peaty flavor in islay

Taking a moment's reflection, Thomas Wildgruber mused: | | i always thought the peaty flayor from Lagavulin is coming from the age | (16 Years) but now i taste a ten year old Laphroaig, and this one is very | peaty too. Is this a regional effect, like a special kind of water or | something else?

Peat can be imparted in two ways ... the smoking of the grain over peat fires, and a high peat content in the water the whisky is made from. If you've every been to Scotland, you'll know that some rivers are dark brown with peat sediment.

If you ask any of the distilleries on Islay they'll all tell you that the peated water has very little effect on the actual whisky , it all comes from the drying of the malted barley and the amount of time it is exposed to the peat smoke at Port Ellen Maltings or in the Laphroaig/Bowmore distillery Kilns . Another factor is how much of the husk is allowed through the milling machine , most tend to allow only a small amount through as it can bung up the mashing .Ardbeg allow quite a bit in to attain the higher phenolic content ( how peated it is ) .A further "complication" if the distilleries does it's own kilning is ventilation , most now have extractor fans , if you try one of the early to mid 1970's Ardbegs the phenolic content in these are very high due to the use of just natural ventilation (i.e. no fans ) so the smoke hung around and sunk into the malt . (BTW Pheolic content, is the amount of phenols in the grain measured in parts per million . Bunnahabhain is just about non-existant , Bruichladdich is 5-10ppm , Bowmore about 20-30ppm , Laphroaig /Lagavulin around 30-40ppm and Ardbeg around the 56ppm . Bruichladdich's Port Charlotte is about 40ppm and their Octomore is 80 ppm though it is claimed to have went into the low 100's on one batch !). Port Ellen Maltings will tell you it's near impossible to get anything over 60 for consistant batches . I can't remember what Caol ila 's ppm content is but i think it's around the Bowmore range , they do a "Highland" Caol ila for blending purposes which is un-peated and Bunnahabhain are now doing a "peated" version of which the festival bottling the "Moine" was an experiment in 1997 (it was about 20ppm , but the production run will be slightly higher ) God i've gone all technical.....time for a lie down Slainté Gordon

interesting - thank you

next time i will spend my hollidays there. I drive a defender and i will show my car his homeland. Also the spare parts are particulate cheaper ;-)

greetings from bavaria

BTW: An adage in bavaria means: `hop and malt, god protect it` (Hopfen und Malz, Gott erhalts) I'm unable to bring it in a rhyme in english ;-)

Bye Tom

"Gordon" ha scritto nel messaggio news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

Remember that Bowmore mals only 10% in his premises. 90% comes from Port Ellen, too! Bye