HOW WE MAKE IT
General Principles
Sam (owner/distiller) is a tinkerer by nature. He is never happy with the status quo when he feels like there is possibly a better way. Call it his Gen x ADHD brain. According to Sam there is not a thing on this planet that can't be tinkered with to make it better (or at least pulled apart to find how it works). Distilling or more accurately the creation of flavor during distillation is at the top of his very long list. In researching the production of fruit washes/distillates, Rums and Whisky(ey) over the last 10 years or more he felt that there were gaps in where it was thought flavor congeners come from in the production process and he set about to fill the gap.......by tinkering.
Production of Rye and Barley Whisky(ey)
Rye Whiskey is a challenge, the grain is stubborn to work with. Unlike Barley or other grains, Rye cannot be easily sparge to free the sugars from the grain bed during mashing (it is too gelatinous even with the right enzymes). Anyone who tries, finds it an exercise in frustration. There is nothing like having 2000-3000 Litres of stodgy porridge in your mash tun to deal with. Rye distillers in North America at the turn of the 19th century already knew this and so by tradition, rye was always mashed, fermented and distilled on grain. When you distil on grain, you cant directly heat the wash, unless you use injected steam. Sam realized that with the limited power available in the distillery, indirect heating wasn't going to be an option, so direct injected low pressure steam was the solution. Sam built his still in house to do exactly this, a 700L Hybrid pot still with an 8" 7 plate column. And while he was at it, he decided to produce whisky from barley the same way. This really is just the starting point though. The direct steam injection method takes a bit longer to run than an indirect heating method, and it dilutes the wash as the distillation progresses. But in doing so, certain conditions are met, with acidity, heat and alcohol present to make some remarkable flavor congeners during the distilling process. The hybrid pot is good, but not best. Introducing the 3 chamber still (otherwise known as a beer batching still or a charge chamber still). This is steam injected distilling on steroids, with equally increasing flavor. The distillery has so far only produced whiskey using the original hybrid pot. The 3 chamber still is being manufactured and delivery is expected late in 2026.
3 Chamber Still
Flavor and where it comes from
Traditionally whisky has been made with all sorts of grains. Oats, wheat, barley, rye, corn etc. Each of these has its own flavor characteristics inherent in the grain and the production of all of them have been refined over centuries. How fine to grind the grain, best extraction of sugars (temperature, how the enzymes work), sparging, fermentation (yeast type and temperature), distilling (design of the traditional pot still) and then finally aging the spirit.
By this tradition, it is largely thought that the majority of flavor to be had in a new make spirit comes from the yeast type and fermentation temperature. Esters, aldehydes, fusel oils, etc are all created during the fermentation process based on yeast and bacteria, temperature and time. A lot of those compounds are fragile and are readily broken back down to constituent parts during distillation on a traditional pot still. Some survive and they make it into a barrel, where the remaining flavor congeners are slowly created by the chemical interaction of the afore mentioned chemical components and the chemistry of the wood in the cask, and this is where the majority (read 90%) of a whisky's flavor comes from (traditionally). But, and its a big BUT, what if it doesn't have to be the case.
That's the conclusion Sam came to. Time to tinker.
Well, Sam hasn't reinvented the wheel, merely
re-appropriated it. What he worked out, is by distilling on grain, it means that all of the goodness of the grain makes it all the way from grist to still, and of course all of the great chemical building blocks to make exceptionally flavorful spirit come along for the ride. Given the right conditions in the distillation process, the new make spirit can have exponentially higher ester counts, along with other powerful congeners like ketones, and terpenes. Some of these cannot be created in the cask, so having them in the new make, means the spirit, once matured will be exceptional.
