Traditional Cask Scotch
Traditional cask scotch is a whiskey that contains a single malt .For this reason it is sometimes also called as single malt whiskey. Whisky is a broad category of alcoholic beverages that is prepared from grain mash first by fermentation and then by distillation.
This is then aged in wooden casks which are generally made of oak. There are many types of whisky such as vatted malt, pure pot still whisky, blended whisky, cask strength whisky and traditional cask scotch. Traditional Scotch is traditionally distilled by using a pot still, and it is distilled and matured in Scotland. Since it is matured in scotch it has the name traditional cask scotch.
Traditional cask scotch is produced by single distillery in one season and from a single batch of whiskey. It is produced from 100% malted barley, which has been aged for minimum of three years. After distillation, a 70% alcohol spirit called plain British spirit is pumped into casks and it is considered as whisky only after it is sat for three years. The traditional Scotch whisky is produced all over the world but the best ones are said to produce from Scotland, Japan and Ireland.
Traditional Scotch whisky is produced from malted grain specially barley. Its production also requires it to go through the various production processes like malting, mashing, fermentation, distillation, maturation, bottling and storage. It also requires the use of water whish is a very important ingredient. Water is first added to the barley to promote germination of the single malt.
It is mixed with ground barley to create a mash and is also used to dilute most whisky before maturation and then once again before bottling. Water is used to dilute the whisky to bottling strength which is 40-60%alcohol by volume. Different types of water are used in the distilleries. Malting involves the soaking of barley grain in water for 2-3 days and then allowing it to germinate so as to convert starch to fermentable sugars which then becomes available to yeast for fermentation.
Mashing is the process in which the malt is milled into coarse flour and is added to hot water to extract the sugars. The enzymes act on the starch to produce sugary liquid called wort to which yeast is added in a large vessel for the fermentation process. It then undergoes a process called distillation to get an alcohol content of 60-70%.ths then undergoes the process of maturation, bottling and storage to get the final traditional cask scotch.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am and is filed under Scotch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.