The Maltings

"Y" Shaped Floor Maltings, Highland Park

Malt whisky is made exclusively from malted barley. Spirit made from other grains that has been matured for three years in oak can also be called Scotch Whisky; but we are concentrating here on the production of malt whisky, so it is to barley that we turn as the starting point.

Barley Loft, Highland Park Steep Tank, Highland Park Floor Maltings, Bowmore Turning the Piece, Bowmore

Chariot, Highland Park

Turning Machines, Highland Park

Port Ellen Maltings

There's a view in parts of the distilling industry that only two things are important about the barley it uses. Firstly how much sugar it produces as it converts its natural starch during germination, and secondly how little solid product it is likely to carry through the brewing process into the wash to clog up the wash still. The idea that the barley used can also have an effect on the taste of the product dawned on parts of the brewing industry during the real ale revival of the 1970s: and is now becoming accepted by some distillers too.

Barley in its native form is a rare sight in distilleries these days. The pagoda that traditionally tops the kiln that brings the malting process to a halt has become the symbol of the distillery, to the point that some modern distilleries that never had a maltings carry pagodas, in one case atop every roof in the complex. This symbolism continues despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that at one point the number of distilleries with operational floor maltings and working kilns diminished to a tiny number, just Bowmore, Laphroaig, Highland Park and a couple of less well known names.

But things are looking up. Springbank has returned to running a floor malting after a long period without one, and there is talk of at least one more distillery following suit. This may well improve the taste of the whisky, as adherents claim: and it certainly improves the potential of the distillery as a visitor attraction.

The majority of distilleries buy in their malted barley from the large scale industrial maltings such as that at Port Ellen on Islay, or those near Burghead which serve some of the Speyside distilleries. These operate more quickly and efficiently than floor maltings, and the distiller can specify precisely the specifications of the malt received, all the way down to the exact degree to which it tastes of peat. For the rest of this page, however, we discuss floor maltings and you will just have to accept that in most distilleries you visit you won't see one.

Barley arriving at the distillery is conveyed up to the barley loft, which usually occupies the top floor of a building of at least three floors. At this stage it will be dry and dormant. Barley is essentially a seed that contains some genetic instructions for the next generation plus a store of starch for energy to be used by the growing plant.

The barley is placed in a steep tank. Here it is alternately soaked and dried for up to 48 hours until it begins to germinate: to sprout shoots and start to convert its starch into sugars that can be used in the brewing process. At this point the barley is laid out, to a depth of up to a foot, on the floor of the maltings, usually on the level or levels below the barley loft. At Highland Park the malting floors are "Y" shaped.

Over the next four to six days the malt is occasionally turned to allow heat to dissipate, either by hand with a malt shovel or by a kind of rotavator. And when the distiller feels the right amount of sugar has been produced, the green barley is collected and fed through to the next stage, the kiln, where the malting process is stopped by the heat.