home of true Lancastrian spirit
The whisky room
The whisky room
Inspired...
Welcome to the Whisky Room at Lancaster Spirits Co. Distillery!
Our Whisky Room is a unique space that showcases the heart and soul of our distilling process, 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 the heart of 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 is Lancaster, 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 mated barley is mashed to release its fermentable sugars, creating a sweet wort that forms the foundation of the whisky. This is done in our 4000-litre traditional mash tun, which play a crucial role in extracting flavours from the barley.
Fermentation: The wort is then fermented into our Fermentation vessel, where our Live Brewers Yeast is introduced to convert the sugars into alcohol. This fermentation 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
The expert team of Brewers at Lancaster Brewery are resposible for producing the whisky wash needed for our Single Malt. Utilising the same malted barley, live brewers yeast and water used to make their award-winning ales!
Our process begins with the whisky wash, a specialist beer wash made by Lancaster Brewery utilising its own in-house mill to guarantee the freshest malt flavours and sourcing crystal-clear water from an ancient Bowland aquifer via our own artesian well.
The wash is then fermented using the Brewery's 200-year-old live brewing yeast. The combination of our live yeast, the pristine local water, the exceptionally flavoursome malt and a notably slow fermentation period of up to 168 hours culminates in a wash of outstanding quality.
Our Live Brewer's yeast, traditionally used to brew beer aids a long fermentation that develops unique flavours to the wash, often enhancing fruity esters that add a lot of complexity.
Our Brewhouse
Lancaster Brewery
Distilling
The distillation is done in two stages — the first distillation, the 'wash run' and the second the 'spirit run'. Our fruity wash is charged into our wash still, affectionately known as Constance, who completes the wash run, converting the 10% ABV wash into low wines at an ABV of up to 38%.
Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday 2000 litres of wash is transferred from our brewery into our wash still for distillation. Constance is in no way, automated, so our expert distiller Joan has to constantly monitor the wash run to create the desired flavour profile by employing a slow and meticulous distilling process.
Our Hybrid Copper & Steel Pot still, Constance, spends over six hours per day distilling the wash to create the complex yet elegant whisky spirit we are looking for. Every part of the process is time-consuming and carefully analysed to ensure superb quality.
Our stills are crafted to enable copper contact, whilst protecting the complex fruity notes from our wash.
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.
Now we wait...
Our Bonded Warehouse