Brewers that venture into whisky making, often start with single malt. Makes sense, since brewers, when making beer, work with malted barley almost always.

When we get brewers in, that tried to make single malt whisky, we often find their efforts rather one-dimensional and not very impressive. The weird cause for that ... is that they tried to make an amazing beer ... and turn that into whisky. Contrary to logic, a distillers beer needs to be everything but a well-made consumers beer!

The summary? In order to make a beer from which a great single malt whisky can be distilled, the brewer, in general, needs to mash without boiling, aim at saccharification only, ferment sour and hot.

Here's a picture, where I summarized the differences in approach between producing consumers beer and distillers beer.

Regards, Odin.

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