Single Malt Scotch
Single malt scotch is a kind of single malt whisky, which is distilled in a pot still by a particular distillery, utilizing malted barley as the sole grain constituent in Scotland. Single malt scotch should be distilled and developed in casks of oak in Scotland for minimum three years.
In single malt scotch the word “Single” implies that entire malts in the bottles appear by way of single distillery. Malts of Multi-distillery are normally called as “blended malt” or “pure malt”. The word “Malt” implies that single malted grain is utilized for distilling whisky. For making single malt scotch, the barley grain is always used.
Every single malt scotch passes through the same batch production procedure, as summarized below. At the time of bottling different batches are combined together for achieving reliable flavors from one bottling. Now let’s see how the production of single malt scotch takes place:
Water is used in all stages of making whisky. For promoting germination, it is included to the barley. It also combined with the grist of ground barley to generate mash and it is utilized to dilute majority of whisky previous to maturation. Majority of distilleries utilizes different sources of water in various steps.
As enormous amounts of water are utilized throughout the whisky production process, supply of water is the main factor for the site of every distillery.
Malting is another process of production in single malt scotch. Water, yeast and barley are the ingredients needed for producing single malt scotch. The barley utilized to produce the whisky is “malted” through soaking the grain within water nearly for 2 to 3 days. It is then allowed to develop to create the essential enzymes necessary for producing fermentable sugars by converting it from starch.
In the process of Mashing the malt is crushed into a coarse floor and included with hot water for activating the enzymes which will change the starches to fermentable sugars. Long chains of starch are wrecked into maltriose, glucose and maltose, which are proficient in getting fermented by yeast.
In Fermentation yeast is included in a large vessel described as wash back. They are normally made of stainless steel or Oregon pine. The yeast nourishes on the sugars and as a result produces both alcohol and carbon dioxide and this process is called as fermentation which may take up three days for getting completed.
In the process of Distillation the wash is then forced into a still pot of copper recognized as the wash still, to be distilled. The wash is then heated which has a lesser boiling point than water. The vapor is then gathered in a condenser which is submerged in water. The vapor gets condensed back to liquid due to lower temperatures.
In the process of Maturation the undeveloped whisky is placed in oak casks to develop. The Scotch whisky for getting matured takes almost 3 years in oak casks.
Finally, after completing above processes of production, Bottling is done of single malt Scotch. A bottle may solely comprise whisky which is distilled from malted barley created at a particular distillery.
Thus, in the above ways single malt scotch is prepared and distinct taste is provided to it.
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 10:33 am and is filed under Scotch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.