Female: So, here we’re with Simon Brooking from Laphroaig and it is located on the Island of Islay in Scotland.
Simon Brooking: Yes.
Female: Now, we are here exploring the world of whiskey. You actually have this pit here and I am intrigued by the pit and then tell me a little bit about the pit and how it influenced, you know, how it fits into the process of making.
Simon Brooking: Whiskey is actually a very simple spirit to make and actually to drink too once you understand a little bit of the intricacies of it, but you know, quite simply whiskey is made up of malted barley. That’s the only a single malt whiskey is made up of pure malted barley. That’s the only grain that can be used. Distilled in copper pot stills and then aged in oak barrels for a minimum of three years by law of a Court, and legally be called the Single Malt Scotch. So Laphroaig is a single malt scotch. But one of the things that makes it so unique is the pit.
So what we do is we soak the barley for two days and let the barley grow then for a week out on a floor. And then after the end of the week, it has got the consistency of sprouts. So what we want to do is stop the barley from growing.
Female: Okay.
Simon Brooking: Because then we’ll grind it down, mash it, ferment to distill it. So—but we need a fuel source. We need a heat to dry the barley and then that fuel source is pit. So what we do is after the six days of growing, we want to dry the barley over the pit fires for 15 hours. So when we talk about the whiskey being smoky and pity, it comes from drying the barley over the pit fires for 15 hours. That smoke that you’re smelling, it comes in through the barley, drawn into the barley by drying it over the pit fires.
Female: So you’re drying it versus cooking it.
Simon Brooking: That’s right. People think it’s roasted but it’s not. It’s actually stopping the barley from growing and then after that, we then store it for three weeks and then we grind it down, we mash it by adding hot water and then ferment it by adding yeast and then distill it. So the pit comes from drying the barley to stop it from growing.
Female: Okay.
Simon Brooking: All right.
Female: And then it has a very distinct smell to the pit.
Simon Brooking: The pit from the different regions in Scotland will give you different flavors. The pit from the Island of Islay where we make Laphroaig has got the influence of the sea. There’s seaweed in this, there’s the vegetation that is indigenous to the region of Islay compared to the pit from the highlands, which is more connected for more pine forest and heather. You’re going to get the different flavor from the pit from that region. The same way you might smoke mix with different kinds of woods. Apple wood, hickory Musky, that’s going to influence the flavor of the pit. The pit from the different regions will give you different flavors.
Now when you come to taste the whiskey—
Female: Okay.
Simon Brooking: I will suggest and this is a big tip, is that when you’re, you want to know what’s the whiskey, nosing the whiskey is as much part of the experience as tasting the whiskey.
Female: Okay.
Simon Brooking: But when you nose the whiskey, I also recommend that you part your lips a little bit. You get your nose into the glass, but open your mouth. I’ll demonstrate it like this.
Female: I heard that.
Simon Brooking: Because when you close your mouth to nose the whiskey, you’ll get full alcohol, it numbs the senses and that’s to dry your nose, it makes your head kick back. Now you might like that experience. But for the sake of getting more as it relates to the spirit, breathe it to your nose with your mouth open for more flavor and less alcohol.
Female: No—
Simon Brooking: It cuts the heat, it cuts that bite and what we’re getting with the Laphroaig here is we’re getting the salt, the sea, there’s a sweetness to it as well. There’s another way nosing the whiskey. When you want to get a sample out of the barrel out of the warehouse—
Female: Okay.
Simon Brooking: That was on a copper dog it’s a long copper tube for drawing the sample out. You pull the bung out of the bunghole and insert the copper dog draw off your sample, but if you don’t have your copper dog, the other way nosing the whiskey is this. You put your hand over the opening of the bottle and you roll the bottle.
Female: So I’ve got to rib—my hand?
Simon Brooking: Put your hand over the opening of your bottle and roll it to get some whiskey on your hand.
Female: Oh!
Simon Brooking: Not too much because you won’t drink the rest, right? Now, put your glass down. Your hand is wet like that?
Female: Oh yup, glass down.
Simon Brooking: Rub your hands together. Get some heat going, some friction going, this burns off the alcohol and it releases the esters, right—
Female: Oh! I can feel my warm heat, okay.
Simon Brooking: Open the doors to the warehouse and that’s what you get. You get a whole other layer to the spirit that way. You get more the wood influence, you get more of the sweetness in that like toasted.
Female: That’s a very toasty smell to it. Like that was such a very distinguished.
Simon Brooking: You’ll also notice that it evaporates very quickly. If we’re going to do with the Cognac, you’re hands will be very sticky from the sugars, but all of the sugars consumed during fermentation. It’s another good reason for drinking the single malts, you’re not going to get a bad sugar hangover.
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