Irish Whiskey Making by Matt Morley

We visited an old Jameson distillery in County Cork, Ireland to learn what makes Irish whiskey in different from the rest.

First of all, there is the question of how the word itself is written - with or without the second ‘e’. In Ireland, ‘whiskey’ is always written with, but in Scotland and America it takes the slightly shortened form of ‘whisky’, without. It is also worth noting that these three countries largely divide up global whisk(e)y production between them.

While relative newcomers on the scene such as Korea and Japan may produce their own, perfectly drinkable versions on a much smaller scale, even the most novice of whiskey drinkers knows if they want a truly memorable bottle, it will most likely come from one of the ‘big three’.

The main ingredients in Irish whiskey are barley, malt (germinated barley) and water. With this in mind, it is no coincidence that Jameson chose to base themselves in County Cork as from here they have access to vast amounts of superior quality, locally grown barley and fresh rainwater from the Dungourney river.

Once the barley has been collected it needs to be soaked in water until it begins to sprout. In the old distillery, grain was dried out in a kiln using anthracite (a smokeless fuel). This is where Scotch whisky making diverges so markedly from Irish. In the former, the grains are dried using peat smoke to produce a deliberately smoky taste, whereas in the latter, this technique is religiously avoided.

At this stage in the production process, both barley and malt grains are ground into a coarse flour – originally this was done by the Jameson distillery’s 6.7m wide waterwheel. This ground flour is added to huge vats of boiling water and stirred until the starches in the grains convert into fermentable sugars, a process known in the trade as ‘mashing’. And this is when the real magic happens. Yeast is added to the liquid to convert the sugars into alcohol, when it has an alcohol content of around 8%, it is ready for distillation.

The main principle of distillation is that alcohol boils at a lower temperature to water (78C vs 100C). By exploiting this small but significant piece of information, alcohol can be separated from water by a dual process of evaporation and condensation.

A further particularity of Irish whiskey is that it is triple distilled, whereas Scotch is distilled twice and Bourbon only once. In the case of Jameson for example, the resulting spirit emerges pure, transparent, odourless and with an 80% alcohol content. Only after a number of years maturing in oak barrels does it take on the qualities we normally associate with actual whiskey.

These oak barrels are imported from Portugal, Spain and America where they would previously have been used to mature sherry, port or bourbon respectively. Over the course of 5-7 years the whiskey takes on a golden hue thanks to the tannin in the oak casing. The longer the maturation process obviously, the more developed and complex the end result. Jameson Distillery Reserve stays put for a minimum of 12 years for example, others even longer.

Before being bottled the whiskey is watered down to 40% to make it suitable for consumption and is ready to be distributed to stockists around the world. Or at least, the vast majority of it is; the suspicion is that the Irish are rather canny about keeping the best stuff for themselves, and who can blame them?