Whisky Fundamentals
Whisky Production Process
Published 01/08/2020
While every distillery has its own recipe for making malt whisky, they all largely follow a basic recipe. The process, although strictly regulated, offers a lot of leeway for the master distiller to create his own style. Each step affects the character of the malt. Let’s find out how Uisge Beatha is made and how the flavors get into the whisky. Ingredients whisky consists of surprisingly few basic ingredients; grain, water and yeast.
Whisky Production Process
What is a Mortons Refrigerator?
Published 31/07/2020
A Mortons Refrigerator is a device used to cool wort drawn from a mashtun using only cold water. Largely abandoned as a technology in favour of modern heat exchangers these used to be prevelant across the whisky industry. After boiling water is fed through the ground barley in the mash tun the resulting wort must be heated before fermentation can begin. At Edraduor distillery this cooled in the Morton refrigerator only with cold water.
What is a Mortons Refrigerator?
Lomond Still
Published 27/07/2020
The Lomond still The shape of a whisky still has a profound impact on the spirit created, small squat stills such as those found at Edradour will result in a waxy, oily and estery new make. The reduced surface area results in more of the heavy oils, fats and congeners being carried over into the lyne arm and condenser. In contrast large stills, such as those at Glenmorangie distillery, create far more copper contact and allow for far greater reflux (when some of the spirit vapour meets a cooler surface inside the still, coalesces back to liquid, and falls back down the still for re-distillation).
Lomond Still
Lost Diageo 11
Published 27/07/2020
The Whisky Loch The history of the Scotch whisky industry, like any others under capitalism is one subject to periods of boom and bust. The 1820s saw a glut of whisky result in a wealth of distilleries halting for years, amalgamated or being lost entirely, it was in this backdrop that the famed Kennetpans Distillery was lost in 1825. By the 1840s the boom had come again and would last for the next few decades, a further slowdown and subsequent boom ended with the Pattison whisky crisis.
Lost Diageo 11
Porteus and Boby malt mills
Published 27/07/2020
What is a mill? A mill is a mechaninical device for breaking down malted barley into flour, grist and husk. After malting, the malted barley, which is as crispy as well-done toast, is milled into powder known as grist. The consistency of this grist is crucial to the extraction of fermentable sugars during the next stage, mashing What is the mill for? The mill in a distillery is used to break or mill malted barley down to facilitate the creation of beer.
Porteus and Boby malt mills