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Make Your Own Scotch Whisky

By Super

In Scotland, Scotch whisky is known as 'The Cratur', and indeed it is a creature of infinite variety. "A complicated simple", as the poet tells us, "pure in essence but diverse in effects; and against it none can prevail".

The prevailing winds for Scotch around the world blow strong - Scotch is 'our greatest ambassador', a major tourist attraction, and a leading employer and among the top five U.K. export earners.

A shame, then, that so little whisky is drunk in the land of its birth. One of the reasons for this is the absurdly high excise duty levied upon our national drink, amounting to almost 70% of the price of a standard bottle. There's not a lot that the Scottish Executive can do about this, though one thing they might be lobbying Westminster for is to have distillery shops made duty-free zones.

This would cure the endless complaint of tourists that "they can buy whisky cheaper at home than in the place it's made", which they can in almost every country in the world except Sweden. But what the Swedes do to get round punitive taxation is to make their own spirits. So I thought it might be useful to welcome you to this guide to making your own whisky.

Make Your Own Malt Whisky at Home!
First, what is 'Whisky'? Well, there are two kinds, malt whisky (made only from malted barley) and grain whisky (made from any other kinds of grains - the cheaper the better). When these two are mixed together they become blended whisky; when only malts (or grains) are mixed, the result is called 'vatted malt/grain'.

For the purposes of simplicity, I will guide you through malt whisky production only. Blended whisky is far too complicated.

Stage 1: Raw ingredients

Malt whisky is a simple and wholly natural product of the earth and man's ingenuity. The raw ingredients are:
1) Water (lots of it)
2) Barley (malted) and
3) Yeast
And that's all. It's not Scotch if it contains anything else - except spirit caramel, which one can add at the end to give it a nice colour.

Stage 2: Steeping

Fill your bath half full with dried barleycorns. Add cold water to the top - tap water's fine, so long as it has no chlorine taint. Leave it to soak for 48 hours, stirring and swirling once in a while. Drain and repeat the process twice. What you are trying to do is to kid the grains that spring has come and it's time to sprout.

Stage 3: Germinating

When the grains look as if they've woken up, spread them out on a cool floor in the basement. They will start to sprout. This generates heat, so every few hours you must turn over the grains to keep them cool. You must do this day and night - nature doesn't sleep - for about a week (depending on the weather) until you reckon the barley has turned into 'green' malt. You will know this has happened when the grains go chalky and you can write your name with them.

Stage 4: Kilning

Before the grains start sprouting lengthy roots and leaves, stuff them into the oven and dry them, stirring from time to time to make sure they dry evenly. If you want a smoky taste in your whisky - so fashionable nowadays - you will have to dry the grains over a peat fire, only possible if you have either a large fireplace or if you build a suitable fire in the garden.

Stage 5: Milling and Mashing

Place the grains, now called malt, in a coffee grinder and grind, so that you have 70% grist (the lumpy bits), 20% husk and 10% flour. It is important that you get these ratios right, otherwise the next stage won't work properly. Return all the ground malt to your bath, mixing it with hot water at precisely 63.5C. Drain off the liquor (which is now called worts) and repeat with slightly hotter water.

Stage 6: Brewing

Having cooled your worts a bit put them in nice clean tub and bung in some yeast. Stand back: after a few hours the mixture will bubble and froth like a witches cauldron. Beat back the foam with a birch switch, and hope it doesn't overflow. After a couple of days it will settle down, but don't be taken in: to make good whisky you have to leave it for at least 60 hours.

Stage 7: First Distillation

You will, of course, have sent an onion to your plumber and asked him to copy it in copper on a scale big enough to hold the contents of your bath, with plenty of room to spare and the hollow 'stalk' rising from its neck and coiled into a spiral. The spiral, called a 'worm', is placed within a running stream or, if you don't have one handy, a tub filled with cold running water. The onion itself is placed on the fire and filled with the contents of the bath - now called (appropriately) 'wash', but actually strong ale, around 8% alcohol. Light the fire and wait for the pot to boil. This is quite difficult, since you can't see inside the still. Try tapping the neck with a wooden hammer, and as soon as it gives a dull (rather than a bright) ring, quickly reduce the fire, or the wash will boil over and you'll have to start again. Save all the liquor that flows from the end of the worm - now called 'low wines' and at approximately 21% alcohol. Boil the still dry, then cool it, clean it out and refill it with the low wines.

Stage 8: Second Distillation

This is the difficult bit. The early runnings of the second distillation are at best unpleasant to taste and at worst poisonous. They should be discarded. You'll know when you're into the good stuff when it remains clear if you add water, so take small samples every five minutes or so and check. When it's looking good, start collecting the liquid [now called 'spirit', 'new make' or 'clearick']. After and hour or so (depending on the size of your still), start checking the spirit for cloudiness again, and when it goes hazy with water collect in a different bucket, since you'll need to re-distil this with your next batch - if you haven't yet been caught by the excise men.

Stage 9: Maturation

The new make spirit is not yet 'Scotch'. To be called such, it must be matured in an oak cask for at least three years in a warehouse in Scotland licensed by H.M. Customs & Excise...Oops!

So actually it is impossible to make 'Scotch whisky' without a license - although you can call it something else, if you like. But really, is it worth the bother? Although the process is dead simple, there are all kinds of things that can go wrong at every stage. This is why we have artists called 'distillers' - highly experienced custodians of The Secrets of how to make good whisky. And although their product is beyond price for the pleasure it brings, it would be much cheaper if it was more reasonably taxed!

I hope to share more on this subject with a select audience of interested scotch drinkers when I visit India in November.

Story first published: Friday, October 7, 2011, 13:40 [IST]