The process starts with malted barley. We favour older floor malted heritage varieties, which we believe provide a higher degree of complexity in our spirit.
Milling
The malted barley is then milled into a grist composed of husks, grits and flour. The composition of which is very important to enable us to get an efficient extraction.
Mashing
Next the milled grain is loaded into the Mash-tun along with hot water. During this stage the complex carbohydrates within the grain are converted into simple sugars. When this conversion is complete, we filter off the sugary ‘worts’ and chill it, ready for the next stage.
Draff
After mashing the spent grain is collected and provides local sheep with plenty of calories
Yeast
We use a variety of yeast stains, propagated in house along with spent brewers yeast from local breweries.
Fermentation
The chilled worts are filled into our open top eastern European oak washbacks along with the yeast to begin converting the delicious sugars into alcohol. Our fermentations run for a minimum of 168hrs. A long fermentation allows a lot of bacterial activity to contribute even more deliciousness after the yeast finished its work. The result is called Wash.
Wash distillation
The Wash is then distilled into low wines. We don’t use anti-foam, so favour a low fill and a long slow distillation.
Spirit Distillation
Next the low wines are combined with the foreshots and feints from the previous spirit run, again, we favour a low fill and a long slow distillation. We select the heart of the spirit by sense, cutting out the early foreshots and later feints.
Casking
Our precious new make spirit is filled into a variety of casks including first fill bourbon, de-char/re-char and sherry as well as a selection of refill casks left over from our independent bottlings.
