What you need to know

More on the matter

Whisky can quickly be described as distilled beer. However, such a simple statement of course doesn’t fully do justice to something as incredibly interesting and diverse as whisky.

Perhaps the largest form of spirit in regards to amount of products, and certainly the widest regarding variation, this has all the prerequisites for becoming the longest chapter of this manual.

The word whisky is itself either an irish (Whiskey) or Scotch (Whisky) derivative of the first word an old gaelic term, Uisce Beatha, which means something close to the Water of Life.

The two versions of the word are a common cause for confusion, as whisky made in other countries choose either or, depending on whatever. Some say they choose irish pronunciation because they made whisky after irish traditions, and scottish because of scottish. But, over the now huge line of different producers, this is not a consequent rule. All you need to know, and convey, is irish or scotch, whiskey is whisky.

Whiskey is produced all over the world. We’re gonna go through each country, and give a few nuggets of info that you might find interesting. But first, some general statements. No matter what country we’re talking about, whisky production roughly follow these steps (themselves slightly simplified):

1. First you malt your grains. Simply said this is what you do.
   • Wetten the grains, so that they start to germinate (or try to grown into a plant, if you will).
   • Kilning, or drying, stops the germination process by removing the moisture, through different methods. Think towels, hairdryers and holding stuff over a fire. Whatever floats your boat.
2. Mashing. When you add your malted grains to water, heat it up, and let the enzymes in the grains turn the starch in the grains to sugar. The liquid goo this creates is called a wort. Some norwegians might recall the term Vørterøl. This is it.
3. After a boil to sanitize the wort, you cool it down and add yeast to induce fermentation, the gorgeous naturally process that turns sugar into alcohol.
4. After fermentation, you filter it, and keep the wet stuff. The dry stuff you feed your cows with. Add hops to this wet, and you got yourself some beer, btw.
5. Distilling is, again, more or less a reduction process; where you remove alcohol from the beer, effectively keeping alcohol and water separated. Do this, and you got yourself a distillate that after some time on barrels can be called whisky. Again, many different methods allow you to do this, and you can find whisky using them all from all over.