The total number of UK distilleries has risen in the last five years from 184 to 441, with 80 opening last year alone, with a flow of craft gin, vodka, whisky and rum going from the stills to happy consumers. With this year looking like the world’s financial market will be having a rough, rough ride, is it time for you to diversify and look beyond beer? Velo Mitrovich and distilling expert Kieran Aylward of Vitikit Ltd give you the basics.

In 2015 Brewdog announced that it was going to enter the distilling game, to shake it up like it has shaken the beer industry. From a German workshop on the shores of Lake Constance, the master craftsmen at Arnold Holstein GmbH were to construct two 3,000 litre copper pot stills, an additional 600 litre copper gin still and a 20m tall copper column still,which would allow for the production of neutral spirit for vodka and gin.

“From these hand-made stills, we intend to produce a home-grown vodka that will really make the big players sit up and take notice, as well as a BrewDog gin for which we have already begun trials on a number of different botanicals,” said Brewdog.

“The four stills are all designed specifically for our needs and on them we will be able to produce pretty much any spirit known to man. But our first goal is to focus on the triumvirate of whisky, gin and vodka (we wouldn’t be a true Scottish company if we didn’t stay close to our roots and produce the first of these). Our spirits will be made in the BrewDog way; pushing the definitions and boundaries at every stage, revolutionising the craft distilling scene in the UK.”

Whatever your feelings are about Brewdog, you have to give Brewdog its due by its consistently showing other breweries what they can do with the right expertise, courage and financial backing. 

Two years after making this announcement, Brewdog released its first Lone Wolf gin and vodka, with its full range now also including rum and three ‘Boilermaker’ whiskies made to be paired with a specific Brewdog beer. 

Patrick Carberry, business development manager for Moorgate Finance Limited – which specialises in breweries and distilleries – says: “We are definitely noticing a rise in distilleries across the UK. In fact, there are now more distilleries in England in comparison to Scotland – this happened for the first time in 2018. I believe this is due to the increase in demand for speciality drinks such as flavoured rums and gins etc.

“We noticed a rise in distillery finance enquiries – even during the Brexit period when people were looking to spread the cost to allow them to keep their cash flow intact. Last year we noted a major rise in new start distillery finance enquiries.

“In regards to gin/whisky distilleries, the process for financing these is very similar, the equipment being used is predominantly the same throughout – the main change for us is the ‘story’ of the distillery and the companies that we are lucky enough to have the opportunity to deal with,” says Carberry.

While the idea of adding spirits to your existing line-up might seems a bit daft, there has long been a tie between distilling and brewing, and even more so with craft beer.

In the USA, San Francisco’s original Anchor Distilling Company was established in 1993 by Fritz Maytag, the same beverage visionary who sparked the craft beer movement with his purchase of Anchor Brewing in 1965. Maytag had rescued the struggling brewery and its iconic steam beer, and after several decades of exclusively producing beer, Maytag saw an opportunity to expand into the distillation of spirits.

Fritz’s vision of a rye whiskey revival was fuelled by the bold realization that there were no pot-distilled whiskeys being made legally in America at the time. Finding inspiration in the rye whiskeys of America’s past and the great single malt whiskies of Scotland, Fritz gathered a small team to begin top secret research and experimentation in the distillery. 

The first whiskey went into barrel in 1994, and the distillery soon began producing three rye whiskeys under Fritz’s guidance, all pot-distilled spirit from a mash of 100 percent malted rye. Over time, the range of spirits expanded into other categories, with the addition of Junípero Gin and Genevieve genever. The creation of Junípero was particularly significant, as it effectively started the movement towards high-end craft gin in the United States, which then spread here.

San Diego’s Ballast Point moved into gin distilling – which the founders kept after selling off the craft beer side of the business for $1 billion ¬– and Delaware’s Dogfish Brewery/Distillery started producing a series of gins, vodkas, whiskeys, and one spirt, Booze for Breakfast, which came about when the distiller started playing around with stout. 

Like in the UK, in the States most brewers’ first venture has been with gin. The reasons for this is you can eliminate quite a bit of the work by buying-in a 95% ABV neutral or base spirit, which is basically a high-proof vodka – made from either grains, potatoes or sugar beets – and then distilling this with your botanicals. 

If your eyes are focused on Scotland’s whisky distillers and some of the UK’s few rum and vodka makers, distilling gin looks dog-easy with being able to eliminate the fermenting and later aging stage. However, much like there is lot more to brewing beer than throwing some barley, hops, water and yeast together, the same is true with gin. 

Because the flavourings come from essential oils in the natural botanicals – juniper (essential), coriander seeds, angelica, orris root, citrus, liquorice root, cassia bark, cardamom, ginger, and a host of others, producing a gin with a product consistency is where gin distillers lose their hair.  

All spirits start their journey the same, which is very similar to how you brew beer. A grain is mixed with warm water, yeast is added, and it’s allowed to ferment. Although grain is the prominent product used to create alcohol, anything and everything seems to be used ranging from potato peels to leftover dairy whey. Once fermentation is finished, the wash is put into a still where over heat, alcohol is released from the water, with it boiling at a lower temperature of water.

Then through a session of distils, more and more of the water is eliminated from the alcohol.  Flavours can come from the grains or other fermenting-source used, and/or botanicals added.

Why hasn’t there been the same well-worn path of brewing at home to a brewery? Much of this has come from confusion, with most believing that you cannot legally distil at home. Not only can you legally brew at home – you do have to register with HMRC – thanks to three UK craft distillers challenging HMRC – it is considerably easier creating a commercial distillery, without a required minimum size of your stills.

Still beauty

The still, from a solely practical perspective, is the equipment where a mixture is separated according to its members’ boiling points. Fermented mixtures contain water and ethanol, but also methanol, esters and other volatiles. 

But stills are not only utilitarian, their shape and colour capture the romantic imagination of even the stiffest pragmatist. Images of stills are the mainstay of distillery marketing, and peculiarities in a stills shape, no matter how slight, give rise to legends about its influence on flavour. 

There is a story from a chemical engineer, who when visiting a project to upgrade an old whiskey distillery noticed chalk marks on the brand-new copper still about to be swapped for an old veteran still. The chalk was to show where dents should be made , to match the dents in the old pot – so that both would behave in exactly the same way. The dents probably would have affected the distillation, but how detectable, or even measurable, is questionable – the real value of the dent story was probably in the hands of the marketeers.

It’s more likely than it’s probably ever been for a small distiller to be granted a licence from HMRC, and so it is a good time to look over the types of stills in operation.

Pot stills

Pot stills are the simplest and least expensive type of still and give the crudest (and so most flavourful) distillation. Like all stills, the material of choice – because of its ability to remove sulphur – is copper. But copper is expensive and so some cheaper stills are made from stainless steel but with copper components.

A pot still is simply a boiling pot, a lye arm, (exit pipe) and a condenser. The length and angle of the lye arm influences the reflux (condensation and potential re-evaporation) and so the purity of the spirit. Usually it’s necessary to pass a spirit multiple times through a pot still to gain purity.

Pot stills are used in Irish Whiskey and Scotch Whisky distilleries, with at least a double distillation being used. They are also used for small rum producers, brandy producers and sometimes for rectifying gin.

Column stills

A column still has no pot and is not a batch system – instead a constant stream of preheated, fermented wash can be introduced into the column, with distillate exiting at a constant purity and de-alcoholised wash being discharged from the column bottom. 

The column is made up of “plates”, or “trays” which are designed to bubble vapour through a reservoir of condensate, and to drain excess condensate to the plate below. The vapour and condensate exist in an equilibrium where the vapour gains alcohol (and other volatiles) and loses water as it bubbles through. Because each plate works at a lower temperature than the one below, the volatile components become more concentrated as they rise.

 The still works by introducing steam into the bottom of the column and wash near to the top, the wash fills the reservoir of the plate and some of the volatiles are lost to the vapour, which continues, through more plates to the top of the column, and the remainder overflows and drains to the plate below. 

Few true column stills are in use in craft distilling, but one example is the sprawlimng 46 plate column still at work at Doghouse distillery in Battersea, London.  Doghouse’s still is put to use making a wheat mash vodka, and a neutral sprit to produce their “grain to bottle” gin – called Renegade.

Column stills are common in the large rum and cachaca producers, also in vodka and neutral spirit (the base for gin) production.

Hybrid stills

A hybrid still is one that combines aspects of a pot and column still, and because of their flexibility, are very popular with craft distillers. Usually it would consist of a pot still with a small or large column to one side – this column can be bypassed in pot still mode, or the vapour can be directed through the column and its plates. 

The column is often fitted with a dephlegmator, or pre-condenser – this allows chilling water to be introduced to the column top and controls reflux. In full reflux, no vapour can pass and instead condenses and flows back into the column, this increases contact time with the copper and gives a smoother spirit.

Hybrid stills are common for all kinds of craft distiller, but more expensive than a simple pot still. The automation available and flexibility means that one-still often produces a range of spirits.  u