barrels

In the long history of whisky making, wood has perhaps travelled the furthest along the distiller's continuum of understanding as to its importance to and influence on the final product. Born of the need simply to contain and transport the whisky maker's art, it is now exhaulted as one of the major contributors to the flavours we have come to love. So much so that distilleries like Glenmorangie actually select their own oak from trees growing in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri where it will begin its life as barrels maturing American whiskey or bourbon.

And though the distiller appreciates the barrel for the qualities of its wood, I appreciate it for the qualities of its shape and form...the smooth flowing line of the circle, the rhythm of repetition, the stories it tells by its grizzled exterior and stencilled tatoos. They're fun to photograph.

Bruichladdich barrels after the rain.

Arran barrels.

Glenora, Canada's single malt distiller on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia.

Balvenie barrel hoops.

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...and Happy Hogmanay

on malting

While savouring a dram of Redbreast Irish pot still whiskey, I finish reading Iain Banks's "Transitions". It gets me thinking about transitions - change, the movement between states. So of course that leads to thinking about malted barley (malting as one of many transitions involved in making whisky, and the fact that most Irish whiskey is made with unmalted barley...just nod and pretend you follow me). Who first figured that barley should go through the extra time, effort, and energy to germinate the grain before using it to distill our favourite tipple? It's a process that is systemically more costly than just using barley reaped and dried straight off the field. Maybe it was one of those serendipitous mistakes - barley stashed under a leaky roof, discovered too late but too valuable to discard...I'm just musing here, I'm sure somewhere out there is an historical explanation.

The first two are a couple photos of barley quietly germinating on the malting floor at Laphroaig. It's time, labour, and space intensive to malt this way - that's why few distilleries do it for themselves any more. I'm thinking the process was only undertaken after the establishment of distilleries as legal entities able to occupy a relatively large footprint, the first arguably founded sometime during the last quarter of the 18th century. Prior to the luxury of a malting floor, I suggest that most Scotch whisky must have been made with unmalted barley.

I also suggest you pick up one of Iain Banks's works, with or without the M. His "Raw Spirit" got me reading him, and though it is not quite representative of his more widely distributed subject matter the book is a tasty dram, a roadtrip through the landscape of Scotch whisky.

a grain wheelbarrow at Laphroaig used to spread the steeped barley by hand across the malting floor

you've seen a similar image here before - raking the growing barley at Bowmore so it doesn't mat together into a tangled mess

a motorized barley rake at Laphroaig - undoubtedly a lot easier on the maltman's back!

           after two days on the malting floor            after three days on the malting floor

the malting floor at Springbank, Campbeltown

the malting floor at Kilchoman, Islay

the malting floor at the Balvenie, Speyside

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tribute

Just got back from Scotland where I picked up a copy of "Discovering Scotland's Distilleries" by Gavin D. Smith and Graeme Wallace - a neat little publication which has nicely updated the state of affairs. The book tells me that Tamdhu has been closed down (the Edrington Group website says it was "mothballed" in March of this year - OK, so I'm not the one to come to for the latest industry news!). Shame, since the dram I'm drinking is quite tasty (distillery release, no age statement).

We had a wonderful tour of their maltings in 2008, very informative and personal, with Heather Anderson, the distillery manager's wife. The maltings may still be operating, I don't know. When you get to meet the people who have a direct role in the crafting of our whisky, one feels a modicum of personal loss when a distillery like Tamdhu is considered redundant by its corporate owners. One wonders what happens to the people you've met...here are a few of them.

...another one bites the dust

...peering into the barley screener

...emptying the steeped barley

...casting the steeped barley to the Saladin box for germination

...emptying the Saladin box, the barley being ready for the kiln

See www.whisky.com/brands/tamdhu_brand.html for more information on Tamdhu.


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the rant

It really hasn't been that long since I first became interested in single malt whisky. The first trip my dad and I made to Scotland with distilleries as the main focus was in 2001. At that time many of the distilleries had no well developed facilities for public tours, but most were quite accommodating in giving us a personal glimpse which I prearranged before our journey. Most, if not all, were quite amenable to me taking photographs along any part of the process. This was heaven for me since, as I've said before, my interest in whisky is not restricted to the tasting of the end product.

Jump to the present. Most distilleries now do not allow photographs to be taken in any of the production areas. Apparently this is for health and safety reasons - a common excuse being the prevalance of explosive alcohol vapours. More likely the methane from this bull***t.

I welcome any industry comments on this. And I applaud all those distilleries which still allow whisky fans like me to have their photographic fun.

This clandestinely obtained photograph would have gotten me into trouble with the tour guide at Tomatin had I been seen.

A couple of Whisky Academy students at Bruichladdich get a lesson from Budgie...look out folks, my camera is going to blow you up! During past visits, the folks at the Laddie have given me free access to photograph in the distillery. One of the reasons I love the place.

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"still" here

You may have noticed that it's been a while since my last post so I'll take a quick minute to let you know I'm still here. My summer is consumed by my work at a kids camp and I barely have time to check my email let alone put the amount of thought into a blog post that it deserves. That being the case, I'm going to leave you with a photograph from Aberfeldy.

If you've managed to peruse my webalbum photos, or looked at my personal photoblog then you'll know that I'm quite visually drawn to splashes of the colour red. Or any colour for that matter. Aberfeldy, like many distilleries, was quite restrictive in allowing cameras to be used inside the distillery, so luckily there was some interesting stuff to see from the outside.

See you soon.
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Talisker

Talisker distillery is in the top ranks when it comes to the beauty of its surroundings. The road to our B&B snaked its way up to the hills above Loch Harport where we could look down upon the distillery on the shore.

 

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envying angels

Consider the angels.

You've no doubt heard of their "share", that portion of whisky alcohol which works its way through the wood of the barrels basking in the warehouse over time and which apparently disappears into the ether. Well, this vapour actually doesn't totally disappear. Some of  it is rounded up and feasted upon by a mould or microfungus called Baudoinia compniacensis. This is the black sooty stuff often seen on the outside walls of distillery warehouses. Some distilleries whitewash the walls to cover it up. Too bad I say...it is an integral part of the making of your favourite dram. At every turn we seem to be increasing the divide between ourselves and the natural world. How can we expect people to respect the natural environment if we are forever demonizing it?

So, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? At least we know why they're dancing.

The angels at Glen Ord

A Tamdhu wall...but it could be any whisky warehouse wall.


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more heat

I got thinking more about heat after my last post and realized just how prevalent it is in the whisky making process, and that I'd overlooked some of my photographs reflecting the subject which may be of interest to you. So I guess this is part two.

A couple of the photos have an annoying lens shadow at the bottom of the image, for which I apologize. I would normally not hesitate to excise such offences to my aesthetic sensibilities, however I felt that the subject matter would have suffered somewhat if I had cropped them out. So be it...I'll just have to do the suffering with a cringe or two every time I see them.

Forsyth's, in the town of Rothes in Speyside, have been crafting the lions share of Scotch whisky distillery equipment since the end of the nineteenth century. Dad and I were lucky enough to be graciously hosted by Mr. Richard Forsyth on a very interesting tour of the factory. I suspect this is the upper section of a still in the making. After having been heated by another coppersmith with a torch, this chap is beating the red hot metal into shape. The outer shell of a condenser is lying on the floor behind him.

Bowmore is one of the few remaining distilleries to floor malt some of their own barley. While germinating, the barley produces heat which must be regulated by turning over with wide flat shovels and raking, which is being done here. This also prevents the emerging rootlets from tangling into an unmanageable clump. As you can see, this process is quite labour intensive and back breaking so it is also done by machine.

This is a rare sight - too bad I messed it up with a shadow (cringe #1!). The inside of Springbank's wash still with one of the few rummagers in existence. When a still was (is, in this case) directly fired with an open flame from below, as all stills used to be, there needed to be a method of preventing the contents from scorching. This was achieved by the rummager, a strip of copper chain mail which revolved inside the still in order to stir and scrape the bottom, not unlike what needs to be done when you make your porridge on the stove. This still is also heated by steam which travels through the pipes seen around the circumference.

The interior of a Glen Scotia still. The silver pots radiate heat from steam inside the pipes which can be seen just below the liquid surface. They, of course, would be covered when the still is in full tilt boogie mode (one of the lesser known whisky distilling terms!...and an obtuse shoutout to Canadian backup bands everywhere!!).

The charring of the inside surface of whisky barrels is done in a couple of ways. At the Speyside Cooperage where they refabricate zillions of barrels for the Scotch whisky industry, the barrels are stood upright with no ends above a furnace which blasts a huge flame through the barrel like a chimney. Very cool sight. This photograph, however, is from the cooperage at the Balvenie where they do all their own barrel work on site. You're looking at the end of a barrel on its side, through a window I might add, which is being spun round by the two rollers at the bottom of the image. A flame is then blasted into the open end facing away from us, which can be seen shooting out the bung hole. It, too, is a pretty cool sight to see.

This is one of my favourite barrel images, so I'm glad to be able to share it with you to end off this post. It is a triptych of Bruichladdich barrels, with one showing the result of the interior charring (or maybe it's from all of my hot air floating about!).


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the heat is on

One of the fundamental skills in whisky making is understanding heat, how to apply it and how to move it around. Indeed I suspect one of the biggest costs involved in producing whisky lies in the creation of process heat, so its efficient manipulation is crucial to our getting an affordable dram.

Quite a lot of distillery tour guides will tell you of the happy cows which are fed the draff or spent grains left over from the mashing process. Glenfarclas also incorporates their pot ale or spent wash into the draff for livestock feed, a byproduct which has traditionally been disposed of by most (I'm guessing) distilleries. Bruichladdich is looking into the creation of methane from their pot ale, using it to help power the distillery. I'd like to think that waste heat recapture is high on the list of research into the further improvement of distilling efficiency. We humans are a wasteful lot, and must get to a point where the byproducts of human activity cease to be considered waste but moreso as raw material for some other industrial process or human endeavour. Every natural process is part of a closed cycle, and human industry should be no different...Am I grandstanding again?

The main use of heat in a distillery is, of course, to separate the alcohol from the rest of the liquid within the stills by evaporation. And in order for us to be able to drink it, it must be condensed into a liquid again. This is the job of the aptly named condensers, those big copper columns which are often seen standing beside and connected to the stills. In some distilleries they are situated outside, for lack of space or to keep them cooler (another guess there). The vapour coming off the still is sent through the condenser where it circulates around a series of smaller tubes running the length within it. These tubes hold cold water which takes the heat from the vapour allowing it to condense back into a liquid. This is one of the processes which we are unable to see happen during that tour of our favourite distillery.

However there is another, older technique for condensing the vapour coming off the stills and that is the use of wormtubs. The function is the same but the technology is a little less sophisticated (arguably?). The vapour passes through a tube which "worms" its way in a circular path down through a large "tub" of cold water, usually outside.

At the top are Kilchoman and Bunnahabhain. The third photo shows the wormtubs of Abhainn Dearg, which are inside and sit above the two stills. The last photo shows the outside tubs of Cragganmore. I bet these would make dandy hottubs during a chilly winter. Dram in hand, soaking in the soothing warmth while snowflakes gently caress your face...mmmmmmm.

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food for thought

Grab a dram, I'm gonna wax poetic on ya'.
Consider this...10, 12, 15 years ago (18, 21?...lucky you) the whisky in your glass was a plant, struggling in the soil for survival, seeking out its own water of life. Barley. If lucky, it experienced the right environmental conditions to grow into a strapping young kernel. If not, then it returned to the soil to help nourish the next lucky one. But it was a living thing nonetheless.

All too often we disregard the history of the food we put into our mouths in order to nurture our bodies. If we considered where our food comes from a little more, then perhaps we'd be less inclined to mistreat the gardens of our very existence, the air, water, and soil which give us life. You'd better take a sip, I think I'm getting too melodramatic here.

Back to the barley. It never ceases to amaze me that whisky is just that, plus water and yeast, which is also a living thing. And if you want to get really metaphysical, so is water. In the end, is it any wonder that whisky gained its name from the Gaelic term uisge beatha, itself descended from the Latin meaning "water of life".

There aren't many distilleries which are able to facilitate the entire cycle of whisky making from barley to bottle. Many don't strive to, but some make it a part of their mission statement. It takes a lot of homegrown barley to satisfy an entire mashbill. Even small distilleries like Kilchoman on Islay only presently grows 30% of their own, and they don't (yet) have a bottling facility. The young Abhainn Dearg on the west coast of Lewis is giving it a go, if the Atlantic lets them. Not sure how much Islay barley Bruichladdich manages to bring in, but they may be the closest to the goal, even though they don't malt at the distillery.

So, this blog entry is in celebration of the lowly barleycorn, that often overlooked but essential first component that is the root of all whisky, from which all our drams stem, the seeds of our mal(t)content...OK, OK, here are the photographs.

The top one is harvested Bruichladdich barley. How do I know it was destined for the Laddie? I tasted a few grains left in the field which the birds hadn't gotten to and compared it to the new make I had just tasted at the distillery and...well, OK, I just read the sign on the fencepost which said so. The other image is what's left of a field of Golden Promise barley (what a great name) grown for the Macallan. No telling fencepost sign, but the folks at the distillery.

Here, Islay birds feast on what John Barleycorn didn't get.

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a couple of my faves

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. My first steps will be about two of my personal favourite single malts, Bruichladdich and Laphroaig. Both distilleries are on the Isle of Islay, part of the Inner Hebrides off the west coast of mainland Scotland. Maybe someday I'll put up a map of Scotland and all her distilleries, or find a link to a good one...remind me, would you please?

The Laddie is on the west coast of Loch Indaal, in the village of and just north of the Bruichladdich pier from which this photo is taken. Loch Indaal is a long and fairly wide body of water, open to weather coming from the southwest across the North Channel from Ireland and the Atlantic. The distillery and warehouses are situated just across the road from the loch.

Laphroaig is on the south coast of Islay, sheltered somewhat by Laphroaig bay. I say somewhat because it can still get lashed quite severely by storms blowing in from the southwest. It has warehouses directly on the shoreline.

I'll be highlighting distilleries in no particular order and will be putting up photos on an irregular basis, especially if I revisit the distillery in the future, so please don't hesitate to return.

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welcome

Go to Scotland. It's a beautiful place with lots to offer. In 2001 my father and I made our first trip there together built around single malt Scotch whisky. I chose the distilleries to visit and dad had fun creating the itinerary and making all the necessary arrangements. We've been doing that almost every year since.

The focus of this blog is to share some of the photographs I've taken in and around those distilleries. According to the Scotch Whisky Association website there are 148 working distilleries in Scotland as of March 2024, and there are more in the works. Just as some folks get a kick out of "bagging munroes" (adding to their list of Scottish mountains they've climbed), I've got quite a few more visits to make to get anywhere near bagging them all. And as you'll see, there's more than just Scotland here.

I hope you'll enjoy the ongoing journey with me. It's been a blast so far.

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