Scotch Addict

If you’re like me, your ability to buy scotch far outpaces your ability to drink it. Every time I go through Duty Free at Heathrow, I seem to leave with a handful of bottles and now I have at least a dozen I haven’t even opened yet! Fortunately, like wine, the rules for storing Scotch are simple and it is far less delicate than wine!

Avoid Light, Air, Heat

The enemies of Scotch, like its younger cousin beer, are light, air, and heat. The key to storing your Scotch so that it remains unchanged is to minimize its contact to all three: Read more…

Reference Storage

Do you know how to pronounce Lagavulin? Glenfiddich? Glenmorangie?

If you know those, you’re in pretty good shape. How about Bruichladdich? Caol Ila?

Now, visit this website and play all the names. They have an audio file for a lot of distilleries (many of the majors, most of the smaller ones too) in both .wav and .au, though some are only in .au file format.

How many did you get right? If you got the pronunciation right did you accent the right syllable? Glenmorangie is easy to say but I bet you accent the wrong syllable like I did.

Learn how to pronounce scotch whisky names from an expert.

Reference Bruichladdich, Caol Ila, Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie, Lagavulin

One of the most entertaining parts of the Macallan Distillery tour was the section on the art of coopering, or barrel-making. I always implicitly knew that the barrel played a significant role in the taste of whisky but until the tour I never had a name for the art, coopering, nor any basic understanding of what led to what.

One of the biggest factors, besides the maturity time, has to do with the type of wood the barrels are made of. The wood itself is almost always oak, though at times spiritmakers have experimented with other hardwoods. With oak, you have two options – French Oak and American Oak. In many years past, the differences between the two were more pronounced as French Oak, with its tighter grains, imparted its flavor more slowly. However, as American coopering started adopting some of the French coopering practices (splitting staves along the grain and air-dry seasoning for 24 months), the differences have diminished over time.

Having sampled Macallan’s new make whisky (what goes into each barrel), I can definitely say that the aging process in the barrels really gives scotch its depth of flavor.

Reference American Oak, Cooperage, French Oak

The above is a Whisky Tasting Wheel taken from Whisky Magazine, via Scotch Blog, and I posted it here because it’s one of several “whisky wheels” out there. Whisky wheels are great because the fun in sampling different whiskies is in finding the subtle aromas and flavors. It’s hard to know what to look for if you don’t have a map, especially when you’re a novice like me, so having a wheel available can help. I wouldn’t get too carried away though, as trying to smell fresh laundry or hot sand (both are in the Sandy part in the Sulphury wedge) might leave you more confused than anything else.

When I enjoyed the Laphroaig last week, I could distinctly smell the medicinal aroma, which makes sense in such a peaty scotch. But looking back, I didn’t get any tar, diesel oil, or seaweed (not that I was supposed to).

In the end, the whole experience of enjoying whisky is very personal and everyone’s palate is different, so while this should give you diesel, don’t sweat it if you can’t get the flavors you read in some tasting notes.

Reference Laphroaig, Whisky Wheel

Scotchblog.ca has a great feature this week for those seeking to find the perfect gift for a lover of Scotch. The guide starts with a fantastic bit of advice from Ian Millar, Global Brand Ambassador & Master Distiller at Glenfiddich”

“look for single malts between 12 and 18 years old that come in at $50 to $80.” This way there is some measure of quality as you aren’t ending up with something made for the sake of being inexpensive.

I think that’s solid advice, you can’t go wrong going into a store with that approach.

From there, they picked four bottles for the under $70 group, four for the $70 to $100 range, and two in the over $100. Each choice comes with an idea of what’s captured within the bottle, what it goes well with, and it’s important to match those up with whatever notes you’ve taken about the person its for.

If you know they hate peatiness or smoke, then going all out for a Lagavulin, even at $125 a bottle, is going to be less effective than if you bought a Macallan 12 at $90. It’ll also show you’ve been listening… which is always good right?

Reference

One of the best parts of the Macallan tour was the special barrel/art of coopering section they had above the warehouse. In it, they explained the difference between American oak and French oak, barrel construction, and other aspects of coopering.

Did you know that a barrel has a standard volume of 36 gallons? I didn’t, I figured barrel was a general term for a container of that general size and shape. Well, to make things more interesting, there are actually many varying sizes of “barrels,” some of which have very funny names:

• Firkin – 9 gallons
• Kilderkin – 18 gallons
• Barrel – 36 gallons
• Hogshead – 54 gallons
• Butt – 108 gallons
• Tun – 216 gallons

Firkin – It’s an old English term derived from a Middle Dutch word vierdekijn, which means fourth. It’s appropriate because a firkin is a fourth of a barrel in volume.

Kilderkin – Again an old English term derived from Dutch but it doesn’t mean half, it just means small cask, but it is a half barrel.

Hogshead – I wasn’t able to find the origin of the term but it was standardized as 54 gallons by an act of Parliament in 1423.

Butt – This size in wine is called a pipe, so when The Balvenie Portwood Finish 21 states it was finished in Port pipes, it means barrels of this size.

Tun – It sounds like ton because it shares the same origin though the latter refers only to mass/weight.

It’s always interesting to learn a little bit of trivia!

(Photo: schlaeger)

Reference Butt, Cooperage, Firkin, Hogshead, Kilderkin, Macallan, Tun, Volume

Chill filtered.

Sounds grand right? But what exactly does it mean?

Chill filtered means the whisky is chilled to near 0°C and then filtered through a very fine filter. Beer is cold filtered in the exact same way (not surprising, since they are cousins) and the purpose is to clarify the beer. It’s meant to make it look clearer and cleaner, removing haziness.

The reason why it’s use a lot in beer is because it shortens the production time. If you don’t chill filter, you have to wait until the particles settle. By chill filtering, you don’t have to wait.

It comes at a cost though, it removes a lot of the stuff that add flavor and body to both beer and whisky, which is why many people don’t like chill filtering.

Is there a difference? Chemically yes, but can your palate detect it? Perhaps… just an excuse to sample more whisky!

Reference Chill Filtering

As you may know, Scotch is typically aged and matured in oak casks for the number of years listed on the label. As you may also know, oak is a type fo wood, so what does it mean for a single malt to be wood finished or to have a wood finish? If it’s already in a oak-wood cask, aren’t all scotches finished in wood? (No, it’s not a trick question!)

A wood finish means that the scotch was then aged another two or more years in a cask that once held some other spirit in them. The popular choices are port, sherry, etc. This adds a different layer to the scotch because in the maturation process, the scotch gets pulled into the wood and then released as the temperature changes. Since the cask once held something else, which presumably went through this same process, some of the flavors and essence that make up the other spirit will be passed onto the scotch.

The Balvenie Doublewood 12 is the only wood finished Scotch I’ve ever tried and I really enjoyed it. The Balvenie is located in Speyside and the Doublewood 12 is aged in both a traditional oak cask and a “first fill European oak sherry cask.” When I tried it, the sherry was very easy to detect in the nose and I enjoyed the sweet flavors imparted by the sherry cask. Having never tried The Balvenie without the wood finish, I didn’t know if the sweetness and vanilla notes were more from the Balvenie or more from the sherry cask. Either way, I enjoyed it. I think aging it in a cask that held something else is a great way to add a layer of complexity to something. I would really like to try their PortWood 21 someday too, perhaps side by side against the one matured in sherry, it would provide an opportunity to compare the two (though 12 and 21 years is a big maturity difference).

Reference Balvenie Doublewood, Sherry, Wood Finish

The process of making scotch is actually quite easy, it’s just like making beer except you distill it a few times to get the clear whiskey, then put it into an Oak barrel to mature. The “making beer” part is actually pretty straightforward too, though the specifics can get a little complicated. In the next few articles I’ll discuss the individual steps but here’s the overall process.

First, you grow barley. When it’s ready, you pick it and put it in some hot water to let it germinate a bit. Once it has sprouted, you dry it in out a kiln. The germination produces the sugars that will be consumed by the yeast to produce alcohol later on. Once you roast it in a kiln, you grind it up with a grist mill and mix it with hot water, thus creating a mast ton. You drain and refill it several times to create the wort. Once the wort cools, you pitch in the yeast and let the little guys do their magic. Up until this point, the process could easily be mistaken for brewing beer (except you probably wouldn’t use peat to heat the kiln in drying the barley). After fermentation, the wort is now known as wash.

From here, once the wort has fermented to wash, the mixture is put into a pot still or a column still for distillation. The wash is distilled several times (2-3 usually) and part of the distilled whiskey is then put into an Oak barrel to be aged. After aging in a warehouse for many years, it’s then bottled (often after mixing with water to lower the alcohol by volume to a more reasonable 40-45%).

That, my friends, is the process of making scotch at a very high level.

Reference Making Scotch

Now that you’re familiar with the differences between blended and single malt scotches, let me introduce a “third” type – vatted malt (or pure malt). Despite my calling it a third type (see the quotes?), vatted malt is really a blended whiskey without the grain whiskey component. Vatted malts, like blends, mix a variety of single malts together in an attempt to get a totally new flavor. With blends, grain whiskey is used to thin out the flavors a little in order to achieve some balance, though many enthusiasts consider it to be cheapening the flavors.

The term is somewhat misleading. Malt refers to the the mixture that will be fermented and vatted just means put into a big pot or container. Vatted malt would lead you to believe that malt from a variety of sources is put into a container and fermented together, but that’s not the case. While much of the flavor is determined by the malt itself, there are flavors, mouthfeel, and other characteristics that develop in the cask while it matures in the warehouse. If you mix the malts and mature in the same warehouse, you lose a lot of that. In reality, the vat refers to the blending process after the individual whiskeys have matured and would otherwise be consumed.

The Scotch Whisky Association recently renamed this category from vatted malts to “Blended Malt Scotch Whisky.”

Johnnie Walker Green Label, Eleuthera by Compass Box (vatted from Caol Ila and Clynelish), and Famous Grouse 10 yr. are among the few well-known vatted malts.

(Photo: reutc)

Reference Caol Ila, Clynelish, Eleuthera, Famous Grouse, Johnnie Walker, Johnnie Walker Green Label, Vatted Malts