Imagine you just noticed a moment ago that you won the lottery…ahh, let’s go crazy…the Powerball with whatever the bulk of millions they are giving you! Ok, I have to say a number for you to imagine…how does $56,000,000 sound for you? I think the first thing that crosses your mind is to celebrate with a truckload of drinks and good food, music and the people you care for the most. How about a good scotch whiskey?
I am more of a beer kind of guy, but when it comes to hard liquor, only one thing comes into my mind…a great glass of whiskey. I'd rather pick a sour mix with it, but, hey, it’s your drink…have it whatever the way you want!! Well, the point here is that whiskey is indeed a very interesting piece of work. It’s distillation techniques are just as old as wonderful! I'm gonna take you into some historical and technical facts and then we will have fun all the way, with a virtual tour…(of course, you’ll have to wait till the end!).
Whiskey is one type of spirit, and a spirit is any alcoholic beverage in which the alcohol content has been increased by distillation. There are other types of spirits, like gin, rum, brandy and vodka to name a few. Let’s get our attention to whiskey now. Whiskey is produced from fermented grain and aged in wood. The process of distillation consists of heating an alcoholic beverage in order to boil off, collect, and concentrate the alcohol. History says that it was first used in China around 800 B.C. to produce rice spirits. The practice of distillation then spread to western Europe with the Arabs in the eighth century, mostly in Spain and France. Anyway, the first records of scotch whiskey manufacturing date to 1494. The word whiskey meant “water of life”.
Whiskey is made from water, yeast, and grain. Water is considered to be the most important element in having a great whiskey made. The steps of manufacturing are: preparing thegrain (cleaned, cooked, grounded), mashing(mixing cooked grain with malted barley and warm water, which produces a sugar-rich liquid called smash or wort ), fermenting(put into a fermentation vessel with yeast added, in which the sugars are converted into alcohol), distilling(alcohol is evaporated and condensed, making it more concentrated. Some premium whiskies may be filtered through charcoal before and after it is aged to produce an even smoother product. The charcoal is made by burning wood from sugar maples.), aging(whiskey is aged in wooden barrels, usually made from charred white oak, and aged for 3 to 4 years and for 10 to 15 years in many cases), blending(different batches of whiskey are mixed together to produce a better flavor. Often, caramel is added to standardize the color, neutral grain spirit is added to lighten the flavor, and a small amount of sherry or port wine is added to help the flavors blend.), bottling(glass is always used to store mature whiskey because it does not react with it to change the flavor). Modern day distilleries use automated machinery producing as many as 400 bottles per minute!! The bottles then come to a process of cleaning, filling, capping, sealing, labeling and then placed in cardboard boxes. After this, the whiskey is ready to be shipped to bars, supermarkets, liquor stores and restaurants.
Wanna know more? I invite you to visit the folks at Jack Daniels Distillery. There is a really fun way of traveling through the distillery. Go here:
www.jackdaniels.com/TheDistillery/virtual/high/index.html
(Photo courtesy of Kylemay@ flickr.com/creative commons)
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