home of true Lancastrian spirit
The whisky room
The whisky room
Inspired...
Welcome to the Whisky Room at Lancaster Spirits Co. Distillery!
The centre of our distillery, The Whisky Room, is a unique space that showcases the heart and soul of our distilling processes, offering visitors an immersive experience in the art of whisky making. Here, you can explore the meticulous craftsmanship and innovation that go into each bottle of our English Single Malt!
Nestled in Lancashire, our distillery is a place where time-honoured methods meet modern techniques, allowing us to produce exceptional whiskies that stand out in the world of spirits. The Whisky Room serves as a hub for learning and discovery, where our expert distillers and guides share insights into every step of the production process, from grain to glass.
All Single Malt Whisky is produced by combining three simple ingredients - barley, yeast & water. But of course, it is the interaction between these ingredients during mashing & fermentation that develops a lot of the flavour found in any particular whisky.
Here at LSCo, a lot of care & attention is taken at each step of the production process to ensure that we produce a high-quality spirit with real depth of flavour.
How We Produce Our English Single Malt Whisky
Our Brewery team begin by making a wash: a high gravity wort made from freshly milled winter barley. Our flagon winter barley is ordinarily used to produce ales, but when combined with our live brewer's yeast, it kick-starts a long fermentation of up to 168 hours (a whole week!)
A long fermentation period produces a wash that is full of flavour & depth with lots of fruity esters.
Mashing: The Pale ale malted barley is mashed to release its fermentable sugars, creating a sweet wort that forms the foundation of whisky. This is done in our 4000-litre traditional mash tun, which plays a crucial role in extracting flavours from the barley.
Fermentation: The wort is then transferred into our fermentation vessel, where our live strain of brewers' yeast is introduced to convert the sugars into alcohol. This process is carefully monitored to ensure that it produces a complex and flavoursome wash with a long 168-hour fermentation.
Come and experience the passion, precision, and heritage that makes Lancaster Spirits Co. a truly special distillery.
Mashing
Brewing
Our whisky’s journey begins with the whisky wash, a specialist beer wash crafted by Lancaster Brewery, using time-honoured brewing techniques to create a foundation of exceptional depth and character.
We start with the freshest malt flavours, ensured by milling our grain in-house at Lancaster Brewery. This is combined with crystal-clear water from an ancient Bowland aquifer, drawn from our own artesian well, a pure and mineral-rich source that plays a crucial role in shaping our spirit.
Fermentation is where the magic happens. We use Lancaster Brewery’s 200-year-old live brewing yeast, a heritage strain that has been carefully nurtured for generations. This brewers’ yeast, traditionally used in beer production, enables a long, slow fermentation period of up to 168 hours - far longer than many whisky distilleries.
Why does this matter? Time is flavour. A longer fermentation allows the yeast to develop rich fruity esters and deeper, more complex flavours in the wash. This process enhances the natural character of our malt and creates a wash that is bursting with bright orchard fruit notes, delicate spice and layers of depth - all of which carry through into distillation.
Our Brewhouse
Lancaster Brewery
Distilling
At Lancaster Spirits Co., distillation is a slow and deliberate process. Where science meets craft and precision creates flavour.
Our whisky is distilled in two stages: the first, known as the wash run, and the second, the spirit run. The journey begins with our fruity, complex wash, which is transferred into our beloved wash still, Constance. Every Monday to Thursday, 2,000 litres of wash arrive daily from our brewery, ready to be transformed.
Unlike many modern stills, Constance is entirely manual, requiring the skill and intuition of our expert distiller, Joan. He carefully monitors every stage of the wash run, guiding the slow and steady process to capture the precise flavour profile we’re looking for. Over the course of six meticulous hours per day, Constance converts the 10% ABV wash into low wines, reaching up to 38% ABV.
The spirit run is where the true character of our whisky begins to emerge. Here, our all-copper spirit still, Rose, takes over, refining the low wines through a second, careful distillation. Copper is essential in whisky-making - it reacts with sulphur compounds, smoothing out the spirit and allowing the delicate fruit notes from our wash to shine.
With Rose, precision is everything. The spirit run is carefully controlled to capture only the finest cut - the heart of the distillate, which will eventually mature into our first-ever Lancastrian single malt. Every decision, from cut points to flow rates, is made by taste and instinct, ensuring that only the best spirit makes it into our casks.
Our distillation process is time-intensive, hands-on and meticulously crafted - but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Wash Still - Constance
MATURATION
Every Friday our distillery team filled up to six casks with our new-make spirit produced in the previous week. Filling a combination of seasoned & authentic casks, both European & American oak, including high quality wine, sherry & bourbon barrels.
Sourcing reliable, high-quality but highly-active casks is of paramount importance in making single malt whisky with depth of flavour. Importantly though, our task is to create single malt whiskies that are complex, full of flavour and balanced at a young age.
We create exciting, complex and flavourful whisky at any age.
Our focus is upon curating a collection of casks that will provide our single malt with both depth and breadth of flavours. So, our Single Malt is matured in highly active first-fill casks that help to accelerate the ageing process, whilst adding depth of flavour & complexity to our spirit.
By hand-selecting casks that have been seasoned with high-quality wine, sherry or spirits, enables the flavour to develop considerably quicker than many expect. Single Malt whisky is often filled into exhausted, refill bourbon barrels that are in many instances filled a multitude of times and need to be matured for considerably longer periods to develop the depth of flavour that can be achieved with a first-fill cask.
Traceabililty is important to us here at Lancaster Spirits Co. So, every cask purchased and filled at LSCo can be traced back.
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Our Bonded Warehouse