THE KNOWLEDGE
Maltings magic
We’re used to visiting distilleries with Unfiltered and witnessing the alchemy that transforms the basic triumvirate of water, yeast and malted barley into new-make spirit that’s destined to mature into Scotch whisky. But a step inside a maltings is another matter altogether. Forget about any flashy visitor centre, marketing materials or glitzy gift shop. Don’t expect tartan-clad tour guides or educational graphics explaining the various stages of the production process. Instead, don your sturdiest boots, hi viz jacket and hard hat. This is an industrial site in all its Victorian glory, and it’s where the whisky story truly begins, as Richard Goslan reports
PHOTOS: PETER SANDGROUND
Crisp’s maltings in Alloa has been operating since 1890, originally for George Younger’s brewery when the town and area was a hotbed of Scottish beer production.
When whisky and beer chronicler Alfred Barnard visited in 1891 – a year after the opening of the mighty engineering achievement of the Forth Bridge made a journey from Edinburgh by rail that much easier – the small town was home to eight breweries.
“Alloa is essentially a brewing town, and from time immemorial has been famous for its beer,” he surmised in his book The Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland.
It’s not a brewing town anymore, unfortunately, with the George Younger’s brewery demolished and replaced with a car park. Their bottling plant, however, lives on as the brewery and base for Williams Brothers. They are now one of Scotland’s largest independent breweries, who are proud to keep Alloa’s tradition of brewing alive – if not quite kicking quite as much as it did a hundred years ago.
The maltings has changed hands a few times over the years, from George Younger’s to Bass Brewers and Tennent’s until Crisp took over the site in 2003. The names at the entrance may have chopped and changed, but what’s happening inside these imposing Victorian brick walls looks relatively unaltered since Barnard’s visit 130 years ago. The three key stages of the process to turn barley into malt take place on site here: steeping, germination and kilning.
The site produces both pot still malt, for single malt distilling, and high diastatic power (HDP) malt (known as ‘distillers malt’ in the US), which is used for grain whisky production. From here, the malt is bulk-loaded to distilleries throughout Scotland, or transferred to Crisp’s nearby (and modern) packing facility. From there it’s despatched in both 25kg and one tonne sacks to breweries and distilleries around the world. As our guide Colin Johnstone, Crisp Malt’s sales manager, tells us, all of the barley malted here now comes from Scotland – a huge shift from what would have been the case when the facility was first opened.
“A hundred years ago, this site wouldn’t been malting barley from the local area, because it was such poor quality,” he says. “Scottish barley didn’t have a good reputation, because the varieties weren’t there to support the climate that we have. We know from records from local breweries here that they were buying barley in from California, from Egypt and all sorts of different places.
“What happened, from the mid-1960s onwards with the introduction of Golden Promise for example, was that you had varieties that could be grown in the Scottish climate. And since then, things have moved on quite significantly and we've got these fantastic spring barley varieties, which is ultimately what we need for the relatively short growing season here. Scotland is now an absolute powerhouse for producing really fantastic malting barley, which means we can get all of our grain for Alloa within the Scottish supply chain.”
Colin Johnstone, Crisp Malt’s sales manager
POINTS OF DIFFERENCE
Barley varieties for both pot still and HDP grain whisky production are now all grown within Scotland, generally in the east from Moray down through to Aberdeenshire and into Fife. The perfect barley for pot still production tends to come from light, sandy soil and is low in nitrogen and protein. That leads to a high starch content – ideal for a high alcohol-yielding, single malt whisky. Somewhere in the region of 80 per cent of the Scottish crop is a single variety called Laureate.
Barley for HDP is different, because its addition in grain whisky production is all about converting any starch-rich cereal such as wheat, rice or maize into sugar. That means it has to be rich in enzymes to aid that conversion. Crisp use the Fairing variety, which is grown on heavier ground and develops heavier nitrogen and protein levels.
While bigger brands are looking for consistency in their malt, Colin says that for some of the smaller and newer distilleries, barley variety offers a point of difference.
“More and more, we’re seeing that difference coming from the malt selection. That could be a couple of different avenues. One would be provenance, for example, so not only are distillers looking for malt from Scotland, they might be looking for it from a specific region or even indeed from a specific farm, so we’re talking about single-estate barley production. Of course that will come with variation from year to year, but there’s a terroir aspect there that the distillers and their consumers are really interested in.”
Distillers are also exploring other barley varieties, for example with the renaissance of heritage varieties such as Plumage Archer, Maris Otter, and Chevallier – which dates back to the 1820s. Then there’s the demand for specialty malts, such as crystallised or roasted malt.
“Crystallised malts can introduce all kinds of sweet caramelly flavours into new-make spirit,” says Colin. “Or roasted malts, like chocolate or black, brown or amber malt, can bring these toasted, almost coffee-ish, chocolatey tones coming through in the new-make.
“It’s interesting because if you look back maybe 100 years in terms of kilning technology, things were not as controlled back then, and so almost certainly maltings producing for distilleries would have overcooked a batch here or there. You would have had some of these roasted malts, a little bit in the kiln there, that would have contributed to the whisky character, so in a way with these specialty malts we are almost reviving flavours of older styles of whisky.”
AN AGE-OLD PROCESS
The demand for variety may have changed but the site itself feels rooted in a process that goes back in time. Barley is taken from the store and steeped in huge vessels with up to three immersions of water to hydrate the grains to a moisture level of around 46 per cent, the optimal amount for germination.
The main difference between the 1890s and the present day at the Alloa malting is in the move from floor malting to the use of Saladin boxes for germination. The sprouting barley is moved into these long boxes – named for their French inventor Charles Saladin – where it is turned over by augers which pass through the barley as a crossbar passes along the length of the box.
The germination process breaks down the barley’s cell walls and protein, releasing starch and producing enzymes, while the turning stops the barley’s rootlets from tangling up and matting.From there, it’s onto the kiln where germination is stopped by drying for up to two days on this site, but could be more. A programme of varying temperatures and airflows protect the grain and create the desired colour and flavour.
Crisp’s maltings in Portgordon in Moray produce a peated malt, where peat smoke passes through the moist barley to provide the required level of ‘smokiness’ – from lightly peated at a phenol level of 15 parts per million (ppm) to heavily peated at 50 ppm and beyond.
“If you look back maybe 100 years, maltings producing for distilleries would have overcooked a batch here or there. You would have had some of these roasted malts, a little bit in the kiln there, that would have contributed to the whisky character, so in a way with these specialty malts we are almost reviving flavours of older styles of whisky.”
Colin Johnstone
Barley is steeped in huge vessels with up to three immersions of water, to hydrate the grains to the optimum moisture level
Germination in Saladin boxes see the barley’s cell walls and protein break down, releasing starch and producing enzymes
The barley may then be crushed at the maltings or at a distillery’s own mill before starting its next stage of the journey into becoming a sugary wort, ready for fermentation and distillation.
“In terms of the analytics and the way that a maltster interacts with barley during the actual malting process, that’s not really changed,” says Colin. “There’s very little that you can measure as you have barley going through the germination process – it’s about sight and it’s about touch, and it’s about taste, and it’s about smell.
“There are computers now that can move things around and pumps and all these sorts of things, so the number of people involved in the process has reduced, but the principle is age-old; indeed, malting is probably one of the oldest biotechnologies in civilisation.”
“There are computers now that can move things around and pumps and all these sorts of things, so the number of people involved in the process has reduced, but the principle is age-old; indeed, malting is probably one of the oldest biotechnologies in civilisation.”
Colin Johnstone
The processes at Crisp Malts are little changed in the past 100 years
Colin’s quote reminds me of what the scientist Sir Geoff Palmer, discoverer of the barley abrasion process, told us in Unfiltered issue 60 in August 2021 about the journey of this humble grain.
Reflecting on the Robert Burns ballad, John Barleycorn, Sir Geoff said: “The whole poem is about barley being harvested, that’s like trying to kill it. Then you take it in and you try to drown it. And then you beat it during germination, turning it. And then you put it in the fire. But nevertheless, it triumphs by producing Scotch whisky. That’s what the poem is about – it’s about trying to stop and defeat the apparently insignificant, which then turns out to produce something glorious.”
Put like that, the malting process deserves our respect and eternal gratitude. And if you ever get the opportunity to visit the place where it all happens – grab it.
