If it weren't for yeast life wouldn't be worth living, or how to make Whisky

Not only did I survive, but I also actually enjoyed driving the car on the wrong side of the road today. Tatatoes had two wishes : to go and see Forth Bridge, and to go the a distillery. To this I added a visit to Shackleton's Endurance, moored in Dundee. A car was indispensable.

Fortunately I have been riding a bike on the wrong side of the road for a year now, so the concept of doing the same with a car did not seem that weird. I also managed to avoid opening the door when trying to change gears; instead, Tatatoes would forget he was not the driver, and release the handbrake before I had a chance to even switch the engine on. All in all, however, we did well, and covered nearly 200 miles.

The morning was splendid with sunshine, and I followed the bus route to bring us to the foot of Forth Rail Bridge. Tatatoes, an engineer, insisted on having a close look, and the weather could not have been better.

Forth Rail Bridge in the sun.

From there we had an hours' drive to reach Dundee, but we veered off to have a coffee in Kilmarnock. I was curious to have a look, as the town is famously the birthplace of Johhny Walker Whisky, and even more famously the site of a massive employee-employer-government dispute when the Kilmarnock distillery was closed last year by Diageo, costing the town 700 jobs. The place itself, however, perhaps unsurprisingly, was absolutely bleak. Massive multistorey car parks, shopping malls, bingo halls and living estates, doom and gloom and no sign of coffee. Disillusioned, we stopped for a brief glance towards Norway over the sea, and continued towards Dundee. The countryside was actually reminiscent of Poland – big fields, dense forests, tree-lined streets. It felt homely.

The Firth of Tay seemed to me to be even bigger than Firth of Forth, perhaps due to the length of the bridges which connect the southern and northern shores. The one I could see, ie. the one I was not actually driving on, actually had a bend in it. The city itself looked absolutely grim; grey, dark, and uninspiring. In fact the beauty of the Discovery sail-ship itself was diminished by the bleakness of the surrounding architecture – a concrete leisure park, and a boring glass-and-brick dome of the Discovery museum.

I was actually quite excited to see the ship which had carried Scott on his unfortunate and failed attempt at being the first man to set foot on the North Pole. I had read so much both about his expedition, and that of Shackleton. How ironic that one survived to return, but without the ship, while the other sacrificed himself and his crew, but the ship returned. In a way it is fitting that after having served under the short-sighted and selfish Capitan the boat should be put to better use as a merchant and training vessel. This also means that the restored vessel is not really as it was on its first voyage, which was a real shame actually.

Shakleton's Discovery.

As far as the sail-boat itself, the most surprising thing about it was its size. I have seen much more footage of Shackleton's Endurance, and so I imagined that also Discovery will be similarly compact. Instead there are actually two entire storeys under the deck, the rooms have proper high ceilings, and the deck stretches long and wide.

We were off quickly, North towards Pitlorchy and the Edradour Distillery. It's the smallest distillery in Scotland, and the closest one to Edinburgh which is not owned by a corporation. The approach to Pitlorchy is beautiful, along the river Tay which winds its way through a wide, green valley. The river is shallow and rocky, and a known destination for fly-fishing; in fact, we saw men standing with fishing rods, knee-high in the river, at regular intervals.

Pitlorchy itself seemed like a major tourist destination, and reminded me of the cutesy towns in the Peak District. Bell's Whisky has a 'Visitor Centre' there, but we drove swiftly past and started climbing. The distillery itself was hidden in a dip of the valley slope, invisible until we were right at the door. Which was, as it later turn out, one more way of making it hidden from the eyes of the law when it was being used for illegal whisky production.

We just made it in time for the last tour.

The Edradour distillery, all whitewash and red timber, made very tourist-rady, but very cute nonetheless.

The long distillery building, and the malting building in the distance. The distillery malts and dries its own barley; as opposed to the distilleries on the Islands, they do not use pete smoke for barley drying, so their whisky does not have this typical, strong, smokey flavour, but is lighter instead.
Here is the malten barley, ready for being ground into a sort of coarse flour. It is then mixed with hot water and mashed until a sugar-rich water is obtained, called the wort.
The wort is cooled, and pumped into the big vats, where yeast is added. Ah, my good friend yeast, dearest saccharomyces cervicae, the maker of bread and the creator of alcohol, the single organism which makes our life enjoyable, possible even! My favourite invisible friend. Here it makes malted barley practically into beer, which is then distilled into the beautiful amber whisky.

Here they are, the two copper stills, for two distillations. The shape of the still determines many of the whisky's characteristics. The fact that they are made with copper is important as well, as the metal reacts with the liquid to rid it of certain unpleasant aromas.

The two condensers, the outpipes of the two stills inside. The condensers are cooled with water and hidden under the ground level, again, historically, for protection from custom officers. The beer-like substance, called the wash, has only 8% of alcohol. At the first distillation, the vapour which rises from the still is around 17%, and by the time it has made it to the second still, it is closer to 25%. By the end of the second distillation, the spirit is nearly 70% alcohol.


From the still, the whisky goes into a container; only the 'heart' of the spirit, the strong, pure liquid which flows for around 90 minutes is kept. Both the early and the late distillation spirit is not fit for being matured, and is distilled again.

The spirit goes into barrels, to mature for ten years. They use diverse barrels there - wine, port, sherry, and bourbon; and each adds something of their own flavour.


Off to the warehouse the barrels go. During the ten years, a quarter of the alcohol will evaporate. At the moment of being put into a barrel, the spirit is around 65% alcohol; by the time it's matured, it's around 55%, and needs to be watered down for bottling.

The used barley is taken away by a local farmer as cattle feed. No wonder the hairy Highland cows look so content!

The muscle behind all this hard work.