Whisky Galore

By Jeremy Torr

Whisky is simple to make. Just water, grain and yeast. It’s the way the ingredients are put together that makes it special. Jeremy Torr visits Speyside, home of the finest malts, to learn the language of whisky.

“The first whisky was probably an accident,” says Ian Logan, my guide to the secret recipes behind Scotch Whisky and a self-described “hairy-arsed Scotsman”. Ian is International Brand Ambassador for one of the big brands, and as genuine a whisky expert as you can find. Over 2m tall, almost as wide, and with bright red curly hair, he even wears a kilt when he takes the fancy.

“This area around the River Spey in Scotland – where many of the best malt whiskies are made – has always been a fine place for growing barley. And it has wonderful clear water,” he says. “In the old days, the farmers would sometimes have too much barley after the harvest, so they would malt it to stop it from going mouldy and being wasted,” he adds. Malting encourages the harvested barley grains to start germinating (turning the starch inside each grain into sugar), and it is then smoked to stop the germination going too far. The malted grains are mixed with water, yeast added, then distilled to yield raw whisky. Job done.

“Basically, that’s is all you need for whisky. Malted barley, water, and a little yeast,” says Ian.

Admittedly, there are a few more steps than that, but this is the essence of whisky – and has been since 1494, when it was first made for James I of Scotland. This may make whisky-making sound straightforward, but Ian it’s more tricky than it sounds. And the most difficult part is learning whisky language.

“First you grind up the malted barley to make grist, then you mix the grist with water in the mashtun to make mash, then leave it for a while before you drain off the wort, leaving the draff which is turned into cattle feed,” explains Ian. He is busy flashing up slides from a complex Powerpoint of chutes, vats, valves, recirculating pipes and stills.

My head was spinning with jargon by this time, but Ian was having none of it as we wandered around the centuries-old buildings at Strathisla Distillery, established in 1786 and Scotland’s oldest working distillery. A sparkling salmon river flows through the grounds, and Ian’s office looks out over the water to the tree-shrouded steeple of the local kirk, or church. Not a bad place to work, even without the whisky.

Ian explains some more. “The mashtun – that’s the big vat that holds the mash – is drained of its wort (liquid), which is then mixed with yeast to help ferment the sugars from the grain, and to start producing the alcohol in what we call the wash,” continues Ian, warming to his theme of confusing with vocabulary.
“The wort, together with the newly-added yeast, is piped into even bigger fermentation vats called washbacks. These contain several thousands of litres of wash, and are left to ferment for about two days,” he says.

This is the crucial part of the process which produces alcohol, with carbon dioxide as a by-product. Which makes bending over the vats – as I did – a risky affair. It’s hard to know whether the jargon, the alcohol fumes or the carbon dioxide make you more giddy.

“Once the yeast has done its work, and transformed the wort into wash, which is about six to eight per cent alcohol and smells like beer, it is ready for distilling,” explains Ian, taking me along a tiny metal walkway to the copper stills, which are highly polished works of art as tall as a three-storey house. Clear liquid can be seen bubbling up against peepholes, and hissing noises fill the room as alcohol is distilled from the wash.

This is where things go from agricultural, from vats stirred by crude paddles, to super complex and highly refined. “The stillman – the man who looks after the still – has to make sure only the middle cut, or heart of each distillation run, gets piped to the holding tanks. The first spirit out of the still (the heads) has too many volatile long chain molecules, and the last (the tails) makes the final produce taste too strong because of the residuals,” says Ian, getting more technical by the moment.

I long for the simple world of mashtuns and wort. No matter – at least the whisky tastes great . . .