With a rest day in Fort William, I took the opportunity to walk over to the Ben Nevis Distillery. I was hoping to get to take part in a tour, and as chance would have it, I arrived 5 minutes before the next tour, with only one open spot left.
We got a pretty good tour, and the guide took us through all the steps of making a good dram. At the end, I got to sample a few of the Ben Nevis lineup, and they do make a nice whisky. Pictures are below the fold.
The unassuming exterior of the Ben Nevis Distillery Here the ground dried malt (called the grist), is mixed with hot water in this mash tun. This turns the starches into sugar. This is known as mashing.After mashing, the sweet sugary liquid, called wort, is cooled hereAfter the wort is cooled, it is pumped into these wash backs, where yeast is added, and the fermentation occurs. The resulting wash is about 6-8% ABV.Here the wash is distilled so the alcohol is separated from the water. This is done twice to further increase the alcohol concentration.The first pass ends up in these copper containersThis is the the spirit safe where all the distilled liquid passes, and where the distiller determines if the alcohol content is sufficient for caskingA bourbon barrel, which is the smallest cask usedA larger cask, which is also an ex-bourbon caskA large ex-sherry caskAn ex-sherry caskAll the whisky casks, showing their relative sizesThe warehouses where the whisky matures, with Ben Nevis in the backgroundA lineup of the whiskies that I got to sample at the end of tour
