How to make whisky - Part 2

A couple of weeks ago, I started learning the role of the Stillman, ie. the guy that operates the stills.

The Stillman takes the wash that was made in Part 1, and uses it to make the spirit that will become whisky after a period of maturation.

Glenfarclas has 6 stills: 3 wash stills and 3 spirit stills.

A still is a large, bulbous vessel made from copper. 25,000  litres of wash (the "beer" from Part 1) is pumped into the wash still, until it comes up to just above the widest point of the still. A gas fire is lit underneath the still and the alcohol in the wash starts to evaporate, along with some of the water. The alcohol and water vapours rise up to the top of the still, around a tight bend and outside to a condenser. The condenser cools the vapours, turning them back into a liquid. This liquid is called "Low wines". It is roughly 20% alcohol and gets piped into a holding tank.

The low wines from the holding tank are then pumped into a spirit still. The spirit still takes around 20,000 litres, and the process starts again. As the still heats up, the alcohol begins to turn to vapour. The alcohol that vapourises at the lowest temperature (around 58 degrees celcius) is a mixture of Methanol and Acetone. These are "bad alcohols", the the ones that cause blindness and death.

Needless to say, blindness and death are undesirable charateristics in whisky, so the stillman lets this flow back into the holding tank to be mixed with low wines and distilled again. After running for 20 minutes, the liquid coming off the still is usually 63 - 70% ethanol, which is the alcohol we know and love. It is referred to as "spirit" at this point and goes into a tank, ready to go into a cask. The spirit flows for about 7 hours, before the alcohol is mostly evaporated. The stillman redirects the weaker liquid that is now coming from the still, known as "feints" back into a tank with the low wines and the "bad alcohols", to be distilled again.

All this is contorolled with rather Steampunk-looking windowed brass box called a Spirit Safe. All the liquid that comes off the stills runs through the Spirit Safe and allows the Stillman to see that the liquid is flowing and lets him take a sample of that liqid at any time in the process to measure the temperature and alcohol levels, and control the swap from feints to spirit and back again.

Checking the gravity and temperature of spirit in the spirit safe

Traditionally, a Spirit Safe was securely padlocked, with the keys held by Customs & Excise. This was so spirit couldn't be syphoned off and consumed without having had the appropriate taxes paid on it. These days, the keys are held by the distillery and we are trusted to play by the book. With modern technology, a spirit safe isn't strictly necessary, but it looks the part, so most distilleries still have them.

If you go on a distillery tour, the tour guide will often refer to the "head", the "heart" and the "tail" when describing the distilling process. The head being the "bad alcohols", the heart being the spirit that becomes whisky, and the tail being the weaker liquid that gets distilled again.

This is the whisky you'll be drinking in your old age, running through the spirit safe

After all the precious alcohol has been distilled off, you are essentially left with dirty water in the bottom of the the still. In the wash still, this is called "Pot ale". In the spirit still, it is "Spent lees". The pot ale is heated to reduce and thicken it and is sold to farmers as a high-protein syrup to feed livestock. It can also be mixed with the draff, left over from the mash process to make animal feed pellets. The spent lees gets filtered and pumps back into the water system.

There are 3 Stillmen, and they each work five 8-hour shifts a week, from Sunday night, until Friday afternoon, with Friday usually devoted to cleaning. The job is a little bit of chemistry, a little bit of physics and a whole lot of watching the clock. Each process and sub-process has an expected time that it will take, so the Stillman always needs to be aware of what is going to happen next and when.

How to make whisky - Part 1

Whisky is made as follows:

• Obtain malted barley (barley that has been allowed to germinate, then toasted to stop the germination process).
• Grind it up to release the sugars.
• Add this, with hot water and liquid yeast, to the mash tun. The mash tun is essentially a 60-something-thousand litre teapot. The ground malted barley (referred to as "malt") steeps in this water , then all the water is slowly drained off into a wash back with some yeast. A wash back is the fermentation tank. 
• More hot water (known as the 2nd water) is added to the malt, much like getting a second brew out of your tea bag, and this water is also drained into the wash back. Before it has fermented, this liquid is referred to as "wort". The lid is shut on the wash back and the wort is left to ferment until most of the sugars have been turned to alcohol. This takes roughly 48 hours.
• A 3rd water is pumped onto the malt, then pumped back into a holding tank. This will be used as the 1st water for the next brew(!). The leftover spent grain is known as draff. This is pushed out of the mash tun by mechanical arms and augers. It gets taken away by truck and turned into animal feed.
• After fermentation, you are left with what is essentially a weak, un-hopped beer, still full of half-dead yeasts. On my first day at Glenfarclas, the Production Manager, Callum said to me "You can drink this. You can get drunk on it, but it WILL put you on the toilet for 2 days".
• That beer, known as "wash" is then pumped to the distillation area to be refined into spirit and put into casks (more on this in another post).

The steps prior to distillation are known as "mashing" and they are controlled by a "Mashman". The "mash"  is the sweet porridgey mixture you get when ground malt and hot water are combined.
The Mashman has a computer screen that allows him to open and close a number of pneumatic valves to shift liquid around. He can see how much liquid has gone to where, what temperature it is and how long it has been there for. In addition to the pneumatic valves, there are plenty of manually operated valves. He is constantly checking the position of valves and the open drain channels to make sure precious liquid is not being sent to the wrong place, or down the drain. All the vessels have to be regularly pressure-hosed, then treated with bleach and hot steam to kill any bugs that could interfere with the next brew.

Mashing and distilling at Glenfarclas is a 24-hour operation, Monday to Friday. The Mashman works an 8-hour shift. In my first week of training, I was working with James on the 6am to 2pm shift. James has worked in whisky production at several distilleries in the area for 30 years, not that you would think it possible to look at him. On my first day, James explained to me he is essentially lazy, so sitting behind a computer, controlling the process suits him nicely. James's definition of lazy clearly differs from mine. He starts the shift at full-speed, checking that all the processes that were started in the previous shift are running as they should be and assesses what he will need to do over the next 8 hours. He goes and talks to the still operator to check that the distillation is running to schedule and establishes when he will need the next batch of wash for distilling.

Good loons: James the Mashman and John the Stillman (not a couple)

Whenever James instructs the computer to shift some liquid or malt around, he gets up and goes to check that it is happening and that there are no blockages or valves left in the wrong position. He is always thinking one step ahead, or doing something now, so it will help with the process later on in the day. He is constantly listening for noises that could indicate a problem, a pump running dry or a process ending. Meanwhile, he is managing the malt milling process for the next batch.

After doing this for a couple of hours, he can stop for a couple of minutes and enjoy a cup of tea (while still keeping a close eye and ear on everything). At any time, a truck could show up with a load of malt or to take away the draff, requiring him to co-ordinate the process. I think I could teach him a thing or two about lazy.

At the end of each week, the Mashman who is working on a Friday afternoon thoroughly cleans out the mash tun so it's ready to go when shifts start again the following Sunday night. Cleanliness is paramount to prevent an infection that could affect fermentation and write-off days worth of production and thousands of pounds in raw materials.

Matthew IN the mash tun

This week, I have been on night shift and it feels like I am getting my head around the process. There are so many valves (known as "Crans") that could be left open, resulting in thousands of precious litres going down drain. The shift is from 10pm to 6am. I'm slightly concerned that at 5am, my brain is not to be trusted with such risks. It can feel like a long night, but I have enjoyed the camaraderie between Mashmen and Stillman.

Glenfarclas has the largest mash tun in Scotland, at 10 metres in diameter.

The 12 wash backs. This is the upper storey of a two-storey building and the washbacks go almost to the ground, holding around 27,000 litres each.

My news is that Glenfarclas has decided to hire a tour guide to cover the busy season from April to September. I have been offered and accepted this role and start at the end of April. In the mean time, I've got another week of mashing, then 4 weeks learning the distillation process. If anyone wants to come and visit over summer, I'll be the one in the tartan trousers without a Scottish accent. Sadly, the house I'm staying in is needed for guests over summer, so I am on the look-out for my own, more modest accommodation in the area.

When not making whisky or sleeping, I've been exploring the area, visiting to the nearby towns and villages and doing lots of country walks. It feels very much like spring is here. The first bulbs are flowering, the days are getting longer. The squirrels, foxes and badgers will soon be snufflling around. I sometimes think I'm living in a mixture of Wind in the Willows and Monarch of the Glen.

I don't think I could be any happier.

“Take the Adventure, heed the call, now ere the irrevocable moment passes!’ ‘Tis but a banging of the door behind you, a blithesome step forward, and you are out of the old life and into the new! Then some day, some day long hence, jog home here if you will, when the cup has been drained and the play has been played, and sit down by your quiet river with a store of goodly memories for company.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Travels in the North-East of Scotland

Since getting my car, I have taken the opportunity do some sightseeing in the north-east of Scotland. I'm very glad I got it because there is some breathtaking scenery here, and some cracking driving roads. Here are some photos from my wandering.

The Tormore Distillery.
I am slightly obsessed with this grand building. Sadly the distillery is not open to the public, and they really only make average whisky to go into blends. I'm itching to see inside though, so one day soon, I might just wander in, then pretend I don't speak English when I am asked what I'm doing. It is about 10 minutes drive from Glenfarclas. I have driven past it several times, and each time I have to get out of the car to just look at it.

Highland coos

A pheasant, just waiting to be plucked

A few weeks ago, I went to the surprisingly beautiful and sandy beach at Lossiemouth and dipped a toe in the North Sea.
It wasn't that bad after my feet went numb from the cold.

You can't swing a jousting stick without hitting a castle up here. This is the ruin of Huntly Castle, and one of several I have visited. It's fascinating to see these buildings, some of which were started in the 1100's, then evolved over the next several hundred years and saw all sorts of dramas.

 

Roads like these, in an angry little Renault hot-hatch like mine: Heaven.

Scotland's coast is dotted with incredibly charming little fishing villages, like Stonehaven, pictured here. The harbours of these villages are mostly too small for large-scale commercial fishing boats, but there are still craft coming and going. In a village like this, you might see someone wearing a cable-knit jersey and a fisherman's cap....and they wouldn't even be a hipster.

Are you feeling lucky?

Glenfarclas 1 month on - A collection of bad iphone photos.

It is a month today since I started at Glenfarclas. Here are a bunch of photos of things that have caught my eye in that time.

A whisky cask that was filled in 1957 and has just been hanging out, thinking about how delicious it's going to be, ever since.

I came across these two casks in a storage area and asked why they had bits of branch wrapped neatly around them. I was told this is commonly done with brandy and cognac casks (which these had once been). It is usually Willow saplings that are used, which is a much softer wood than the oak of the casks. The theory is that Woodworm will attack the softer wood and are less likely to bore into the oak, jeopardising the cask's contents.

My kind of smoked salmon

This is a 1950's "Green Goddess" Bedford fire engine that is owned by Glenfarclas. The story relaid to me is that it was bought because the insurance company offered a discount in the premiums if the distillery had it's own fire-fighting equipment. I think in reality it's just a big toy for the boys. I'm hoping to blag a drive in it, because my inner 3-year old would probably wet himself with excitement.

I found this Coventry Climax FWB fire pump engine (that goes with the Goddess above) sitting in one of the sheds. Vintage motorsport enthusiasts will be drooling. Normal people will be thinking "Eh....it's a grubby old fire pump engine that doesn't look like it's run in years."

In years gone by, the distillery would have owned cows that were fed on the spent grains from the mashing process. This is an old cheese press from those days.

The man on the right in this photo is Miguel. He has just spent 2 days driving his articulated lorry from Spain to deliver a load of fresh sherry casks for us to fill. The extent of his English is "Hello" and "OK", but he still managed to exchange some schoolboy banter with the aid of a wiggling little finger, ribald chuckling and references to chorizo.

There is an old farmhouse onsite that is now used for storage of equipment and supplies. This is the wallpaper from what undoubtedly was "the boy's room". Very Royal Tenenbaums.

I didn't so much find this at the distillery as buy it for £1600 and take it there myself. It is a 2003 Renault Clio 172 Cup and I adore it. It is a very small, light car with a powerful 2-litre engine that makes it hopeless in the snow. It breaks my heart to drive it on the heavily-salted Scottish roads.

The art of the Warehouseman

Monday morning came, and with a stomach full of porridge, I walked down to Callum's office to report for work. I was issued with a navy blue outfit and steel cap boots. A few introductions, then it was off to the filling room, where rows of freshly-stencilled, empty casks were waiting to be filled.

The filling room and warehouses are managed by a cheerful man called Tommy. Working alongside him are Euan, Brian and Brian's son Andrew. They all have a strong North-east Scottish accent and initially, I could understand about a quarter of what they were saying. . They have been patient with me though, and I'm picking up more and more:
"ken" means "know" (Do ye ken?)
"pesh" is "piss" (It's peshin' oot 'o this crack)
"loon" is "boy" or "son" (Gordon's loon was visiting last weekend)
"quine" is "girl"(Go and ask the quines in the office)
"piece" is a morning or afternoon tea snack (Have you got a piece to go with your cup of tea?)
"scutch" is  a wedge of wood that is jammed under a barrel to stop it rolling.

In the filling room is a 46,000 litre tank, that is constantly being filled with new spirit from the stills.
New spirit is clear like water, around 63% alcohol and tastes whisky-ish, but harsh and a bit fruity.

The job of the warehouseman is to:

• Select empty casks that are stored around the distillery and take them to the filling shed.
• Paint out any previous numbers from the end of cask.
• Stencil new details onto the end of the cask.
• Fill the cask with new spirit from the tank and record how much liquid went in.
• Hammer a new poplar bung into the filling-hole of the cask
• Sometimes the casks will leak from a crack in the wood, a woodworm-hole or from a bung that hasn't sealed properly. The warehouseman will hammer the steel hoops of the cask towards the fatter centre part of the cask, compressing the staves (planks of oak that make up  cask) to try and close any gaps. For a worm-hole, he would expand the hole with a nail then hammer in a small piece of dowel. If the leak is coming from around the disc of wood that seals the end of a cask, dried reeds called flagging will be jammed in  to try and seal it. No glue is used in the construction of the cask, it is all held together by the friction of the hoops. Sometimes the hoops rust or fall off and need to be replaced, so the warehouseman becomes a cooper and fits a new hoop with hand tools. If it's the bung that's leaking the bung hole will be reamed out and a larger bung fitted. If all this fails, the spirit will have to be decanted into another cask. It should be noted that you must never ask a warehouseman where the cask is leaking from. He will pause, look you in the eye and reply "probably from the inside".
• The filled cask is then taken by forklift to one of the 34 warehouses Glenfarclas has on site.
• The casks are stored on their sides, two or three high, depending on the size.

Casks vary in size from 200 litre ex-bourbon barrels, to 250 litre ex-sherry hogs-heads, referred to as  "hoggies", to 500 litre ex-sherry butts and 600 litre ex-port pipes, which is essentially a longer sherry butt. Glenfarclas is known for its sherried whiskies, so the bulk of the casks are ex-sherry casks from Spain and Portugal. A used 500 litre sherry butt is worth about £700, so the cask is a greater cost than the liquid that gets put into it. This also means that running repairs, as described above, sometimes need to be made to casks to get maximum use out of them. A cask is usually used 4 times, before being retired. The cask is a major contributor to the flavour and colour of a whisky as it matures. With each subsequent use, the influence of the cask becomes less.

I spend a lot of my day rolling these casks around in warehouses. The larger casks can weigh over half a ton when full. I have enjoyed learning various techniques minimise the effort required. Full casks always have to be stored, even for short periods, "bung up", ie with the bung facing upwards, as this is where the cask is mostly likely to leak from. This sounds easy enough, but when you are storing a dozen or so casks in a row on two wooden rails, some forethought is required. There is a whole clockface system where by you roll one cask into a stowe with the bung up as you start rolling, then the next cask will have the bung at "twenty past", the next at "twenty too", then "bung up" again.
It's not easy to explain, and I often get it wrong myself, but let me say that when a cask rolls along its wooden rails and thumps into place next to another cask, with the bung pointing straight up, that is job satisfaction right there!

I have the pleasure of spending much of my day in the warehouses where the casks are stored. There warehouses are  dimly-lit and filled with full whisky casks, stacked on their sides, two or three high in multiple rows. Most of the warehouses have an earth floor with a concrete path running down the middle. The warehousemen lay wooden rails about a foot apart on the earth perpendicular to the path. Casks are lined up on the rails, bung-up, until they stretch from the side wall of the warehouse to the path. The casks are carefully levelled by eye, and another set of rails is added on top of the first casks. A specially-designed lift is used to bring the next layer of casks, one-by-one, from the ground to the top of the casks below. If smaller casks are being stowed, a third set of rails and casks will be added on top. A scutch is used to stop a row casks from moving.

The most striking thing about the warehouses is the sweet, woody smell, which always reminds me of my late grandfather's antique mahogany booze cabinet. The wood from the casks mingles with the slowly evaporating whisky, the damp in the air and the earth floors. The smell differs from one warehouse to the next, with at least one smelling like jersey caramels and another like freshly baked bran muffins. Some of the warehouses have leaking roofs, which are in the process of being replaced. These smell damper, and less pleasant, but no less fascinating. The warehousemen have an off-colour name for the black mould that grows on  interior walls of the older warehouses and is synonymous with the maturing of spirits.

Having worked at Glenfarclas for just over three weeks now, I have learned a lot and been made to feel welcome by some great people. One thing is was quickly aware of is that for all the tartan and water-of-life romance of the whisky industry, the distillery is a working production facility, no different from the Walkers shortbread factory a few miles up the road. With this comes economic realities, health and safety requirements, plant and equipment hassles and the constant coming and going of trucks to deliver raw materials and remove product and by-product. None of these are a problem or much of a surprise, but a reminder of how inaccurate our perceptions from afar often are.

I will be spending another couple of weeks rolling barrels, as there is always a barrel that needs rolling somewhere, then moving into the mashing area, which I'm told will mean shift work.

I'll let you know how I get on, and hopefully write a bit about some other aspects of life in the snowy Scottish Highlands.

Hammering the bung into a freshly-filled cask. The 46,000 litre spirit tank is in the background. Incidentally, this particular cask was last filled in 1953. It had just come back from bottling a single-cask batch of whisky that had been maturing for over 60 years. Yours for a mere £2700 per bottle.

One of the older warehouses. I wish you could smell it.

I work in here [cough].

Taking a small sample from a cask of maturing whisky using the "bull's cock". This is put in a small bottle and the powers-that-be will decide if that cask has reached its full potential.

Tommy and Euan hammering a new steel hoop onto a cask.

One of the newer Glenfarclas warehouses. I took this photo sitting on a three-high stack of casks, so each of the casks you see in this photo has another two casks underneath it. Glenfarclas has 34 warehouses. That's a lot of whisky.

Casks being loaded onto a truck. These two are from 2006 and are most likely going off to be added to a blend.

 

 

 

There is something undeniably satisfying about emptying seven 250 litre casks of 25-year-old Glenfarclas into a vat so it can be sent off for bottling.

Scotland: I'm finally here

After an all too brief visit to London, catching up with relatives and friends, I landed in a snow-covered Inverness on the afternoon of Saturday the 17th of January and was collected from the airport by Callum, the Production Manager at Glenfarclas. It was about a 45 minute drive back to the distillery and he pointed out landmarks, towns and other distilleries along the way.

We arrived at Glenfarclas and I was shown to my accommodation. I was told it was a nice place, but I still can't quite believe the house I have been put up in. I was hoping for a tidy workmans's cottage. As it happens, I am the sole occupant in "The Manager's House", which is normally kept empty for guests.

It is newly renovated and has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a generous kitchen and living area. It also has a separate dining room and sitting room. It is all centrally heated and decorated with  a "hunting, shooting and fishing theme". I will probably use about a third of the space.

There was a bottle of 12 year old Glenfarclas whisky on the sideboard in the dining room that I was invited to familiarise myself with.

After dropping my bag, I was introduced to Mr and Mrs Grant. John Grant is the chairman of J & G Grant, which has owned Glenfarclas since 1865. Despite this legacy, the Grants come across as friendly and down-to-earth. I was welcomed with a cup of tea and a piece of christmas cake.

I'll write about how the work goes soon. I think I'm going to like it here.

Glenfarclas in the snow

My hoose

Bathroom wallpaper: "Och. I think I've hooked a dolphin"

Welcome to Singapore - You can leave your diet at the door

If you are expecting me to write about whisky, you will have to wait for the next post. I'm at the end of four days in Singapore and whisky hasn't featured. Booze is fairly expensive here, so apart from the odd bottle of Tiger after a day of sightseeing, it has been an almost teetotal visit.

What I have done is eat. There is so much good food here.
You probably know the story - Singapore is a small island, populated with Malays, Chinese, Indians, Europeans and lots of others. They all brought their food traditions, and some have evolved into distinctly Singaporean dishes. I wanted to eat them all and gave it a good nudge, going to different food centres, full of tiny food stalls everyday. I haven't had a western meal since the plane trip here. Breakfast this morning was rice porridge with fish stirred into it, yesterday, it was sort of turnip Egg Foo Yong. Maybe the best thing was a Mutton Biryani from a bustling restaurant in Little India. It's a good thing I'm leaving. My trousers feel tighter already.

It's always hot here. It's the least warm part of the year at the moment, but it's still always between low 20's and low 30's. I just got used to sweating and buying plenty of fresh juice drinks. The best of which was made from tropical Starfruit and tastes like a slightly sour, slightly salty Nashi pear. Very refreshing,

Anyway, hearing about other people's holidays isn't all that interesting, so I'll stop now, but here are a few photos.

A typical food centre scene. Meals here are typically $3 - $5.

With so many vendors under one roof, one vendor can be very specialised. This one only offers two variations of the same dish, Kway Teow, and has done since 1974. Needless to say, they do a bloody good Kway Teow.

This is a coconut milk drink called "Cendol". It's nice enough if you like drinks with Durian and little green noodles in them.

I took this photo to prove that I didn't just eat in Singapore. I looked at some touristy stuff too. Singapore seems slightly obsessed with the "Merlion' at the right of this picture. It's a statue that projectile-vomits water.

I wasn't really in Singapore to shop, but this was a bargain I couldn't pass up. For 30 cents, I purchased a dual-purpose "earwax pick" and blackhead remover. I didn't even have to haggle. In saying that, for $2, I could have got clear plastic earwax pick with a built in light. Truly a gift for the man who has everything.