FEATURE: GRAIN • 13


Box in 2000 with a grain whisky aptly named ‘Hedonism’. The industry would do well to read


Bell’s book and heed its prediction that craft distilling will do to whisk(e)y what microbrewing has done for beer. Most American craft distillers use a German continuous still that produces a spirit of around 65% abv, though some do it “the romantic way with a pot still”, says Owens, who feels that “the jury is still out whether it is just as good to double distil or make one single pass.” It is then either bottled as white whiskey or given a brief maturation. “You can have some delicious whiskies at six months to a year, while you can pick up decent colour in less than a month.” The strength of the blended whisky


of the American distilling institute, says alternative grains “weren’t even on the radar until a couple of years ago when craft distillers started producing white whiskeys, rye whiskeys and wheat whiskeys, and now that’s the hottest category out there in craft distilling.” Despite the minute volumes involved, the American whiskey giants have started to take notice. This October, Jack Daniel’s released an ‘Unaged Rye’. “The signifi cance of this cannot be understated,” gushed a press release. “This is the fi rst new mash-bill from Jack Daniel’s in over 100 years.” And yet ‘old Jack’ may be behind the curve, if you listen to Owens describe Darek Bell of the Corsair distillery in Nashville, Tennessee. “He’s distilled every grain possible from blue corn to black rice and popcorn, and then he jumped over to distil all the beers he could get his hands on.” Bell’s 2011 book ‘Alt Whiskey’ is packed


with recipes that make Scotch whisky seem just a little bit tame. There is everything from Amarillo aromatherapy bourbon, to Carpetbagger corn cob moonshine to Cannabis whiskey. Who knows whether they will ever be legally distilled in Scotland, but one can’t see the Scotch Whisky Association embracing them any time soon. EU regulation 110/2008 says Scotch grain whisky has to be made from malted barley, but the mash may include other cereals. None are specifi ed, but the end result must have a traditional Scotch whisky character. “You could certainly use other grains


like rye or oats, and you could run it through a pot still,” says John Glaser, who launched Compass


MUST TRY


The Society has a range of great aged grain whiskies, including a favourite of Jim Murray, G5.3 Extraordinary Taste Intensity (see page 5)


market has safeguarded the future of Scotland’s grain distilleries, but it means few of us will get to taste the spirit they produce in its natural state. This sad irony is set to continue, for it seems there is no real appetite among the big distillers to push single grain whiskies. Cameron Brig is one of the few still produced, but it can be hard to fi nd outwith working men’s clubs in Fife. Occasionally a rogue


cask slips through the net, and a grain whisky destined to disappear into a deluxe blend is rescued by an


independent bottler. The


Scotch Malt Whisky Society has some spectacular old single cask expressions marked with the


letter ‘G’. Among them is a nineteen-year old whisky from Scotland’s “most northerly grain distillery” called the ‘All day American breakfast’ Just one sip and you might forsake single malts forever.


CAMERONBRIDGE GRAIN DISTILLERY


Some couthy wee distillery like Edradour, which produces 90,000 litres of pure alcohol a year, tells you nothing about the scale of whisky production in Scotland. For that you need to visit the likes of Cameronbridge at Windygates in Fife – the country’s biggest grain distillery. At present some 4,500 tonnes of wheat and about 500 tonnes of malted barley go in at one end, and 90 million litres per


annum fl ood out the other. For the whisky industry this is the belly of the beast, and when Cameronbridge is humming away at near capacity, as it is now, all is well in the world of Scotch. Two years after it was opened in 1824 by John Haig, Cameronbridge became home to Scotland’s fi rst continuous still. It was designed by his cousin Robert Stein and turned the wash into a fi ne mist, which was sprayed through


a series of hair-cloth diaphragms. These were replaced by copper plates in Aerneas Coffey’s much improved version, which


Haig installed in 1830. “The whisky made here is said to have no rival in the world,” wrote the Victorian whisky writer, Alfred Barnard.


THE SCOTCH MALT WHISKY SOCIETY


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