Water. The water used in most distilleries is soft. It is common wisdom that the best water sources are those that rise from granite over peat. The flavour the source water picks up from its journey is concentrated by the distillation process. Peat. The amount and character of peat used in the kilning process has...
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Lowlands. Whisky from the Lowlands region tend to be lighter, softer, and less peated. Highlands. The Highlands are where the bulk of single malt whisky is produced. As it encompasses a very large area, the whisky produced in this area is stylistically very broad. Generally Highland whiskies are known for their depth and complexity. Islay....
With idiosyncratic character and a lingering finish, Single Malt Whisky is made to be sipped. Although smothering your single malt with ice or soda water is not recommended, don’t be afraid to add a little cool water to the whisky. Drink it at a strength that allows you to appreciate subtleties in the flavour. Spring...
Beer is a fermented beverage principally made from four ingredients; water, malted barley, hops, and yeast. Each one of these ingredients will impart its own flavour characteristics to the finished product, one which is almost as old as civilization itself. One Egyptian recipe called for bread to be left out in the rain and then...
Cask ale is unfiltered and unpasteurized. Traditionally cask ale is also cask-conditioned, undergoing a secondary fermentation in the cask. This contrasts with “keg beer” which is generally filtered and carbonated. Cask-conditioned beers are also referred to as “real ales”. It is common in Canada to find cask dispensed brews that are racked off from a...
You may have heard of the “Bavarian Purity Law,” also known as “Reinheitsgebot.” This German law, dated 1516 and still enforced today, stipulates that only barley malt, hops, and water may be used in the making of beer. It is one of the earliest, and longest running, examples of consumer protection legislation. Inventive brewers, like...
It took until until the 17th century for bottled beer to become commonplace. Up until that time most beer was consumed by pouring it directly out of a cask. Along with advances in science in the later 19th century such as pasteurization and mechanical refrigeration the inevitable march towards tightly controlled, factory produced, mass made...
There are two ways of dispensing a cask beer: Gravity or pouring the beer directly out of the cask and pulling the beer out of the cask using a piston called a beer engine or hand pump (patented, 1785). The Old English word “draught” meant, “to pull,” like the draught horses that used to deliver...
What is the big deal about a “microbrew,” isn’t beer all pretty much the same? Microbreweries (the little guys, however you want to define them) almost universally use craft brewing techniques. This is the traditional method of making beer in single batches. Each recipe is produced to maximize the desirable characteristics of one beer. On...
Yeast, although present in all fermented beverages, was not discovered until the 18th century. It is a member of the fungus family that, because of its cell-spliting capabilities, is self-reproducing. Yeast has a voracious appetite for sweet liquids and produces abundant quantities of alcohol (ethanol) and carbon dioxide (bubbles) as a waste product. There are...