Still Innovation
Penderyn uses a unique design of still for its malted barley spirit. The still consists of a single copper pot beneath a tall rectifying multi-plate column, and was developed by Dr
Whilst most Scottish and Irish distilleries would use a conventional two or three pot system the technology developed at Penderyn enables an extremely clean "flavourful" spirit to be produced from the single still.
Each morning our unique copper-pot still is charged with the finest malted barley wash. As the steam heats the liquid it starts to bubble and the vapour rises into our copper column above the still. The column has a number of perforated plates and the vapour will condense on the first plate before being returned to the still. As the process continues the vapour will reach the second plate and so on, before evaporating and falling back to the still, each step leaving the spirit, smoother, softer and more refined. Eventually the spirit is drawn from the seventh plate and piped to our spirit safe where it lands, literally drop by drop, over the course of the day.
This time-consuming process imparts our raw spirit not only with great complexity, depth and finesse, but improves contact time with the copper, and removes many of the undesirable chemical compounds which a conventional copper still cannot!
The spirit arrives at our spirit safe at an industry high of 92% A.B.V. and is virtually free from these chemical compounds. This becomes crucial during the cask ageing.
It is a little known fact outside the industry that a major reason for ageing whisky in charred oak barrels is to remove undesirable characteristics. This is why charcoal is so important and oak barrels are burned or charred prior to filling so that the char lining can act as a filter.
As these compounds are generally absent from our spirit in the first place, it allows us to concentrate on the wood management primarily to build complexity, flavour and depth.
At the end of our day’s distillation the copper pot is switched off. The result of all our effort is just one cask of spirit.
All the elements of the distillation process are closely controlled by the Master Distiller, enabling the consistent production of high quality spirit.
Even slight variations in climatic conditions during distilling will produce subtleties of character in the finished product. Unusually amongst malt whisky producers all our bottlings are dated and connoisseurs will be able to pick up the slight flavour nuances from month to month.
