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Single Malt Whisky

A traditional product from modern production?!

Single Malt Whisky is been made in an old, almost unchanged procedure for centuries now. If the interested reader would like to read about the basics of the Single Malt Whisky production, I recommend the description of the production process. This story describes the modernizations of the production process of Single Malt Whisky that have taken place over the past centuries.

In the beginnings of the industrial production of Single Malt Whisky it was first all about guaranteeing the continuous quality of the whisky. Subsequently, the efficiency factor of the whisky production was being increased. As with all technical processes, the engineers put special attention on the balanced relationship of the efficiency in reach (raw material use, energy consumption) and the development costs for the improvements. The costs of the whisky production can roughly be calculated as follows:

C_W ~ C_B / E_M + C_E / E_E + C_L + C_S + C_C

C_W - Total Costs of Whisky Production
C_B - Barley Purchase Price by Distillery
E_M - Mash Efficiency Factor
C_E - Energy Costs by Distillery
E_E - Efficiency of the Energy Conversion
C_L - Labour Costs
C_S - Costs of Whisky Storage
C_C - Capital Costs for Investments (machines, buildings, ... )

In the past above all barley and coal were the goal of the optimization efforts, since these two materials were connected with the highest costs. In the course of these efforts the today usually applied complex mash procedure was developed, which extracts the sugar from the existing barley optimally. Also the process of the transformation of starch to sugar could be optimized in large maltings.

Also the energy consumption was clearly reduced in the past centuries. Closed mash tuns were the beginning. Improved heating systems of the stills followed using superheated steam instead of direct coal firing. Also the reuse of energy is today a firm component of the whisky production. Heat exchangers instead of simple coolers extract the warmth of a liquid, in order to use it again in a different place in the production process. Intensified isolation of the hot pipes and containers preserve the expensive energy.

Today the optimal barley and energy use is solved to a large extent and no longer represents a competition advantage to other distilleries. After all substantial optimization potentials were used, new ways like working in three-shifts had to be found to amortize the investments in the machines and buildings as fast as possible. Today all large distilleries work 24 hours on 365 days the year. Only for 3 to 6 weeks in the year the distillery is closed for a maintenance and repair break.

Today predominantly the employment of labor and capital can still be optimized. In June 1998 Diageo (formerly UDV) announced the cutback of hundreds of workplaces in the administration. Reason for this was the fusion of Guinness and Grand Met, which led to a multitude of redundant places in the administration and sale. In addition, in the production of the different distilleries substantial personnel had to be reduced.

Many of the distilleries were able to reduce the nightshift by large automation to only one person. This single person is responsible for the mashing as well as for the two distillation processes. Mashing and distilling limit the capacity of the distillery. Mash tuns and pot stills are the bottleneck machines in the production process. So what’s more efficient than to use these machines in the three-shift mode and to distribute the fix costs of the capital assets (machines, buildings) on as many litres as possible of whisky?

Ferment, mash, and distill processes are batch processes i.e. a certain amount of raw material is always processed at one time. Unfortunately wash backs, mash tuns and pot still get dirty relatively fast, so that they have to be cleaned after each batch. This cleaning is time/labour consuming, since burned materials that stuck on the wall have to be removed from the container walls with hot water vapor.

This cleaning has long been accomplished by chemical cleaning solutions. For the cleaning workers of the distillery had get or creep into the containers to be able to also clean hardly reachable places.

This central cleaning still has another advantage apart from the saving of Labour and the protection of the service personnel. After the use of the cleaning solution the tanks are rinsed for approximately 20 minutes with clear water, so that all remnants of the cleaning solution are removed for sure. The central supply and waste containers for the cleaning solution ensures that the cleaning solution can be recycled by 100%. From this proceeding you can see again that economically meaningful use of resources also leads to an environmental and politically good solution.

Up to the year 2000 probably more than 2/3 of all Single Malt distilleries will also be equipped with automatic cleaning systems.

Fermenting vessels (wash backs) were always made of Oregon Pine. This wood was able to resist the attack of the yeast mushrooms best. Unfortunately these fermenting tanks had to be protected against the attack of the mushrooms and bacteria with extreme cleaning agents. The introduction of stainless steel tanks, as they were introduced in the beer and Grain Whisky production a long time ago, also brought a relief to the environment from a majority of the cleaning solutions. The argument whisky from wooden wash backs tastes better than whisky made in stainless steel fermenters is not appropriate by the view of the author, since the small period of 40 to 70 hours spent in the wash backs doesn’t permit the transfer of significant amounts of taste relevant substances. Besides, the relationship of wash back surface to volume is 25 times smaller than the relationship of the cask surface to the cask volume during the storage of the whisky. Multiply this relationship by the shorter time (50 h: 12 years = 100'000 h), an influence of the wooden wash backs can be calculated which is 50'000 times smaller than that of the used cask.

If we are honest to ourselves, the ancient wooden wash backs please us only optically better than their modern descendants.

But in this case is the old really better, just because our ancestors couldn’t do it better? - I don’t believe so.

However everyone has to answer this question for himself - or not. Who knows really which whisky is manufactured in which way?

Visit the distillery of your choice in my collection of photos and discover which technology is used to produce your whisky.