Robert Burns, liquordom's poet laureate, wrote: "O whiskey, soul o' play and pranks, accept a bardie's grateful thanks."
I'm grateful for whiskey, too. This fiery liquor is credited with the evolution of modern mixed drinks. Other liquors have been around for centuries, but whiskey only became common after the 1700s.
Whiskey's late entrance
into society is primarily because of the time and effort needed to
make it. To ferment
grains, you must transform starch into sugar (no easy task). To
simplify the process, most distillers today use a flour ground from
malted barley to produce sugars that will yield alcohol.
The process of malting influences how each whiskey will taste. The three steps of malting are steeping, germination, and drying. Steeping - or soaking - the barley is done first to ensure that there is a proper amount of water for germination, the process in which the barley sprouts.
Laid out flat, the barley is allowed to germinate (sprout) for 8 to 15 days. This creates an important enzyme known as diastase, which turns the starch into sugar. After the barley sprouts, it's dried in a kiln to prevent further germination.
In Scotland, the barley (also called malt) is dried on porous stone slabs over a peat fire. The smoke from the fire surrounds the barley and infuses it with flavor and aroma. Even after the distillation, scotch retains these robust qualities from the peat fire. In Irish and most American whiskeys, the smoke is not allowed to come in contact with the malt during the drying process, so a lighter-bodied whiskey is produced. In the case of bourbon, charred oak casks are used to age the whiskey to create a more robust flavor.
Once the malt is dry, it's milled into a flour and mixed with warm water until the starches liquify and turn into sugars. The water, now called wort, is drawn off the mixture and put into fermenting vats, and yeast is added to begin the fermentation process, which eventually produces beer. The process would be exactly the same if you were creating your own home-brew.
The "brew" is then placed in a continuous still for distillation,
which produces a low-proof liquid known as low wine. As with
The first and last parts of the second distillation are known as
feints, which contain many disagreeable impurities that would show up
in a mature whiskey. (So, if you make 100 gallons of liquor at this
stage of distillation, the first 10 gallons and the last 10 gallons
are too concentrated or impure to keep as they are.) The feints are
removed, and aren't aged or blended into the final product. However,
they do contain a large amount of useful alcohol and can be recycled
through the next batch of low wines being distilled.
The second distillation produces a whiskey near 140 proof. Through
the addition of water, the percentage is then lowered to 124
proof. With scotch, the peaty spring water that's used in blending
creates whiskeys unique by region. Once aged in oak or sherry casks,
the liquor condenses in volume, strengthening the aroma and flavor and
slightly decreasing in proof. After a minimum of three years in oak,
most whiskeys are blended with water and bottled at 80 to 100 proof. A
current trend is to bottle and sell cask-strength bourbons at a
premium.
In America's colonies of the mid-18th century, things were done
differently because of the abundance of different grains. Corn and rye
were introduced into whiskey-making as the distillers moved west. Rye
whiskey, corn whiskey, sour mash, and sweet mash are all common North
American whiskeys. Still utilizing malt for the important enzyme
diastase, other, cheaper, grains were added to increase outputs.
Another difference between American and Canadian whiskeys and their UK
counterparts is that the water used in distillation and blending
passes through limestone rather than peat. As tasteless and colorless
as water may seem, its qualities are powerful for taming whiskey.
Some low-grade whiskeys are blended with small quantities of very
fine whiskeys to make them more palatable, but many of the best
whiskeys are bottled unadulterated. Single
malts are scotch whiskeys, unblended with other whiskeys. They
vary greatly and are best enjoyed straight.
If you are making cocktails that call for scotch, use a blended
malt. Blended malt whiskeys contain at least 51 percent whiskey made
from malt. Other grains and flours may be used in the wort for
economic reasons. Until the mid-19th century, scotches were not
blended. It was the Andrew Usher and Co. distillery that first
introduced blending, which made this company famous and elevated
whiskey to a stalwart necessity of any fine liquor cabinet.