Whisky Fundamentals
The Bread-Beer Continuum
Published 19/08/2025
The Bread-Beer Continuum Long before modern breweries, grain-eating cultures treated porridge, bread, and beer as points on a single spectrum rather than separate foods. Heat a mash a little longer, bake it, or ferment it-each choice traded texture for shelf life, flavour, and portability. This is the bread-beer continuum in a nutshell, and it sets the stage for the wider story in Beer: A History and the evolutionary angle of the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis.
The Bread-Beer Continuum
Quadruple distillation & Bruichladdich X4
Published 15/08/2025
New to the basics? Start with Whisky production, then the hardware primers on Pot stills, Condensors, and the Spirit safe. For context, compare with Double distillation, Triple distillation, and Mortlach’s selective “2.81 times” in The Wee Witchie. If you’re thinking about columns, see Continuous distillation and What is a Coffey still?. What is quadruple distillation? In batch (pot-still) whisky-making, quadruple distillation means the spirit is effectively run four times through copper.
Quadruple distillation & Bruichladdich X4
Double distillation
Published 15/08/2025
New to the basics of making whisky? Start with Whisky production, then see hardware primers on Pot stills, Condensors, and the Spirit safe. For contrasts, compare with Triple distillation, Mortlach’s selective triple stream in The Wee Witchie & 2.81, and plate columns under Continuous distillation and What is a Coffey still?. What is double distillation? In batch (pot-still) whisky-making, distillation sits between fermentation and maturation. A conventional double distillation has two main runs:
Double distillation
Mortlach’s ‘2.81 times’: the Wee Witchie and an old-school Speyside distillation
Published 15/08/2025
New to the production steps? Start with Whisky production and the basics of Pot stills. For how condensers change texture, see Condensors. Curious how this differs from plate columns? Compare with Continuous distillation. The headline: what does “2.81 times” distillation mean? At Mortlach the spirit isn’t simply double distilled in a neat wash-then-spirit sequence. Instead, the stillhouse splits the output of the wash stills into multiple streams, redistills them on different spirit stills, and then recombines them.
Mortlach’s ‘2.81 times’: the Wee Witchie and an old-school Speyside distillation
Triple distillation: What are triple distilled whiskies?
Published 15/08/2025
New to the basics of making whisky? See our overview of the Whisky Production Process. If you’re comparing batch (pot) runs to columns, read our guide to Continuous distillation for how reflux and plate count “dial in” purity. What is triple distillation? In batch (pot-still) whisky-making, distillation sits between fermentation and maturation. A conventional double distillation has two main runs: Wash still: Fermented wash (~7-10% ABV) is distilled to low wines (~20-30% ABV).
Triple distillation: What are triple distilled whiskies?