Small Scottish Distillery In Progress

[Simon13]

I've had some fun reading through your forum, thought i'd sign up.

My family own and run a hotel in the North of Scotland, which was the SLTN whisky bar of the year 2014 and is the No1 rated whisky hotel in the world (as voted for by members of whiskybase.com)

We have recently been approved planning permission to convert one of our buildings to a distillery. If all stays to plan, we should be producing with our column still by April 2016 and with pot stills by June 2016.

The distillery is pretty tiny and is entirely self funded (if all sticks to plan). We'll be initially focusing on doing a proper gin in order to generate cash to pay for barley and barrels so that I can continue my experiments in single malt whisky.

We've spent years researching old style whisky and why the best whisky ever made was produced in the 1960's and before. We think we understand enough to venture into the same ballpark as the likes of pre 1967 Laphroaig, 1930's Glen Grant, 1950's/1960's Bowmore etc. Our first full scale legal experiments in Scotland, produced by us, will soon be 2 years in cask.

[PeteB]

Welcome to the forum Simon.

I have visited your part of the world on several occasions to help raise funds and then promote the very new Kingsbarns Distillery near St Andrews.

I am intrigued to know how "the best whiskies..............were made in the 60's and before"

In my opinion it has a lot to do with direct flame heating and maillard reaction!!

Sláinte

PeteB

[Simon13]

I am intrigued to know how "the best whiskies..............were made in the 60's and before"

In my opinion it has a lot to do with direct flame heating and maillard reaction!!

@PeteB

Some of the best whisky ever made was done on steam coil as well as direct gas and direct coal fire. Steam coils have been around for a very long time. Ardmore was direct coal fired untill 2002 and GlenDronach switched from coal to steam in 2005. Ardmores of the 1990s and GlenDronachs of the 1990's are well respected but don't reach dizzying heights of quality.

Really you need to be looking at barley and yeast varieties as well as mashing/fermentation regime. There are plenty of people in Scotland capable of making the old styles again but the problem is that you cannot acheive the quality of the 1960s without running at 1960s yield levels in terms of litres alcohol per tonne barley.

I'm not wanting to give too much detail on the production but I will happily give pointers for direction of research as we are pretty close to being up and running.

[PeteB]

Really you need to be looking at barley and yeast varieties as well as mashing/fermentation regime.

You may have noticed that Tasmania's Sullivans Cove won the best malt whisky in the world a couple of years ago. Lark and Overeem are well up there also, and they all put a lot of their success to barley varieties that have been bred in Tasmania for beer brewing, not maximum yield of ethanol. Also their yeast and mashing are designed for flavor, not ethanol yield.

[MDH]

Like Simon has said, the amount of alcohol extracted from a grain will diminish the influence of other volatile compounds as the yields of ethanol increase. Think of it like diluting juice with water.

This is part of the reason that Cognac is expensive - grapes are harvested on the acid side of the acid-brix balance, so more terpenes, esters, fatty aldehydes etc are present in any given volume of alcohol.

Though this is entirely speculation on my part, it may also be that variations in kilning temperature allowed some grains to encounter more of what is known as the "maillard reaction". One of the finest samples of newmake spirit I have had in recent memory was made with Munich Malt kilned to 20 Lovibonds (a measurement of roasting related color used in brewing).

[Simon13]

@MDH a few whiskies have played around with high roast malt such as Glenmorangies Signet and Balvenie Golden Malt. High kilning temperatures do, however, denature enzymes and reduce yield. We are putting down for direct gas fired stills. Direct firing your wash still leads to hot spots that cause maillard reactions and caremalisation (and a lot of cleaning).

@PeteB With regards to rating and reviewing whiskies (I do respect what Sullivans Cove have been up to), a lot of these competitions and some reviewers are considered jokes by the European connoisseur scene. If you want over 55,000 ratings of over 17,000 bottlings of whisky/whiskey by 20 or so of the most respected independent experts then I suggest you have a scan around the Malt Maniacs Mat Monitor http://www.whisky-monitor.com/stats.jsp

We have just about reached to far side of all the setup and planning regulation stuff and we should be good for production to start June, July or August this year.

We've managed to get our supply chain sorted for Organic certified, heritage varieties of floor malted barley (which is not cheap) for our whisky production.

Our preference is to use ex-bourbon barrels from organic certified producers. We have an organic certified US bourbon/rye distillery able to supply us good quantities of 15 (US) gallon barrels but we're looking for someone who does organic certified bourbon and uses larger barrels such as ASBs? as wee barrels are not really suitable for looooooong term maturation.

[Simon13]

If anyone is interested, we are going to be pushing all the buttons on the Dornoch Distillery as soon as we get the building warrant which was submitted a couple of weeks ago and takes up to 30 days.

www.dornochdistillery.com

www.facebook.com/dornochdistillery

if you want to see what we are up to. There will be a lot going on over the next few months. We are aiming to be producing in July/August but could still make it in June.