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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