re expecting a dram of, say, Laphroaig 10 Year Old Single Malt, and instead someone has handed you a snifter of J&B ‘Rare’ (described by one reviewer as “ It tasted like warm water, sweaty socks, and cigarette butts,”) you are going to dump that drink into the nearest potted plant and drink warm gin and peach brandy to wash that nasty taste out of your mouth and your memories.
Stranger
Did they even have synthehol in Kirk’s era? I don’t recall them ever mentioning it. All of the booze they drank on the show was apparently the real stuff, and just as strong.
I got the impression Scotty had picked up the green stuff on some alien planet and hoarded it as a curiosity. Whether he had ever intended to drink it is debatable, especially since scotch was freely available.
As I recall, the only time we saw drinks synthesized or dispensed by a computer was in bars (e.g., “Court Martial,” “The Trouble with Tribbles”). The rest of the time, booze was purveyed in bottles.
If it was “green”, then possibly Chartreuse Verte (55% alcohol), absinthe (70–75% alcohol), or Romulan moonshine (ethanol may not be his biggest worry)
It was Aldebaran whiskey according to Memory Alpha. So Scotty would still be drinking a grain-based alcoholic beverage, not just some random green stuff. Data wouldn’t do something like that. So it would be more like “We don’t have any Scotch. How about a good Japanese whisky instead?”
Like when Tom Paris ordered tomato soup in the Voyager pilot.
Exactly! I imagine that there could be some sort of default though - I mean, if someone says ‘whiskey’, I imagine it might say “This replicator’s default is Scotch Whisky. Is that ok?” and then if you say no, I want Irish Whiskey, it would default to it’s rendition of Jameson or Tullamore Dew, unless you had specified which brand you wanted.
Except no knowledgable Scotch drinker would simply order “Scotch, neat,” without further specifying a label or style. A generic rail Scotch might be used in a mixed drink (but even then is often ‘called’, e.g. a “Dewer’s and soda”), but someone ordering a dram is at least going to distinguish between an Islay (peated) or Highland (unpeated) style, and while it may not be applicable to replicated beverages Scotch drinkers tend to specify a label that is a single malt or specific blend. That Scotty bellies up to the bar and orders “Scotch, neat” and is then surprised that the result is not what he expected illustrates that he is much of a fraud as a Scotch whisky enthusiast as he is an engineer.
And if you serve me Tullamore Dew when I’m expecting Redbreast Put Pot Still or Tyrconnell Single Irish Malt, I’ll spit it out on whatever direction is most convenient. There is no more a singular style of Irish whiskey than there is Scotch or Bourbon. Actually, I’m pretty sure all of the “synthoholic” drinks on the Enterprise are just made with Aviation Gin and food coloring. It is quite apparent the crew wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Stranger
A direct result of Ryan Reynolds VI being elected President For Life of the Federation a few decades back, ship-time.
After Scotty’s piss-proud dismissal of all the Scotch they had at the bar, Data should have handed him a bottle of Buckfast.
I forgot about that. Data has no idea what the drink is, and says the iconic “it is green” line. But then later Picard identifies it when goes to talk to Scotty inside the holodeck, where he’s on the bridge of the “NC-1701, no bloody A, B, C, or D.”
Whether or not that’s the original green drink he found on Ganymede and used to in his drinking challenge with the Kelvan Tomar, I don’t know.