| |
Archives of the Scotch Malt Whisky SocietyBuilding your own Distillery |
|
"The most important ingredient in malt whisky is the people who make it." - Jim McEwan |
Practically every malt whisky lover has dreamed, however idly, of building and running a malt whisky distillery. This is an unusual industry, though, with its own unusual requirements. Perhaps the first that comes to mind is the typical age of whisky. If you, as a sprightly 25-year-old, began distilling whisky today, you would have a fine whisky in time to celebrate your children's graduation from university. If you were to begin as an experienced 45-year-old, you could celebrate your retirement with a nice 20-year-old malt.
There are few industries where one must wait so long to enjoy the fruits of one's labour. One may officially call whisky "Scotch" as long as it was distilled in Scotland and has spent at least three years in the cask. However, single malts are considered young at 8 years, with 12 or 18 being comfortable middle age, and 24 years or more indicating a senior worthy of respect. So the first requirement of your new venture is patience of the first order.
The second requirement you
already meet in full measure, or else you would never have begun,
and that is to have a sense of adventure. The history of Scotch
whisky is rife with tales of what has been done (or not done, as
the case may be) to control the taste of whisky. These range from
the refusal of one distillery owner to remove spider-webs from
the still-room to the industry practice of carefully denting
replacement stills to match the mishaps incurred with the
originals.
And no one really doubts that the shape of the still, the dampness and temperature of the warehouse, and the source of the water all have their effects on the flavour and aroma of the finished whisky. The problem is: no one really knows the relationships of all these factors to the finished product. So you need a sense of adventure because, after you produce your first whisky, you won't know what you have wrought until the years of ageing have passed.
The third, more practical requirement is a virtually inexhaustible source of capital. In these days when long-range business planning means looking to next year's profits, you have entered an industry where your first return on investment will come with sales to blenders after 3 to 5 years - assuming that your whisky fills a need in the taste and aroma palettes that the blenders are composing. And, if you want to bring a single malt to market, you will have to wait 8 years or more - assuming that your whisky is drinkable in the first place!
Being the patient, adventurous, and wealthy soul that you are, this discussion has only whetted your appetite. So where to begin?
Perhaps the first question is: where should you build your distillery? While the differences between malts from the Highlands and from Speyside may be largely a matter of regional tradition, few would deny that all of the Island malts pick up an element of sea tang. At the risk of losing a bit of the mystery, we can analyse the source of some differences: location affects climate, which in turn affects the temperature and humidity of the warehouse. The location also determines the type of water that is available. And why should we be surprised if a cask left for 30 years next to the sea shore picks up a saltiness not found in one stored safely in the middle of the Lowlands?
Hence, the site of a distillery is the first and arguably one
of the most important decisions to make. While a distillery
situated between Edinburgh and Glasgow would be in reach of
numerous amenities, obtaining a whisky with distinctive
characteristics may be worth the hardships of a more remote
location. Besides, it's easy to invent romantic stories about a
distillery hanging over the edge of a cliff, and rather more
difficult if the distillery is five minutes from High Street
shopping.
Once you know where to put your distillery, you have to decide how it's going to be built. This is more than simply a matter of appearance or practicality, particularly where the warehouse is concerned. Modern metal warehouses with finished floors can get quite hot. This not only speeds up evaporation in general, but can also cause water to evaporate from the whisky faster than alcohol. The angels in Scotland are normally partial to alcohol, meaning that the proof strength of whisky tends to decrease slowly over the years.
This is the main reason that traditional warehouses are thick-walled, earthen-floored constructions. The warehouse stays cool and damp, keeping evaporation slow, which in turn allows many years of maturation. The dampness also inhibits the evaporation of water more than that of the alcohol, leading to the slow reduction in proof strength over the course of time.
The construction of the distillery itself is less critical, and indeed the dedicated distillery visitor sees many styles. The main concerns are those of cost, efficiency, and, of course, that extra something necessary to attract visitors and lend extra character to the very idea of drinking such a malt. It is not entirely coincidence that many of the best-respected malts come from distilleries unusual in some way, and that every distillery open to the public seeks to mark itself as the "smallest", "oldest", "highest", or some other "-est" that will set it apart from the masses.
Once you've built the buildings, it's time for decisions about how you will make whisky. You need to select washbacks, stills, and the other apparatus necessary to whisky-making, based on what you think will produce the best malt, and you need to find casks to age it in. So let's take a walk through the whisky-making process.
Whisky begins as barley, water, yeast and peat. A few distilleries still grow much of their own barley, or at least procure it from local farmers. What is important is that the grain be of good quality, however this is assured. It takes about 2 kg of barley to produce a litre of whisky, so a modest distillery will need around 2000 tonnes of malted barley per year.
The barley is malted, meaning it is soaked in water, spread, and allowed to germinate. When barley germinates, it produces an enzyme that converts the starch in the grain into sugar. As soon as germination has produced this enzyme, but before growth has used up much of the starch, the germination process is halted by drying.
There are two methods for producing malted barley. The first is traditional and, as with all things labelled "traditional", is labour intensive. The grain is spread on the malting floor to germinate. One doesn't quite know how the grain manages this unaided in the wild, because here you have to help it along by regular turning. If you're really traditional, you use a shovel. In distilleries that still have their own malting floors, you will find the shovels off in a corner, covered with dust, while the grain is turned by a back-saving mechanical contrivance looking rather like a lawnmower with teeth. Underneath the malting floor is space to build peat fires. Once lit, the heat from these fires dries the grain and stops germination, and the peat smoke adds some of the most notable taste and aroma components to malt whisky. All malt drinkers know (and either love or hate) the Islay distilleries that believe there cannot be too much of a good thing.
Most distilleries use the
second method of producing malted barley, namely, let somebody
else do the hard work. There are a number of central malting
houses that produce malted barley to order. Although the malting
takes place away from the distillery, the process is carefully
controlled and the amount of peat smoke added during drying can
be precisely specified.
After drying, the barley is coursely ground into grist. This is the true input to whisky-making, and your 2000 tonnes of barley have produced about 1600 tonnes of grist.
The grist is mixed with hot
water in large metal vessels called mash tuns. The water serves
both to activate the sugar-producing enzyme and to dissolve the
resulting sugar (along with many other components). The resulting
liquid, wort, is drawn off to be fermented. The solids
remaining behind, about one-quarter of the original, are used as
cattle feed.
The wort is then fermented, producing wash. This is done in huge wooden vats, called washbacks, which are usually made of Oregon pine and hold anything up to 45000 litres. If you've never seen a washback, try to envision a two-story hot-tub; and the fermentation process is indeed hot. As it ferments, the wash tends to foam, so be generous with the size of the washback and don't forget to stir.
The fermentation is caused by a mixture of cultured and brewers' yeast, which you add by the bagful to the wort, and by bacteria occurring naturally in the atmosphere. These bacteria are of the same sort that ferment cabbage into sauerkraut, so perhaps you could diversify if the whisky doesn't work out.
Wash has an alcohol content similar to that of ale, which is to say a lot lower than what one expects of a good dram, so the next step is...
One of your more important decisions is the number of stills the whisky-to-be passes through en route to the cask. Lowland malts are normally distilled three times, as are traditional Irish malts. That is, the fermented wash is distilled, the product of the distillation distilled again, and the product of this second distillation is distilled yet a third time. This produces a characteristically lighter malt, in contrast to the double distillation used in most Scottish distilleries. There are exceptions to this, for example, Springbank distills their whisky "two-and-a-half" times; a complicated story best understood over a dram of said whisky.
The individual still also makes a
difference. Although we are speaking here only of malt whisky
made in pot stills, there are nonetheless variations on the
theme. Stills come in various shapes and sizes, though since 1814
the minimum has been several hundred gallons. This restriction
was enacted based on the assumption that it was rather difficult
to hie off into the woods with several tons of copper when the
excise man came around. But one can stay at the legal minimum,
producing numerous very small batches, or use larger stills and
produce fewer but larger runs of whisky.
This decision is quite important, as the composition of whisky changes continuously during the distillation. The early part of the distillation, called the foreshots, is undrinkable. This is the stuff that makes you go blind, and is understandably not wanted in malt whisky. The latter part of the run, the feints, contains heavier elements such as fusel oils, and has a noxious taste. However, fusel oils are important flavour components in malt whisky, and it is a matter of judgement when they have reached too high a concentration. Between foreshots and feints comes the middle cut, which will be run into casks for ageing as malt whisky. Some distilleries take a very narrow cut, to produce a more consistent whisky, whereas others value the flavour balance that comes from a wider cut of the distillation.
Assuming that you want the usual double-distillation, you will need one or more wash stills and one or more smaller spirit stills. The exact size and shape undoubtedly have profound effects on the whisky they will produce; unfortunately, you won't find an analysis in your local library, as no one understands just what these effects are. Better to visit your favourite distilleries, take careful measurements, and drink a few drams just as a matter of quality control.
Not to be forgotten is the lyne pipe, which conducts the evaporated liquid away from the still and into the worm. The size, shape, and height of the lyne pipe helps determine which volatiles make it into the final whisky and which recondense and fall back into the still. So once you have found a good size and shape, you need only find an artistic hammer-wielder to add a few carefully placed dents and pings. After all, who are we to contest legend?
Fresh spirit runs off the still and
into spirit receiver, where it is diluted to 63.5% alcohol. It is
then filled into casks. The casks used to age Scotch whisky must
be oak and have usually been used previously to store bourbon or
sherry. To be called "Scotch", the whisky must mature
in the cask for a minimum of three years. When selecting casks
for your whisky, however, it's not merely a matter of buying what
comes up at the auction block. After all, the death of many
Campbeltown distilleries can be attributed to their erstwhile
propensity for using old fish barrels to store (one daren't say
"age") their whisky.
So, do you know where your casks have been? It not only a matter of what they have been used for previously; the history of a cask is important even farther back. Whisky takes a remarkable number of flavour components from the wood, dependent on many factors. There are differences between Spanish and American oak, differences between fast-grown and naturally grown oak, and many other factors that influence the taste and aroma of whisky.
Hence, it is vitally important to know the entire history of your cask, and some distilleries not only own rights to forests, but actually employ consultants to select the trees from which casks will be made. The casks are then given over to the bourbon or sherry industry for use before being claimed as whisky casks. So, in addition to acquiring the land for your distillery, you may also want to take the time to buy up some prime oak forest in the Appalachians.
As a matter of experimentation, some whisky producers are presently trying various finishes, where a whisky is decanted into a second cask of a different type for an additional one or two years of ageing before being bottled. This allows the producer to add a second set of flavour notes to the whisky, in addition to what has already been gained from the first cask. Look for some interesting experiments in this area, but don't pour your single malts down the drain just yet.
Once your whisky has made
it into the cask, and the cask has been placed in the warehouse,
the long sleep begins. But sleep is not inactivity - it is
chrysalis. Chemical reactions take place, volatile components
seep through the cask, flavour components are dissolved from the
wood, concentration of all components changes as the angel's
share evaporates, and many other alterations occur during the
peaceful years of maturation.
At this stage it is vitally important to realise that every cask is different. Casks are filled from different distillation runs, each cask is unique and each is stored in a different spot in the warehouse. These various factors lead to different whiskies, and it is only by careful selection and combination of casks, through the true expertise of the blender, that one can produce blends and single malts consistent from batch to batch. And a growing group of malt enthusiasts are coming to appreciate the variations among casks, leading to the increased popularity of single-cask bottlings.
What this means for you, the potential distillery builder, is that you must periodically sample each cask to see when the malt is mature. Not only do different casks mature whisky at different rates, but you will also want to produce whisky appropriate to various audiences. As with anything, there is a time and place for every type of whisky. Some occasions demand a lively, exciting young whisky, whereas others are better enhanced by the somber complexities of an elder malt.
The result is that some casks may be taken early, at 3 or 5 years, whereas others may be left to mature longer, sometimes much longer. A good quality cask can mature a whisky for 30 years or more, producing a marvellously complex malt. However, with every cask there comes a point where the woody notes start to become stronger. If left for too long, this results in a bitter flavour that overwhelms the subtleties of the whisky. Tales of 60-year-old whiskies are told by those with strong palates.
Having been through the whisky production process, having looked at all of the variables that go into making whisky, and knowing that one must wait years before tasting the first drop of mature malt, one wonders that anyone in modern times would build a new distillery. Whisky-making is not an easy business, and this is amply demonstrated by the open-again, closed-again behavior of many distilleries.
The singular feature of the whisky-making business is the years-long delay between production and finished product. When deciding what to distill this year, you must predict the demands of the marketplace years in advance. And you must make the same sort of prediction in deciding which casks to sell and which to let age farther. Overproduction now may lead to unsellable whisky later - on the other hand, produce too little and your stocks may sell out too quickly, with no casks left to mature into older malts.
New distilleries are occasionally opened, though, most recently on Arran. This represents a rare combination of just the right elements. For the rest of us, however, perhaps it is better to savour the unique products of existing distilleries, and to let our dreams be dreams.
If you have comments about this site, please contact the webmaster. All information in this site © The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1997.
