Harvester Bar Bible - Update 04/2023

What is whisky? Whisky or whiskey, is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye and wheat. How is it made? The principles of producing whisky have changed little over 200 years. Just 3 ingredients are needed: water, grains and yeast and there are 5 traditional stages to the process. 1. Malting - To extract starch from the grains the barley is soaked in warm water for 2-3 days to let them germinate and then spread across the floor of a malting house to let them dry in hot air. 2. Mashing - To extract the soluble sugars, the malt is added to warm water. The combination of malt and water is called the ‘mash’ and is put into a mash tun and stirred for several hours. The resulting liquid is called ‘wort’. Through this, sugars in the malt dissolve and are drawn from the bottom of the mash tun. 3. Fermentation - The ‘wort’ is cooled and put into large tanks. Here the yeast is added and the fermentation begins. The yeast turns the sugars that are present into alcohol. The fermentation normally takes around 48 hours to run its natural course. 4. Distillation - The distillation is the process used to separate alcohol from water and other substances contained in the wash. The stills for whisky are usually made out of copper and variations in shape and size will give a different flavour/character to the final spirit. 5. Ageing - whisky is then put into wooden casks where the flavours of the spirit combine with natural compounds in the wood cask and this gives the whisky its own characteristic flavour and aroma. 163