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Distillery Focus: Ardmore
On Wednesday I visited my favourite mash tun. It’s a mammoth vessel from the 1960’s. Completely analogue and manually operated, it is a glorious piece of machinery which is 100.8% efficient. It gets everything out of the barley and then some. It’s not just the mash tun at Ardmore that has brought me here though.
I first visited Ardmore two years ago with Patsy, and was blown away by the operation, the welcome and of course the Whisky. I couldn’t wait to go back, and this week I was given that chance.
This time, I was to join Jane Conner from Maker’s Mark for a tour. After battling road closures and snow (my satnav sent me towards Glen Shee, which I knew to avoid, then to Fettercairn as a diversion which was also closed and finally over the Suie Road which was gorgeously bleak, desolate and snow covered) we arrived to a warm welcome from Distillery manager Alister, his assistant manager George and head engineer Gordon. All three were so excited to show us the place.After a quick look at the make up of Ardmore and Teachers, the blend of which Ardmore is the key malt, we headed out to the old office, which now contains some of the best artefacts from their long history. (I was also promised a look at the full archives in Glasgow, a trip I’m eager to arrange) Here we were immersed in the traditional ways of Distilling and advertising. Endearing pictures of children using Teacher’s bottles as cricket stumps, old bottles including the famous first stop cork and jigger cap as well as rummagers and Dram cups. Why Beam don’t set up a visitor centre here, I’ll never know! Whisky Adventurers would flock to explore this stuff and we have not even entered the distillery yet!
Before the trip round the plant, we stopped in at Gadie’s in Ryehill for lunch. A great rural restaurant with an amazing Venison burger and a lovely tribute to Ardmore in it’s recipes, shop and book store. While we listened to George, Alister and Gordon’s anecdotes of the industry, I couldn’t help but think about how these guys really work with the local community: A local game butcher is using Ardmore casks to smoke salmon, a local artist is making cask art from Ardmore barrels and a Scottish brewery is using Ardmore casks to condition ales. I haven’t seen this sort of community spirit since my last trip to Bruichladdich on Islay.After lunch, we slipped and slided back through the sleet to enter the malt barns and become immersed in the curious world of Ardmore distillery.As we enter the distillery and all the way through we are faced with the engineering pride and respect for tradition that every staff member embraces in Kennethmont. The old boiler face, the original steam engine and the mash tun clock all sit pride of place reminding the guys of the craftsmanship and industry that has gone before and that they are all still an integral part of.
Alister reports that his mashmen are so skilled that they can get the same amount of sugar from the barley as the scientists in the lab. He is proud that Ardmore have stuck to their tradition of peating the barley to 14ppm delivering a lovely robust smoke which is the heart of the Teachers blend. He also explains how his 53hour fermentation keeps the savoury flavours in the wash and how using bourbon casks leave his single malt with a great balancing sweetness in the final product. These guys have mastered their craft and are constantly aware of the minor changes and shifts in a distillery that can tweak their final product. In fact, this awareness was tested to the limit in 2000 when they decided to move from direct coal fire stills to the more common steam fired stills they have today. The change meant that they had to rejig their recipe to combat any changes from the switch over. This had some interesting consequences.
First of all they needed to create more copper contact as direct firing stills with coal would lead to a greater and more vigorous interaction with the copper. To recreate this, they run their condensers hot and use secondary condensers to cool their spirits. This causes the copper in the condensers to thin very quickly (they get this back though as they were the first in our industry to employ a copper recovery system after distillation).The switch over also gave them some time to experiment with their spirit. One thing a lot of people don’t know is that Ardmore also makes a spirit called Ardlair. This is an unpeated spirit which is used for blending. This was the result of experimenting with unpoeated malt during the switchover. It’s comforting to hear that this kind of experimentation still goes on in the distillery and not just the warehouse where most others are focussing their attention these days.Speaking of warehouses, Ardmore have dunnage warehouses on site full of some great experiments. Puncheons, pipes, barrels, hogsheads and quarter casks sit maturing from as far back as 1978, each expressing Ardmore or Ardlair in it’s own distinctive way.
Why this brand is not pushed more as a single malt is a mystery, but the loveliness of it’s Whisky is up in Kennethmont for all to see.
If you haven’t been, go!
Cheers,
Craig -
Hallowe’en Drams: The Unusual Whiskies Come Out To Play…
As it is all Hallow’s Eve, I thought it appropriate to let you all know the drams in disguise I’ll be drinking this evening…
For any Whisky Adventurer, there is nothing more thrilling than picking up a whisky from a well known distillery and being completely shocked and taken aback by the flavours oozing from the bottom of your glass. As consistency has been at the heart of our Scotch Whisky Industry for the past 150 years or so, these surprises are becoming less and less frequent. So let me give you a rundown of the drams with a trick or two up their sleeves:Ballechin
Ballechin is a heavily peated whisky from Edradour. Peated to 50ppm, this adds an incredibly full bodied smoky finish to one of Perthshire’s hidden gems. This is a whisky that punctuates any trip I make to Pitlochry. A great way to end a weekend, or indeed announce your arrival!Ardmore
Probably the first whisky to ever take me by surprise. A Smoky whisky from the mainland was an unknown phenomenon to me back in 2008, but a whisky tasting 3 years ago to a group of bartenders took me on just as much a journey of discovery as the audience themselves. A lovely savoury, bacony note balanced with a sweetness from the fact that Ardmore is finished in quarter casks. So impressed was I , that I blagged my way onto a distillery tour at Ardmore where I was blown away by the attention to detail and historical references. It’s still one of my favourite distilleries.
Serendipity
A Doctor Jeckyll and Mr Hyde of a dram. Serendipity was the result of a mistake at the Glenmorangie Company’s bottling hall. Basically a cask of Ardbeg and Glen Moray were unwittingly married together. The result: A gorgeously balanced dram with a lovely peaty finish to ease you into those dark alleys of whisky dreams.
Bunnahabhain Darach Ur
This is a Bunnahabhain from New Oak casks. Take the grassy, malty, seasidy deliciousness we expect from Bunnahabhain and inject a big sweet spicy oaky flavour to warp your mind.
Bruichladdich Black Arts
Simply the most complex Bruichladdich I have tasted recently. A secret marriage of casks including bourbon, sherry and Chateau Ycem, this is simply Jim McEwen doing all the things that a Whisky Maker should never be allowed to. This is a whisky that seems to seduce everyone, always leading to a second glass. This tastes like After Eights in a glass, and just like After Eights, the contents usually empties very quickly.
PC9
This is a Whisky I had the pleasure to disgorge before bottling. 10 carefully selected wine barriques were combined to give a hugely smoky whisky the sweet touch of tropical fruit and red wine. Balanced to perfection, with only 6000 bottles worldwide, this is a rare stunner.
SMWS
The Scotch Malt Whisky Society do Whisky differently. There are a huge plethora of surprises on their back bar. If you are looking for one place to be surprised over and over again, find a venue and get comfortable as the bar staff delight and surprise your tastebuds throughout the evening. The 4s and 24s particularly through up single casks the public never usually see. These well known distilleries have Sherry Cask policies in place, so the Bourbon barrels the Society bottle give a completely new face to these spirits.
Let me know what you’re enjoying this Hallowe’en and drop me a line if you manage to find any of these unusual whiskies and how they haunt your evening!
Cheers,
Craig
In my glass: -
Craftsmen Series: 3. The Mashmen, You’ll Never Look at Porridge the Same Again!
One of my biggest misconceptions at a distillery, was the easy life of the Mashman. I used to take tours around Glenkinchie, and most of the time the Mashman was nowhere to be seen, as if he’d come into work, pressed a few buttons, and buggered off to watch the telly. However, every new distillery tour I do, and every Mashman I meet adds another string to their bow of skills. They just make the job look easy, but in fact have a lot of things to think about.Nowadays, at a lot of distilleries, the title Mashman no longer exists, as every member of the team can competently and expertly complete every phase of production. The skills needed change from site to site, its not just making porridge!
MashingMashing is the part of the process where we change starches in the barley into soluble sugars. The mashing machine is a screw-like machine which is used to mix the water and grist from the mill as it is added to the mash tun, which is the vessel in which this crude porridge is stirred and mixed. The mash tun has a false bottom for drainage.
Water is introduced to the grist at around 64C (This changes depending on mash tun type, barley strain and from distillery to distillery. The Mashman needs to know what he is processing to gauge the temperature of water to add.) The water will enable enzymes in the grist, as well as converting starches into sugars and dissolving them into sweet liquid known as wort. This wort is taken forward for the addition of yeast and the fermentation into alcohol. Water will be added at least twice more, each time at a higher temperature allowing maximum sugar to be dissolved, and ensuring we get as much alcohol from our barley as possible. The Mashman’s job doesn’t begin in the Mash House however, he needs to prepare his malted barley in the mill.
Milling
This is definitely the most overlooked skill by most visitors touring a distillery.The mills in Scotland tend to contain two sets of heavy rollers, the first set must be adjusted so that it just cracks the husk of the barley grains, and the second grinds it into grist. The grist MUST be ground to the correct consistency.The barley is introduced to the top of the mill, here any large stones and bits of dirt are removed with a coarse filter. They are then weighed and dropped into the mill in 40kg coups. Now they are introduced to the two sets of rollers.Too fine a grist will lead to the false bottom in the mash tun clogging up and poor draining of wort, too coarse a grist and the water will drain out as soon as it is added. Think about baristas deciding on coffee grinds. It’s the same principle, they are needed to create a great cup of espresso, just as the Mashman is essential to a great glass of Whisky.Milling is a skill all on it’s own, and to get it right, you need one of these:
The box has 3 different meshes, each one finer than the last. This is filled with a fixed weight of grist, shaken a particular number of times, then each section is weighed. Generally a Mashman is looking for 10% flour at the bottom, 20% grits or middles and 70% husks in the top, but again this will change depending on the distillery and the barley. At Bruichladdich, Graham, their South African Mashman was explaining how we were working with Islay Barley. This barley had not been dressed at the maltings, basically it was arriving with lots of dust, and the rootlets from germination were still part of the mixture. (This was due to the unstandardised size of grains from the Islay harvest, dressing would have led to the loss of many of the grains in the batch, and a huge loss of whisky.)All of this meant that Graham needed to mill much more coarsely than usual to make sure his mash tun didn’t clog up. The mash was visibly different to any other I had ever seen, but this was essential for the Bruichladdich he was mashing for.Back in the Mash House, things get even more complicated. Here is the same process from a number of different distilleries with different setups.The Glenlivet
The mega updated and technologically advanced one. To my surprise, working at Glenlivet Distillery was like playing a video game. Everything could be run from one central console. It was as if every valve and door could be open and closed at the touch of a button. Their mash tun is the largest looking one in the industry. It was installed with a very wide design, but also a very shallow design. This allows Glenlivet to drain their new mash tun extremely efficiently. This is a distillery geared up to make a huge amount of Single Malt Whisky. However, our Mashman still needs to adjust for his barley types, and add the correct temperatures of water, it just so happens that the monitor tells him exactly how hot the added water is. He still needs the skills of the other Mashmen, as well as a great engineering intuition, it’s not like he can just turn his Mash Tun off and back on at the wall when something on the screen freezes…Ardbeg
The mashing console here was like many others in the industry, It tracked your water temperatures and volumes, but any decision to add something to the mash tun was made by a human, and had to be executed by hand. When I was shadowing at Ardbeg, Alastair had to set the mash tun with hot water, essentially warming the pot to ensure little heat loss as the water at a precise temperature was added. He then had to close that water valve and open the water valve for the tank at 63.5C which he introduced through his mashing machine with the grist. His mash tun was a Lauter tun. This is a stainless steel vessel with mechanical arms inside which mix and agitate the mash saving alot of hard labour. If anything were to go wrong at Ardbeg, Alastair can’t blame a computer.Bruichladdich
Bruichladdich are still using a Victorian mash tun. Iron with a mechanical arm. This was state of the art in the 19th Century, and it still works perfectly today. This beautiful open top mash tun is not the only one in the industry, Royal Lochnagar still boast one, as does Edradour and a few other original tuns have been kept, however many have been covered over with a copper top like at Bunnahabhain. Because of the open top, Bruichladdich need to add 4 waters. The water being added is also closer to 65C as heat is lost as the mixture is added to the tun. The beauty of this set up is the raw mechanical engineering. Bruichladdich measures volumes in inches, as in inches left in their tanks, and these are visually represented by balances and floats on the wall and in the tanks. Simple engineering that will never break. The other point of note here, is that the mash tun is upstairs. This allows it to be drained by gravity. The Victorians thought of everything.GlenturretI had to go to Glenturret 4 times before I could take a tour. I managed to get round last month, and I was astounded by what I saw. Glenturret claims to be the oldest distillery in Scotland, a claim that can’t really be conclusively argued, but what I can argue, is that they have the most wonderful mashing process I have seen to date. I turned up in the Mash House to what can only be described as the smallest mash tun in the industry. It was like a jacuzzi! They mash batches of 700kg (Glenkinchie does 9.4 tonnes) and each mashing is irritated and stirred by hand with paddles. Magical!After mashing, the Mashman then has the hard task of draining the wort efficiently. He has an Underback or Balancing tank to achieve this. Drain too quickly and you can clog your false bottom, as well as draining through solids. This can have an effect on your fermentation. The drainage has to be conducted perfectly to ensure your worts are worthy.After drainage of the wort, a final water is added to remove any final sugars in the mash, this is generally recycled as the first water for the next batch.Now the mash tun needs emptied. Luckily these days, most mash tuns are emptied through holes in the bottom of the vessel, a task which can be done mechanically. Gone are the days when the Mashmen got in and shovelled the Draff out. This solid Draff is normally used for cattle feed by local farmers.That’s not to say there is no manual labour these days. While working at Bruichladdich, I was given the job of adding yeast to the worts to allow fermentation to begin. This involved carrying 25kg bags into the Tun Room and manually breaking them up and pouring them into the wort.What I learned from the whole experience shadowing at Bruichladdich and Ardbeg, and from the various conversations I’ve had at the 40 or so distilleries I have visited, is the fact that a Mashman has to take great pride in his work. His part of the process can make or break each batch of whisky. Without him, no alcohol would be present, and no milling would get done. The Mashman needs to know exactly how each strain of barley will react in each environment. He must mash and agitate according to his ingredients and his batch. If he messes up water temperatures he can lose thousands of pounds of whisky later on as his yields dwindle away. He must ensure safe passage through the distillery for each grain of barley, taking huge interest in the milling, the mashing and being so proud of his wort, he also makes sure that it is him adding the yeast to this precious mixture of water and sugar.So the next time you’re in the kitchen, making a bowl of porridge, pour a wee dram over the top and remember the Mashman who’s porridge is more important than most people will ever know…Cheers,Craigp.s. Everyone should have a favourite mash tun, my favourite mash tun is at Ardmore
In my glass: Glenkinchie 12 year old, beside my porridge not on my porridge!
Here you will find all interesting things I come across in the world of Scotch Whisky as I travel and spread the wit and wisdom over a dram or two...
