Whisky- The Essential Guide

Whilst legend has it that grains were distilled in 13th century China, it is widely accepted, that Ireland was the birthplace of the water of life made from barley.

It is known from anecdotal writings that whisky played a part in Ireland’s life from the 1400s but the first official evidence seems to come from a 1556 Act of Parliament: “...graine in making of aqua vitae...”.

The first tangible proof of the spirit of barley was from the Scottish Exchequer Rolls of 1494, which states “VIII bolls of malt to Friar John Cor wherewith to make aqua vitae”. John Cor was a monk based at Lindores Abbey in Fife, which existed from the late 1100s to 1559. A boll was a Scottish measure that would have been the equivalent of just over 5 bushels, and this could have produced about 1000 bottles of spirit, but of course, we don’t know what strength the final spirit would have been distilled to.

Regardless, the nomenclature is Celtic; aqua vitae in Gaelic is 'uisge beatha', which became uisge and ultimately whisky. In both countries distillation developed through the middle ages and by the 17th century, whisky drinking had become widespread. In 1644 taxes were imposed on Scotch whisky and laws were passed restricting the rights of distillation. In Ireland taxation began a few years later in 1661. Whilst this may have raised some money for the Exchequer it gave rise to illicit distillation. Distillers made false declarations and sold quietly on the side, or more commonly, they simply disappeared into the countryside with their stills.

Across the Atlantic, the first wave of America’s Scots and Irish immigrants also brought distilling techniques (although it is more likely rum was the first to be made in America; molasses was brought to New England from the Caribbean as part of the trade triangle of slaves, molasses and rum) and by the mid-1600’s applejack, peach brandy and whisky were being produced along the East Coast. These pioneering colonists soon found that whilst barley was ideally suited to British and Irish soils and climates, corn and rye would be much more rewarding crops in their new land. Couple this with a natural disposition for independence and rebellion, and it is not surprising that American whiskey branched off in a different direction both in terms of production methods and taste.

Ireland led the way in whisky production, the first official distilling license being granted in 1608 and one hundred years later there were reckoned to be 2,000 stills in operation! However, just as Irish distillers probably introduced us to whisky, the country also was the first to introduce formal temperance societies; the establishment of the Ulster Temperance Society in 1818 heralded a century of rising prohibitionist tendencies which finally lead to the Volstead Act in 1920, in the USA.

The American temperance moves combined with the development of continuous distillation and the arrival of the phylloxera outbreak in Europe (which temporarily removed brandy from the market) led to the demand for whisky rocketing. Irish whiskey producers before this time had been outselling Scotch as they were larger in number and used unmalted barley which produced a more popular lighter spirit. The Scots took to the new Coffey stills as did the Canadians and in these two countries production advanced enormously, for a period in the 1860s and 70’s Canada was the world’s largest producer of whisky, but in the 20th century, it was in Scotland that the industry powered ahead.

All whiskies are the result of a mash of cereals and water that have been saccharified by enzymes, fermented by yeast, and subsequently distilled before being aged in oak barrels and finally bottled.

The typical cereal grains include:

Barley

With so many strains available today, distillers want to strike the right balance between quality and quantity yielded,

they look for plump, ripe barley with plenty of starch and not too much protein or nitrogen. Used predominantly as malted grains.

Maize

Widely regarded as producing the weightiest of grain whiskies and the predominant grain in American Bourbon.

Wheat

Produces lighter whiskies and along with maize produces most of the world’s grain whisky.

Rye

Used on its own, sometimes with a proportion of malted barley, and often as the flavouring grain for many Canadian and US whiskies.

Mixed Grains

Single malts aside, many whiskies utilise a mix of grains depending on the required flavour profile of the brand.

Steeping

Soak the cereal grains in water. After approximately 48 hours the moisture penetrates the grain. As a result, enzymes in the embryo move to the endosperm, its starch store, thus modifying it from a rigid structure to a fragile one and allowing germination. The germination process changes the chemical structure of the starch and the resultant sugars promote seed growth.

Malting

To Malt or not? Malting the grain eliminates the need to ‘cook’ the cereal to order for us to access the starch we will convert to sugars. Most malted grain is bought from specialist maltsters who will affect the process pneumatically in either box or drum, both of which contain turners that keep the grain separate and ensure the free flow of air throughout the bed. Some malt is still produced on malting floors, where the grain is spread and regularly raked as it begins to germinate. As a result of converting starch to maltose, rootlets and seedling shoots appear and the grains are now termed green malt. To maximize fermentable matter and retain adequate diastatic power this process is halted and the green malt is sent for drying. For large-scale production of grain spirit destined for column distillation, more often the un-malted cereal is cooked under pressure using steam which softens the grain starch, rendering it soluble.

Kilning Or Drying

The kiln is normally a tower-shaped hot air chamber with a heat source, sometimes fan-assisted, below a wire floor that the green malt is spread out on to dry before milling. Here, if peat or wood chips are used or added to the heat source the drying grain can pick up the smokey flavours.

Milling

The extent to which the grains are milled is crucial to the effectiveness of the resultant grist as it determines the amount of starch that is extracted and converted to sugar during the mashing stage. Too little and not enough starch will be exposed and converted into sugar, too much and the floury consistency will stick, go soggy and prevent good filtration. Ideally, the grist should contain a good proportion of unbroken husks as these provide greater buoyancy in the mash and aid filtration in the mash tun—a cylindrical metal vat with rotating paddles. Where mixed grains are used, such as in Bourbon, the different grains are milled separately and measured so that the exact proportion of each grain is introduced to the mash cooker in the right sequence and at the right temperature. Often a proportion of malted grain is used to give a starter effect to the fermentation process.

Mashing

The grist is placed in a mash tun and combined with very hot water giving a slurry where the starch can dissolve and the mixture is left for about an hour. Corn is a very tough grain that must be cooked at extremely high temperatures under pressure to modify its structure. Whereas wheat and rye are cooked at lower temperatures; the former to preserve its character and the latter to ensure that rye clumping which can cause bacterial infection, does not occur. After several hours of cooking and cooling a warm porridge-like product called mash is produced, where the process has converted the starch into sugar, and this is either used directly or ‘lautered’, washed out.

For most Scottish and Japanese malt and grain whiskies, a sweet liquor known as wort is drained off in successive washes. The wort is then cooled and pumped into the fermentation vessels known as washbacks. In Canada and the USA, the lautering process is often omitted and mash is pumped directly to the fermentation vats.