The Whisky Guy Blog

I have been hot, hot, hot the past couple of days!  No, I’m not refering to a great haircut from Shannon or a new Ben Sherman overcoat.  My spirited opening sentence has to do with just that: spirit.  My ongoing Bruichladdich education took me to the still room, where fermented wash is distilled and distilled again to pull off fine spirit nearing 70 percent alcohol.

The still room at Bruichladdich.

Neil and Budgie, the two stillmen, took the time to walk and rewalk me through Bruichladdich’s distillation process.  Unlike my time in the mash house, which was more observational than active, I was right in the heat of things, so to speak.  With still temperatures hot enough to bring more than 7,000 liters of liquid to a frothy boil, the still house is an ideal place to be during the Islay winter.

Budgie put me to work straight away, managing the steam flow to the wash still, weilding big, heavy handles to help him turn valves on and off, watching the quality of the foreshots, low wines and spirit using hydrometers in the spirit safes…in short, I was making whisky.

I’ve been to several distilleries where the still operations are run by computer and monitored by the still men.  They still produce fine spirit, and the still men certainly know their jobs.  However, I had the feeling with Budgie and Neil that the stills, safes and every last valve were more like well-recognized old friends than machinery.  Both men run the stills in slightly different ways, in the same manner PG and Peter ran the mashings with subtle differences. 

Jim McEwan said that’s the essence of Bruichladdich: it’s a handcrafted whisky that exudes the diversity of the craftsmen behind it.  If Bruichladdich’s standard bottlings taste a bit different from one year to another, that’s a good thing, Jim believes, because it’s a return to the handcrafted legacy whisky-making fore-bearers left us. The only consistency Jim wants is in a high quality single malt hitting the bottle. 

Budgie explains the process to me as seen on Bruichladdich's Web Cam (thanks to a loyal reader!)

Time in the still room really helped me watch my “baby” grow up.  The spirit that we distilled was from some of the mash that I helped turn into wort and watched (and smelled…mmmm) ferment.  Today, we helped it grow up into Bruichladdich spirit.  The next step is to watch it mature, and in order to do that, I need to….well, you’ll read about it tomorrow.

I am now 24 hours into a new way of looking at whisky: from the inside.  For the next two weeks, I am learning all there is to know about whisky making from the innovative experts at Bruichladdich Distillery (www.bruichladdich.com) through immersion — not in whisky, but in the process.

At the invitation of distillery manager and whisky legend Jim McEwan, I am going to essentially shadow the Bruichladdich team in all facets of production.  For the past two days, I’ve been working with PG and Peter in the mash house.  It’s here that the malted barley is mixed with hot water to draw out the sugars, which are eventually converted into alcohol in the fermentation and distillation processes. 

The water and barley grist make their way into the mash tun.

Bruichladdich has a rare four-wash mash cycle (compared to the standard three) in which the last two washes go into the first two washes of the next mash.  This draws even more sugar out of the grain.  Each cycle takes about 6-8 hours.  The wort (sugar-rich water) from the first two cycles are piped to the washbacks in the adjacent tun room, where it ferments (once yeast is added) in a 35,000 liter pine washback for  60-70 hours. 

At any given time, four of the six washbacks are filled and are in various stages of fermentation.  One washback could be bubbling like a witch’s gigantic cauldron, as the reaction from the yeast throws off hot carbon dioxide.  Another washback could be enjoying the calm from the end of the fermentation process and, in fact, contain a fruity, fizzy “beer” that is strangely drinkable.

PG and Peter came to the whisky life years ago from other careers (fisherman and farmer), and expertly execute their jobs (including milling the barley several times a week).  The mashing process is a slow one, so there is often time spent watching barley bubble in the hot water or doing other minor tasks.  But when it comes time to empty or fill the mash tun, it’s a flurry of activity with multiple levels of valves needing to be opened, temperatures to be watched and maintained, and mash to be stirred.   

Emptying thousands of liters of wort into the washback tun.

My tasks were minor, carrying and dumping yeast into the cavernous washbacks, but I still had an important introductory education.  My biggest impression is how much character of the final spirit is imparted in the mashing process.  Bruichladdich claims 60 percent of the final character is developed in this stage.  Based on the cereal and fruit aromas I noticed growing increasingly stronger as the wort fermented, and even as the sugars were being drawn from the barley in the mash tun, I’d have to agree.

It still amazes me that barley, water and yeast are these basic all-natural ingredients that end up becoming this amazing spirit.  But, I guess the monks who invented whisky didn’t have much else to work with, so they made magic from mash.

Next up for me is the still room, where the fermented wash is distilled into the “spirit” of Scotch.  In other words, I’ll spend the day in a furnace room, which is good considering how cold Islay’s been this week!

On my flight to India last week, throughout my repeated viewings of “Mama Mia” (my new favorite film, seriously), I was taken with coughing fits that were the dry, hacking “He must have TB” type that has worried mothers covering their children.  Thankfully, I was able to ease some of that coughing with a mini-bottle of Jack Daniels.  Still didn’t help all of it, but it eased my itchy throat enough that I was able to enjoy Meryl sing “WInner Takes It All” to Pierce distraction-free.

In general, when it comes to not feeling well or having those kinds of coughs that just won’t stop, I prefer Irish whiskey over anything else – specifically Jameson.  It rolls nicely into a hot toddy, but it’s also of the right character to be imbibed when you are so sick that the taste of anything makes you sicker. It’s sweet, but not too sweet.  There’s a much nicer warmth than just taking cough syrup, and it doesn’t have the “whacked out feeling” the latter leaves you with. 

Whisky has long-been used for medicinal purposes.  Even during the U.S. Prohibition of the 1920s and 1930s, doctors delved out thousands of whisky prescriptions to cure everything from arthritis to, yes, coughs.  In fact, if memory serves me, Laphroaig was the only Scotch legally imported into the U.S. during that time because it was so medicinal smelling and tasting, authorities couldn’t see it being used as anything other than medicine.

So, the next time you reach for that Nyquil, try a dram of the amber cure-all.