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Kitchen Chat and more…
Kitchen Chat and more…
With international borders still close in most countries, travel is made impossible. For those of us who miss Scotland and her beautiful people, we will have to wait some more. We were, therefore, absolutely delighted when William Grant and Sons invited us to go on a virtual distillery tour at The Balvenie. The highlight, however, was the promise that David Stewart, Malt Master for The Balvenie, would be available for a chat.
Some of you know that I love The Balvenie, especially the single barrel range of 12 and 15 years old. I also adore their tea-spooned blended malt, Burnside, with its huge fruit notes and oakiness that does everything to lift the whisky up. Therefore, a tour at The Balvenie distillery is a big treat. I turned up at the Youtube page bright and early (well, in Scottish time at least), and waited for the tour to start.
Our tour started with Brett Bayly turning up on screen looking all prim and proper with his suit. He looked a wee bit uncomfortable, but hey, he was enjoying The Balvenie 12 years old Doublewood. I think that should take away all the discomfort! Next online was Gemma Paterson, the lady of the distillery. Gemma is the Global Brand Ambassador for The Balvenie, and she is a familiar figure for anyone who knows The Balvenie well. James was last onboard, but he was sitting happily onsite at The Balvenie distillery, ready to bring us on a tour!
As with all proper distillery tours, we started at the glorious floor malting, which The Balvenie has kept intact since 1929.
It was the first time that I saw such a huge malting floor. I did not manage to visit Speyside on my last trip to Scotland, but I did see a malting floor at Laphroaig distillery. Compared to what I saw during the virtual tour at The Balvenie, the malting floor at Laphroaig was smaller. The Balvenie distillery also employed very manual processes. The malt man loads up a machine that would transport a batch of raw barley from the floor to the steeping tank, where he adds water to encourage the germination process to start.
Once the malt man completes the steeping process, he lays the barley on the ground to grow. After that, the barley goes into the kiln, where they dried the barley either with coal fire or peat. Let’s go take a look at their kiln.
James took us down to see the fire, where it was warm and toasty for him. The kiln looked cool, but it’s very hot to touch. Using a metal hook, he eased the door opened and showed off the gentle fire. The small fire generated enough heat to dry and stop the germination of the barley, but not hot enough to burn them. As a real life experiment, he took a small piece of peat (the distillery produces their own peated malt too) and throw it into the coal fire. Will the peat contributes to a small phenol level in the current kilning process? Perhaps.
Next, we headed off to the still house, where The Balvenie distillery produces their new make. The distillery houses 5 wash stills and 6 spirits stills. The wash stills have a capacity of 9100 litres which the spirits stills hold 12,750 litres each. The total distillation hours are 15.5 – 16.5 hours. Balvenie takes the cut of the heart between 74% to 64% abv, pretty much like most other distilleries. Finally, 4250 litres of spirits will be obtained from the original 53,000 litres of wort. A word on the cut of the heart – the peated malt has a lower and more precise cut that is lower than 70% abv.
The second picture showed James’ finger on the bulb of the spirit stills. This is an important part where the shape of the copper still encourages more reflux, creating a higher rectification during distillation. The higher rectification creates a cleaner spirit with fruity notes. The final step of the distillation process is at the spirit safe. Here, the still men will work manually to check on the spirit coming off the still. The new make is collected between 74% abv to 64% abv for the unpeated malt. The cut of the heart is lower when they are distilling peated malt.
A distillery tour is not complete without a peep into the warehouse. James took us to warehouse 24, where some of the older casks of Balvenie are still sleeping.
It is a huge warehouse but not filled to the brim with casks. Each cask is given enough space to breathe and do its magic on the whisky it is holding. Some of these casks dated back to the days where David Stewart, the Malt Master of The Balvenie, first became the Malt Master!
In the warehouse, James shared the story of the copper dog, a device used to sneak whisky out right under the watchful eyes of the excisemen. There is a story behind the copper dog and a man named Dennis, but I would leave the story untold. It’s more exciting to hear it first hand when you visit The Balvenie Distillery after the pandemic. James demonstrated how a man can use the copper dog to draw whisky out of a cask. It was pretty exciting, but perhaps, he was making too much noise trying to “steal whisky out of a cask”!
A copper dog is a device usually made of copper, although it can be made in stainless steel. The first picture showed the copper dog as it is, a container with a long chain. If you are a warehouse man in the past, you may get your mate to distract the exciseman and you use the copper dog to draw whisky from the cask. All you need to do is to drop the copper dog into the cask, draw it back up, and cap it. Put it back into your pockets and share a dram with your mate later on.
In James’ demonstration, he poured the whisky into a wee glass container to show us what the whisky was – a Balvenie 16 years old in a sherry butt.
At the end of the virtual tour, Gemma Paterson introduced David Stewart, the Malt Master. David joined the distillery in his youth (see the picture above) and has spent his entire career at WG&S. David is the most experienced malt master in Scotland, having 59 years of experience. He also nosed about 500,000 casks across his career. Meeting David was a treat, even if it was an online chat. He shared his experience of creating one of the most well-loved Balvenie expression – The 12 Years Old Doublewood.
David designed the “wood finishing” process in 1982 (gulp! I wasn’t even born yet) and began to experiment with it. Over time, he developed a sound concept and used it for the 12 Years Old Doublewood. To make the whisky, David takes a batch of whisky matured in American ex-bourbon casks and vat them together before transferring them into sherry butts for 9 months. Then the whisky are again put into a marrying tun for another 2 to 3 months before bottling. While each bottle of the Doublewood is labelled as a 12 years old, the process makes the whisky just slightly short of 13 years old.
The Doublewood launched in 1993, and immediately took the limelight. The whisky gains its distinctive character from its maturation in two wood types, and these casks give the whisky unique characteristics that would not be available in the other wood. While the bourbon casks soften and give the whisky its roundedness, the sherry casks add depth and flavour to the whisky. It is truly one of the most delectable offerings from The Balvenie!
Comments from WhiskyGeeks
We really enjoyed the tour, and also the media kit that was delivered to us. It holds a copper dog (yay!), the beloved Balvenie Glencairn glass, a 12 Years Old Doublewood and a 12 Years Old Triple Cask. The team is definitely looking forward to drinking the whiskies. The tour gave us a good overview of the distillery and we are now looking forward to visiting the distillery in Scotland for real when the pandemic is over. We want to thank Gemma, James and Brett for the lively tour and David for taking his time out to speak with us.
For now, let’s drink and stay safe! Slàinte!
Whisky is trending as THE drink of the generation and we know that some of you are probably looking for rare or hard to find bottles. Instead of bemoaning the whisky’s unattainability, perhaps you would like to check out Dom Whisky Online. We came across the website and their stunning range of whiskies quite by accident.
Dom Whisky is the brainchild of Mr Andrzej Kubiś, a whisky lover in Poland. Known as “House of Whisky”, the brand first started as a whisky bar in the northern Polish seaside town of Jastrzębia Góra in 2009. Fast forward to today, Dom Whisky now owns various bars and shops across Poland, and also has its online presence as Dom Whisky Online.
Dom Whisky is a likely candidate for the crown of the largest whisky bars in the world. Housing more than 2000 whiskies, it has both official bottlings and independent bottlings. In the eyes of Forbes writer, Felipe Schrieberg, the title of the largest whisky bar in the world goes to either Dom Whisky or Artisan restaurant in Lanarkshire, Scotland.
Andrzej is no noob to whisky. In 2018, he was inducted as “Keeper of the Quaich” for his contribution to the Scotch whisky industry. The recognition is a well-deserved proof of Andrzej’s work and his passion for Scotch whiskies.
Since international travels is still a dream for the future, let us focus on what Dom Whisky Online offers. Once you head over the link, you will want to click on the links at the top to go straight into the whisky selection. There is currently around 4000 whiskies listed, and some of them are pretty rare. For example, you will be able to find a few expressions of closed distilleries bottlings, such as Littlemill and Lochside, from the website.
The website has a lot of whiskies which may be “regular whiskies” in Singapore’s context, but if you spend some time to go through the website page by page, you may just find something that you are looking for. It’s a treasure trove for people who want to look for specific whiskies. If you have no time or patience to search through the website, drop Dom Whisky’s manager an email at mkubis@sklep-domwhisky.pl to ask for assistance.
Dom Whisky Online ships internationally through UPS. Do be sure to advise them of any specific instructions for shipping to your respective countries if there are any. At the moment, I think there may be difficulties shipping through the United States, but all other countries should be pretty easy with UPS.
Dom Whisky Online does not only serve up whisky. If you are a fan of other spirits, you’ll be just as pleased to browse through the website to see their offerings. Besides their national drink, Vodka, Dom Whisky also stocks calvados, cognacs, armagnacs, cachaca, grappa, to name a few. There are also pastis and pisco which are interesting.
Dom Whisky Online can be found here. We hope you will enjoy browsing the website as much as we do!
The first time I visited BenRiach distillery was in Autumn of 2018, but a lot has changed since then, so Whiskygeeks sat with the Global Brand Ambassador for BenRiach, GlenDronach, and GlenGlassaugh,
The first time I visited BenRiach distillery was in Autumn of 2018, but a lot has changed since then, so Whiskygeeks sat with Stewart Buchanan, the Global Brand Ambassador for BenRiach, GlenDronach, and GlenGlassaugh, to have a chat about BenRiach distillery and their new bottlings. If you’re curious about the new 2020 bottlings of BenRiach, you can find the article here! With the new bottlings of BenRiach popping out last year and some new bottlings coming out soon, why don’t we take a look at BenRiach distillery’s history and production?
In 1897, John Duff, who also built Longmorn and Glenlossie, started building the BenRiach distillery. In 1898, the BenRiach distillery was complete and started making whisky. Unfortunately, it closed 2 years later due to the Pattison Crash happening around the same time, which devastated many whisky businesses. It wasn’t until 1965 that Glenlivet Distillers Ltd revived the distillery. Ownership of BenRiach continued changing hands until 1978 when Seagrams took ownership. They started peated whisky production and released BenRiach as a single malt. Pernod Ricard took over in 2001 until it was bought over in 2003 by an independent consortium. One of the co-owners is the famous whisky blender, Billy Walker. Billy Walker is also responsible for the capitalisation in the middle of the distilleries name, just like GlenDronach.
In 2016, Brown-Forman acquired the BenRiach Distillery Company Limited. Dr Rachel Barrie took over the role of master blender for BenRiach, GlenDronach and Glenglassaugh.
Back in 2018, I learnt that the distillery uses concerto barley. However, after speaking to Steward, we learn that BenRiach isn’t using primarily concerto anymore. This isn’t surprising as distilleries are now moving away from the concerto variant. As of early 2021, BenRiach uses a combination of 3 varieties of barley. Although not specified, we could make an intelligent guess by looking at UKMalt. The spring varieties for distilling malts: Laureate, KWS Sassy, and LG Diablo!
Whisky distilleries need to change the variant of barley it uses from time to time. Aside from the better properties, newer barley variants may possess, this stops diseases from adapting to any one barley variant. Therefore, this ensures that the whisky industry would not be affected by crop diseases, which is exactly the issue the banana industry is facing today.
The peat used to kiln the peated barley (at 45ppm) BenRiach distillery uses is also currently from Aberdeenshire, Tomintoul. This peat is more vegetal and more herbal than Islay peat. BenRiach distillery has also been quietly working on their floor-malted barley onsite! The floor maltings run for about 8 weeks a year, resulting in approximately 10 tonnes of floor-malted barley.
The malted barley is milled to become grist or crushed barley. This grist goes into a Traditional ‘plough and rake’ mashtun, much like those at Deanston and Bruichladdich. In the mashtun, the grist steeps in hot water to extract the barley sugars.
Fermentation of wash at BenRiach depends on the workweek. The sweet sugary liquid, or wort, extracted from the barley spends 55-80 hours fermenting in Scottish Larch washbacks, together with some liquid ‘creamed’ yeast and becomes a strong beer called wash.
BenRiach distils 3 types of spirit. On top of the double-distilled unpeated and peated spirit, BenRiach triple distils their unpeated malt. Every year, the distillery dedicates 5 weeks to peated spirit production around the end of September and 1 week to triple distillation in the summer.
Unfortunately, in 2018, visitors could not take photos in the distillery building, but they did allow photos outside the building. So I snapped a photo of one of their stills!
Stewart assures us that BenRiach ships their ex-bourbon casks over to Scotland whole now and they are never looking back at flat-packed casks. Under Brown-Forman’s ownership, BenRiach has many connections to Bourbon and Tennessee whiskey distilleries. Therefore, these casks coming to BenRiach distillery would undoubtedly be of high quality.
BenRiach has acquired the nickname of chameleon malt amongst some seasoned whisky drinkers. This is due to how well BenRiach fares when finished in another cask. To find out more about maturation and bottlings (old and new), click this link here!
I am very excited about the new release of the BenRiach 16yo under Dr Rachel Barrie that has been hinted at. Floor-malted BenRiach whisky might take some time to mature before its eventual release. Still, with distilleries like Glen Garioch bringing back floor-maltings, BenRiach will be prepared, should floor-malted whisky be popular and in-demand. BenRiach has changed its bottles and the styles of whisky in them, much like a chameleon, and I’m absolutely excited about what BenRiach does next!
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