Category: Ireland

Sulfur Control in Sherry Casks Headed to Midleton Distillery

While in Jerez for the launch of the Redbreast Lustau Edition, I had the opportunity to speak with Midleton Distillery Head blender Billy Leighton. Since I had a couple extra minutes, I asked him about the effect of sulfur in barrels used for their whiskies.

As some background, the whisky writer Jim Murray, who seems to enjoy generating controversy to increase book sales, said that sulfured casks are ruining scotch whisky. I don’t know much about the topic, so I asked Leighton if it was an issue.

He said, “The use of sulfur to sterilize casks for shipping or storage is a common practice, but it has to be done carefully. In the year 2000 we stopped the cooperage from using sulfur candles when they’re shipping casks to us. There is always a little bit of a risk of infection or secondary fermentation when you do that. Also, we have only shipped barrels typically between Oct and Feb [the lower temperature months in order to avoid that fermentation/spoilage], though it’s expanding because of [increased sales] volume."

[Irish Distillers has a relationship with the cooperage Antonio Paez to build and prepare their sherry barrels, so they don't buy their casks on the open market. If they did they'd not be able to control/track this.]

He continued, "Historically you would have found a presence of sulfur from time to time. Now we have stopped that for 16 years. We don’t have the same problem certainly in our first fill casks. We could still see some sulfur raising its ugly head again in refill casks [casks purchased before 2000 that aged whisky and then were reused]. And one cask affected with it can ruin a vat. So even now every single sherry casks is personally screened by me."

That’s new info to me, and I thought I’d share.

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September 12, 2016
Why Sherry Cask Whiskies are Aged in Spanish Oak But Sherry is Aged in American Oak Casks

This is a simple point but one I didn’t know before. Often you’ll see that scotch and other whiskies are aged in Spanish oak barrels that previously held sherry. However, I’ve always been told the barrels in the sherry soleras are American oak. What gives?

Thanks to Billy Leighton, Head Blender at Midleton Distillery, I have an answer. He says that yes, the true barrels on the sherry soleras are American oak and as old as possible. They do not want wood influence in sherry so the barrels don’t lend any flavor.

Traditionally, sherry was shipped to the UK in barrels (rather than bottles), and for that they would use the much less expensive/lower quality (at least at the time; I can’t speak for that now) Spanish oak casks, rather than American oak ones.

After being emptied, those casks would have been the ones reused to age scotch and other whiskies.

The Redbreast Lustau Edition is aged in ex-bourbon American oak barrels and sherry conditioned Spanish oak casks.

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September 7, 2016
The Great Decline in Irish Whiskey

Irish Whiskey was once one of the most popular spirits in the world and declined from thousands of distilleries down to just two by the late 1900s. Sales are once again skyrocketing on the back of Jameson's success, but things were pretty grim for a while.

I knew many of the causes of the decline in Irish whiskey, but learned a few more in conversation with Kilbeggan brand ambassador John Cashman. Here are reasons that he laid out.

1. The Irish Temperence Movement in the late 1830s that flared up again later in the century.

2. The invention of the continuous/column Coffey Still, patented in 1830. Irish distillers were hugely reluctant to adopt the column still (despite Coffey being an Irishman) that they thought diluted the flavor of their whiskey. Before the invention of the column still, Irish whiskey was far lighter in flavor than scotch whiskey, and more popular because of it. However, the scots adopted the column still for making blended whisky and saw great leaps in sales because of it.

3. The Irish War of Independence, which ran from 1919 – 1921 and the retaliatory Anglo-Irish Trade War after. This pretty much killed the top market for Irish whiskey: Britain.

4. US Prohibition, which ran from 1920-1933. This killed the second largest market in America.

5. World War II, which ran from 1939-1945. Ireland was neutral in the war. American soldiers developed a taste for scotch, rather than Irish, whiskey. So that continued afterward.

In 1966, Irish Distillers was formed to stave off the continuing slump of the category by merging three big producers together. In 1972, Bushmills also joined the group so that there was only one company and two distilleries making all Irish whiskey.

When I was in Ireland recently I heard that there were 16 distilleries operating, being built, or in the planning stages. It's the dawn of a new era.

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February 5, 2014
A Visit to the Kilbeggan Distillery in Ireland
A while back I visited the Kilbeggan Distillery in the middle of Ireland. Kilbeggan is in partnership with the Cooley distillery, a much larger one (without a visitors' center) that was once independent but is now owned by Jim Beam. They make not only Kilbeggan Irish whiskey, but also Tyrconnell, Greenore, and Connemara.

The distillery dates back to 1757 and they claim it is the oldest licensed distillery in Ireland. You'll note that Bushmills claims they were founded in 1604 but Kilbeggan disputes that.
While today Kilbeggan is a working distillery, the stuff that is working is a tiny part of the overall distillery, and most of what you see on the visit is a somewhat-working display. That said, it's a really, really cool display.

Most of what one sees- the huge gears and equipment- dates back to the the 1860s to 1880s. It's all wonderfully steampunk.

The distillery is situated near a small stream where they pulled their water and powered the operations. The water powered the water wheel which powered the millstones that ground the grains that were used as the raw material for distillation. They also used the stream to cool liquids by running pipes through it.
Inside the distillery there is a 150 horsepower steam engine. This would have been used only a couple of times each year when the river was too low or two high to generate power. The engine still works and they turn it on a couple of times each year.
The old stills are nearly round in shape and though they're exposed to the elements now, they used to be indoors. They triple distilled the spirit here in the olden days, as is traditional for Irish whiskey. They also have original Coffey stills on display which were used to make column-distilled spirit.
According to my host John Cashman, Ireland stopped using peat when they could import coal by train, around the 1940s.

The strange bulbous building is an old warehouse that they now use primarily for dumping casks before transporting it to Cooley for bottling. In the warehouse they have a few special barrels including one that was laid down in honor of President Obama's election, and another one specifically for the band Mumford & Sons.
They are distilling at Kilbeggan, just in a small section with two tiny stills. They use a course grind of barley (because they use old wooden wash tubs that can't handle smaller grains) and ferment it for about 3 days until it reaches 6-8% ABV. They then distill it twice in tiny stills, first up to 20-22% then up to 68-70% ABV.

The still for the second distillation is actually the oldest working pot still in the world, according to Cashman. It comes from the old Tullamore distillery. (Part of the reason it has survived so long is that for a good while it was only used to distill water.)
During a tasting of the product range, Cashman made an interesting claim: "The smoothness of Irish whiskey is not due to triple distillation but it's due to our climate. It is the lack of extreme (temperature fluctuations) that allows Irish whiskey to age at a mild and mellow pace."

I got to try the range of whiskies made at Kilbeggan and/or Cooley:
- Greenore Single Grain – an Eight year old grain (column distilled) whiskey
- Kilbeggan – a blend of Cooley grain whiskey and malt whiskey distilled at Kilbeggan
- Kilbeggan 18 Year, which has been discontinued
- Kilbeggan Distillery Reserve Malt, which is aged 3-4 years ina quarter cask
- Tyrconnel, apparently the biggest selling Irish whiskey in the US before Prohibition. It is a single malt that is finished in casks: Madeira, port, or sherry. All of them are 46% non chill filtered
- Connemara, which is the peated Irish whiskey made at Cooley. It is 100% peated single-malt with no age statement. It's peated to just 14 ppm phenol but since the whiskey is so light the peat has a stronger effect. They use 4, 6, and 8 year old whiskies in the blend.
- Connemara Turf Mor, which is a heavily peated (54 ppm) single malt aged 3 years and sold at cask strength
- Connemara Bog Oak – a blend of 3 year Turf More and 18 year Connemara that are married in a barrel with "bog oak" cask ends
Kilbeggan is one of the coolest looking distilleries I've visited, somewhere in technology between the amazing wooden gristmill of George Washington's distillery at Mount Vernon and the rhum agricole distilleries of Martinique with their huge working gears. It's defnitely worth a visit if you're driving across Ireland.
February 3, 2014
Distillery Visit: Bushmills in Ireland

A while back I enjoyed a brief visit to the Bushmills Irish Whiskey distillery, located at the northern tip of Northern Ireland.

Bushmills is located super close to the Giants' Causeway, a natural phenomenon that brings tons of tourists through town every day. Pretty much all the tours also stop at Bushmills, whether that's for a full distillery tour or just a meal in the visitors' center restaurant. 92,000 people visited the distillery in 2012.

Bushmills doesn't have column stills; all the whiskey made here is triple distilled from 100% malted barley. (Thus the same as single-malt scotch except that it's distilled an additional time.)

The barley for Bushmills is grown in Cork, down in the south of Ireland. It is malted and ground into a grist. The water for fermentation comes from a tributary of the Bush River nearby.

Like single-malt scotch, the malted barley has added hot water to it in a mash tun, and then its drained. This is to keep the fermentable sugars in the water but get rid of the solid bits that gum up the works. It is transferred to a wash back, where it is fermented with brewer's yeast for about 50 hours. The resulting beer is around 8% ABV.

The beer is then distilled. Bushmills has 10 pot stills (2 wash stills and 4 each feints and spirit stills) in a surprisingly small, crowded room. According to my guide, the whiskey is distilled up to 25-30% ABV on the first distillation, then 70% and 84% after the second and third distillations.

Like scotch whisky, they redistill the heads and tails in the next batch so there is no waste. The "pot ale" that is the leftover stuff from the first distillation is made into a syrup and sold for animal feed. The spent barley grain is also sold for animal feed, as it is at most grain distilleries.

The water used to dilute the whiskey to final bottle strength is reverse osmosis-filtered municipal water. They put whiskey into the barrel at 63% ABV.

Four different types of barrels are used to age Bushmills: ones that formerly held bourbon, oloroso sherry (from the Paez bodega), port, or Madeira. They said they reuse their ex-bourbon barrels 3 times before they're no longer useful.

While Irish whiskey by law must be aged a minimum of 3 years, the youngest Bushmills is aged for six, and Black Bush is aged for eight. Both the Original Bushmills and Black Bush are blended Irish whiskeys; made with a blend of triple distilled malt whiskey produced on-site and column distilled whiskey purchased from Midleton (but aged on-site here at Bushmills).

Original Bushmills is 55% single-malt and 45% grain whiskey.

Black Bush is about 80% single-malt and 20% grain whiskey. It is aged in around 70% ex-sherry casks and the rest in ex-bourbon.

The rest of the line are single-malts. The 10-year-old is about 90% ex-bourbon aged, with the rest sherry.

The 16 year old Bushmills is aged in bourbon and sherry casks in equal volumes. Then the whiskey is blended and finished in ex-oirt barrels fro 6-9 months.

The 21-year-old is also made up of whiskey aged in bourbon and sherry casks for 19 years, then finished in Madeira casks for 2 years.

All Bushmills is bottled at 40% ABV and chill-filtered. The only exception to that was the 1608 that is no longer available.

Bushmills sells around 880,000 cases annually, with the US its biggest market. They have 80 acres of land on which the barrels age. As it's such a small distillery, they distill 24/7 throughout the year with the exception of 2 maintenance periods.

No pictures were allowed inside the distillery, sorry for the lack of razzle-dazzle.

January 10, 2014
The Wide Variety of Irish Whiskey Made at Midleton
Jameson, Redbreast, Green Spot, Midleton Very Rare, Powers John Lane, Paddy: These Irish whiskeys and more are all made at one distillery: Midleton in County Cork, Ireland.

On a recent trip the distillery for a big celebration (I wrote about that here), I learned more about the differences between various products, and gained some perspective on where Irish whiskey sits in with other products.

To hugely oversimplify what are the constants and what changes in different types of whiskey:
- Single-malt scotch whisky is made from 100% malted barley and distilled in pot stills. They typically make one distillate, and the single malts that come from a single distillery are differentiated by how long they're aged and in what type of barrels they're aged (ex-bourbon, sherry, etc.)
- Many bourbon distilleries focus on a single mash bill (blend of grains) that they distill in column stills into a single distillate. Since it's all aged in new American oak casks, the various bourbons that come out of a single distillery are differentiated by their length of aging and final proof of the spirit.
- For Japanese whisky, they use many different shapes of still as well as many different types of barrels and often buy grain at different peating levels. They have a lot of different whiskies aging that they blend to make both blended and single-malt products.
There are big exceptions to all of the above.

For Irish whiskey, there are three main distilleries. Midleton makes triple-distilled malted/unmalted pot still whiskey (called "pot still" on its own and "single pot still" when it comes from one distillery) as well as column distilled grain whiskey. Bushmills makes triple-pot-distilled malt whiskey ("single malt") that they sometimes blend with Midleton's column still whiskey. And Cooley makes double-pot-distilled malt whiskey ("single-malt") and column still grain whiskey. [See this blog post for a handy chart.]

But just looking within Midleton, they don't make just one triple-distilled pot still whiskey; they make four. I believe these are designated internally as light, two different medium ("mod pot"), and a heavy. These are made by different variations on the mash bills (ratio of malted to unmalted barley), how high they distill to, and where they cut heads and tails in the distillation.

They use these distillates in different ratios in the final products. That's why the Single Pot Still Irish Whiskeys made at Midleton can have such distinct personalities, despite all sharing certain characteristics such as apple and butter notes. They're made from any of four malt/unmalted pot still whiskies, aged for a different number of years in different types of barrels, and bottled at different proofs.

From one distillery comes many options.

Blends:
- Jameson
- Jameson 12 Year Old
- Jameson 18 Year Old
- Jameson Gold Reserve
- Jameson Signature Reserve
- Jameson Select Reserve
- Jameson Rarest Vintage Reserve
- Paddy
- Midleton Very Rare
Single Pot Still
- Redbreast 12 Year Old
- Redbreast 15 Year Old
- Redbreast 12 Year Old Cask Strength
- Green Spot
- Yellow Spot
- Powers John's Lane Release
- Midleton Barry Crockett Legacy
November 13, 2013
A Doubled Jameson – A Return Visit to the Midleton Distillery in Ireland
A couple of months ago I returned to the Midleton distillery in Cork, Ireland, for a party they were throwing to celebrate the newly-expanded facility.

I wrote a one-page story about it for November's issue of Tasting Panel magazine, which you can read here (digital magazine, go to page 149), but I have more to say than just that.

I last visited the Midleton distillery in early 2011 (as well a a stop into the former distillery and current visitor's experience in Dublin). A write-up on that visit is here on Alcademics.

The Midleton Distillery looks like it did a few years ago with the exception of gleaming new column stills and the new Garden Stillhouse. These are the new column stills:

(On all pictures on this post, click the thumbnails on top for a larger picture below)
The existing stillhouse (where the pot stills are based) holds four pot stills, which are used to make all the triple-distilled pot still products, as well as the pot still part of the Jameson blended whiskies.

The brand new Garden Stillhouse, enclosed in glass, holds three new pot stills so that they can nearly double capacity- and it has room for three more to be installed within a few years. (That's how fast Jameson is growing, folks.)
Each of the copper pot stills holds 80,000 liters. As you should be able to tell from the pictures, they're pretty huge. The stills are used for the same thing each time: there is a Wash still, a Feints still, and a Spirit still for the first, second, and third distillation.

I was curious as to how they're all the same size, since they're cutting heads and tails during each distillation. It turns out that they collect the result of each distillation in holding tanks before moving it to the next still, so they could add the results of 1.5 runs from the first still into the second distillation, for example.

In addition to the distillery expansion, they added an archives and a Whiskey Academy. We didn't get a chance to do an in-depth training but the Academy was really cool – there are a wall of mini-stills so students can actually distill whiskey there.
A second major reason for the celebration was that it was Master Distiller Barry Crockett's last official function. After 32 years with the company, he was retiring and handing the reigns to Brian Nation. Crockett was instrumental in moving the distillery operations from Dublin to Cork in the 1970s, as well as developing the Single Pot Still range that includes Redbreast, Green/Yellow Spot, Midleton Very Rare, and others.

To honor his career, they renamed the older stillhouse the Barry Crockett Stillhouse.

During the day of the celebration, they had guided whiskey tastings, food carts by local purveyors, inspirational talks by the likes of David Wondrich and Nick Strangeway. At night, they threw a hell of a party inside a barrel warehouse with food and music including The Chieftans.
So yeah, that was one heck of a party and a great return trip to the Midleton distillery. In a future post, I'll write a little more about the process of making Irish whiskey.

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November 11, 2013
When Pot Distilled Whiskey Is Not Pot Still Whiskey

What is pot still whiskey?

The obvious answer is "whiskey that's made in a pot still," but apparently that's not true if you're in Ireland.

I was on a trip recently with whiskey writer/expert/class clown/author Dominic Roskrow and was showing off my sexy Irish whiskey distillery diagram, when he called me out on it. He said that the Cooley distillery makes no pot still whiskey.

"But they have pot stills in which they make whiskey, so obviously they make pot still whiskey," I said. It went back and forth for a few days, but the argument comes down to this:

In Ireland, "pure pot still" whiskey has long meant whiskey distilled from a combination of malted and unmalted barley. Thus "pot still Irish whiskey" doesn't tell us the type of still used to make it; it tells us the barley blend used. They claim if you distill another type of whiskey in a pot still (such as all-malted barley) in Ireland it is not pot still Irish whiskey.

That's like a basketball player arguing that an soccer ball is not a ball because it's not a basketball.

But apparently there is no use arguing logic in Ireland… so let's look at the law.

In his efforts to prove me wrong, Roskrow turned to someone with even more expertise in Irish whiskey, Peter Mulryan. Mulryan filled us in on how they've changed the legal definition to fit their local definition of pot still Irish whiskey. Mulryan wrote in an email:

Until very recently there was no legal definition of what constituted a Pot Still Irish whiskey, this allowed John Teeling [of Cooley distillery] to say that his single malt was a pot still whiskey, as it was distilled in a pot still. This was of course nonsense, as the traditional industry definition of a pot still whiskey has nothing to do with the distillation process itself; it was and is, all about the mash. A pot still whiskey is made from a COMBINATION of both malted and unmalted barley. Simple.

The industry and the Irish Government have recently clarified this new definition and it is now certified by the EU, John Teeling has backed down and he too now endorses this new legal status. At the same time the word 'Pure' was dropped from packaging, as the word had no standing in law, it was replaced by the word 'Single', this now appears on all Irish Distillers bottlings and literature.

So from the start of 2012 a single pot still Irish whiskey is one made on the island of Ireland, from a mash of malted and unmalted barely, which has been matured for at least three years in oak. However that was always accepted as the norm, the law simply enforces best practice.

But here's the thing: in order to conform to international standards, they had to drop the word "pure" from "pure pot still Irish whiskey." So apparently you can't just completely make things up in Ireland after all!

It's just too bad their also-historically-accurate-but-logically-nonsensical definition of "pot still" made it through legislation.

May 29, 2012
Where Irish Whiskey Really Is Really Made

In my story last week in the San Francisco Chronicle, I didn't get the chance to be as nerdy as I wanted to with the specifics of the three (and a half) distilleries in Ireland and which whiskies they make. So here are more details from an earlier draft of the story.

Jameson, which accounts for seventy percent of Irish whiskey sales in the US, is made at the Midleton distillery in Cork, in the south of Ireland, from a blend of column-distilled grain whiskey and triple distilled “pure pot still” (now called "single-pot still") whiskey.

“Pure Single pot still” in this case refers to distilling a blend of malted and unmalted barely. This came into practice in Ireland as a way to avoid taxes- malted barley was taxed but unmalted was not. Distillers often describe spirit from unmalted barley as “oilier” and “more citrus-spicy” than the spirit from malted barley that has more apples-and-pears fruity notes.

The Midleton distillery also produces brands John Powers, Midleton, Paddy, and Redbreast, the latter of which is a pure single pot still whiskey rather than a blend. Pernod-Ricard, owner of Midleton, clearly sees a future in pure single pot still Irish whiskies, as they have just released a cask-strength Red Breast twelve-year-old, and plan to release pure pot still versions of Midleton and Powers later this year.

On the opposite end of the island in Northern Ireland is the Bushmills distillery, where the number-two selling brand in the US, Bushmills, is made. The company produces two blended whiskies, Bushmills Original and Black Bush, plus single-malt whiskies Bushmills 10, 16, and 21 year-olds.

The single-malt whiskey is pot-distilled from only malted barley (as is done in Scotland), as opposed to the malted/unmalted mixture found at Midleton. The column-distilled grain spirit used in Bushmills’ blends is actually purchased from Midleton.

The third best-selling Irish whiskey in the US is Tullamore Dew, which is a blend of column-distilled grain whiskey and pure single pot still whiskey from Midleton with single-malt whiskey from Bushmills. In addition to this blend, Tullamore Dew sells 10 and 12 year-old blended whiskies, plus a ten-year-old single-malt that is made at Ireland’s third distillery, Cooley.

Cooley, located north of Dublin, has boasted of being Ireland’s only independent distillery, but it was recently purchased by the Jim Beam company. Cooley operates both column and pot stills, plus the small nearby distillery Kilbeggan. Kilbeggan is also a whiskey brand that is largely produced at Cooley, though they also have a single-malt Kilbeggan Distillery Reserve produced entirely on-site.

At Cooley, pot still whiskey is distilled twice rather than the three times distillation of Bushmills and Jameson. Whiskies from Cooley include the peated (smoky) single-malt Connemara, Tyrconnell single-malt that is aged in a variety of casks, and Greenore, Ireland’s only single-grain whiskey, which is column-distilled from corn and aged in ex-bourbon casks.

Cooley has distilled both single-malt and pure single pot still whisky, though there are no pure single pot still products on the market from Cooley yet.

Cooley also produces Concannon Irish Whiskey, launched this January, in partnership with Livermore Valley’s Concannon Vineyard. It is a blend of column distilled grain whiskey, pot-distilled single-malt whiskey aged for four years in ex-bourbon barrels, and some of that same malt aged for an additional four months in Concannon’s Petit Syrah casks.

Michael Collins whiskey offers both blended and single-malt bottlings, also made at Cooley.

Here's a handy diagram I just scribbled. Click to enlarge.

Irish Whiskey Distillate Origins by Alcademics.com

Now, this doesn't take into account how specifically these spirits are distilled, where they are aged, in what, and how they might be blended and finished, so the final flavor profile of Irish whiskey isn't as simple as all this. But I do think it's interesting to see how much Irish whiskey is born in so few places.

March 15, 2012
Irish Whiskey History

I recently read the book Irish Whiskey: A 1000 Year Tradition, which is no longer in print but still available. It was originally published in 1980 and most recently reprinted in 1998. A lot has happened since then, but this book has some good historical information.

Here are some facts and assertions from the book.

As in Scotland, oppressive laws and taxation drove many people into illicit distilling. "In 1806, out of 11,400,000 gallons of spirits made in Ireland, 3,800,000 of these were produced by illicit manufacturers. In the years 1811 to 1813 almost 20,000 ilegal stills were destroyed by the revenue authorities and the military."

In the earlier 1800s, scotch whisky was heavy in flavor profile and the English didn't prefer it. Irish whiskey, which used malted and unmalted barley, was both lighter and more consistent.

When column distillation was invented, Irish whiskey makers were very reluctant to use it to water down their whiskey. They argued against it and refused to use it, while the Scots took to it to dilute their strongly flavored spirit. The lighter flavor profile was more popular both in England and America.

The Irish whiskey industry was further harmed by world war rationing, independence from England, and American Prohibition.

The last remaining Irish whiskey distillers banded together in the 1960s to form Irish Distillers. They were the sole producers of Irish whiskey, which was made both at the Old Bushmills distillery and down at Cooley.

I'll have some of the more modern history and production of Irish whiskey in a forthcoming story in the San Francisco Chronicle.

March 9, 2012