Whisky Tinkering

It's call chill-filtering, and there was an extensive thread on hear a month or so ago.. It will be worth your while going back and finding and reading the thread. however this may help

Chill filtration Many whiskies are chill-filtered before bottling. This is a process in which the whisky is chilled to near 0°C (32°F) and passed through a fine filter. This removes some of the compounds produced during distillation or extracted from the wood of the cask, and prevents the whisky from becoming hazy when chilled, or when water or ice is added.

However, chill filtration also removes some of the flavour and body from the whisky; some consider chill-filtered whiskies to be inferior for that reason.

Very often bottle of malts that is not chill-filtered and colored state it on their labels

The opposite I have only seen on the serendipity

MacDeffe

It sounds horrible. I agree with the OP: where do we find a list of whiskies that are chill-filtered in order to avoid them!?

Or, better yet, a list of whiskies that are *not* chill-filtered!?

I should think that if you hang around here long enough, you'll see one. Probably every month, too...

You confound me, sir! What can you mean? Is it a FAQ or something?

Having moved over to malt whiskies from real ales as age withers me, I am very keen to ensure that no one is tinkering with my 'water of life'. I don't drink that much, but I would like to think that my ten year old malt, filtered for two hundred years through ye olde Scottish peat etc etc (cut to bleak view of storm-lashed western isles, rousing bagpipe music), wasn't being tarnished by some spin-doctor desperate to appease Japanese and Yankee whisky-with-icers.

Appallingly,

Major Grimly-Oban

If you quoted the original post to which refer then your question "Is it a FAQ or something" could be answered, because we might then know what "it" is..

Chill-filtering has been the norm in 40% distillery bottled whiskies for years. It's the fairly recent upsurge in demand for CS (cask-strength) whiskies which has led to the reduction in chill-filtering. All Cadenhead CS bottles and SMWS bottles are AFAIK not chill-filtered. As posted on here by another, check the bottle. Or check the web site of the distillery/bottler

Roger

U¿ytkownik "Robert Anderson" napisa³:

It's not that horrible after all. Some of the finest malts out there are in fact chill-filtered. Lagavulin 16yo OB, Highland Park 18yo OB, Mortlach 16yo F&F, to name just a few. Most independent bottlings will be non chill-filetered, with the exception of Gordon & MacPhail, basically. As somebody has already stated, you can be sure

A safe practice to ensure you drink only non chill-filetered stuff, check the ABV of the stuff you're poring into your glass, or consider buying, as the case may be. All the whiskies at 40% and 43% will most surely have been chill-filetered. If the ABV is 46% or over, there is a good chance the stuff inside the bottle has not been "tinkered" with.

I've been drinking single malts for quite a few years now, and I'm afraid the trend you seem to be promoting is similar to that rubbish of drinking only non-coloured whiskies. Which means that you're missing out on a lot of absolutely fantastic stuff out there - like Ardbeg 17yo OB, Oban 14yo OB, Longmorn 15yo OB, Talisker 10yo OB, etc...

Cheers, Rajmund

U¿ytkownik "Rajmund" napisa³:

...you're drinking non chill-filered stuff if you stick to Cadenhead's whiskies...

Sorry, seem to have lost haf a sentence ;-)

Cheers, Rajmund

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Just think how much better those whiskies would be if they hadn't been chill-filtered.

I must take issue with that. Nearly all of the idependent bottlings I have are chill-filtered.

Agreed

Agreed but still assert my first point above. Whilst there are excelelnt chill-filtered whiskies around they would be better without it, and most of the more delicate tasting whiskies are eminently better "au naturel"

Roger

U¿ytkownik "Renko" napisa³:

They probably would have. Still, they are by far better than a lot of non-chill filtered stuff from independents. For example, I am yet to find an independent, non-chill filtered version of Highland Park that will be better than HP 18yo OB, which is chill-filtered...

What indies are you talking about? Cadenhead, Murray McDavid, Adelphi, Blackadder, and many others only bottle non-chill filtered stuff. Signatory used to chill-filter, but it seems they have come to reason and are now doing un-chill filtered stuff.

Still, as I said before, they are much better than most of their un-chill filtered brethren from the indies...

Cheers, Rajmund

ALL SMWS whisky is not chill-filtered, and I have a lot of their bottles

But your correct about Highland Park... except for my SMWS bottle. I have a sneaking suspicion that Glenmorangie is chill-filtered, and that is never available in any independent bottlings, which is rather ironic as they now own the SMWS.

Roger

U¿ytkownik "Renko" napisa³:

Right.

A lot of excellent, good, or promising whiskies are not available through independents. Take Balvenie (one of my top favourites) or Glenfarclas. Hard to imagine they would be even better if not chill-filtered. Particularly Glenfarclas 21yo, the best of their range, IMO.

Cheers, Rajmund

I'm not sure I understand your description of Glenfarclas "Hard", does this differ in some way from normal distillery bottled Glenfarclas.

Glenfarclas was in fact the first whisly ever sold by SMWS as an independent bottling, and frequently features in its offering in various ages.

Roger

U¿ytkownik "Renko" napisa³:

Glenfarclas seem to be paranoid about independent bottlings of their whisky, for some reason. Apart from the SMWS bottlings, there are hardly any indies bottling their stuff. About a year ago, Adelphi bottled some fantastic whisky that was named "Whisky That Cannot Be Named", because their producer (Glenfarclas) refused for their name to be used on the bottle. The whisky was 50 years old, and was one of the top five whiskies I've ever had. Still, they didn't want it to bear the name of Glanfarclas, and flatly denied Adelphi the right to do so. i mean, I would understand such an attitude if the whisky was inferior or competitive to their official bottlings, but that was hardly the case...

Cheers, Rajmund

I understand. Of course SMWS doesn't name the distilleries on the bottle, but you don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out the name.

Roger

Murray MacDavid independant bottlers claim to bottle all their whiskies unchillfiltered as well. Their version of Laphroaig which they call Leapfrog, is an example of this. Put a blindfold on even the best of connosseurs and I bet not even one of them could taste a hapeworth of difference. BTW the part about them being filtered through asbestos is new to me. This I have never heard of. Asbestos is out;awed in building materials nowadays let alone having it as a filter for a product for consumers to drink. BTW thanks Rajmund for your imput. Over the years I have always been amazed at yout knowledge.

Peace,

Jock

Uzytkownik "boudinman" napisal:

Hear, hear!

Yeah, the stuff they use to filter whisky is a mystery to me, but I would be more than surprised to find out it is asbestos.

Cheers, Rajmund

U¿ytkownik "Renko" napisa³:

There's a website (don't remember the URL) which deciphers all the distillery codes that they use on the bottles. In the case of of "The Whisky That Cannot Be Named", it took a little of sherlocking to find out, actually. Jamie Walker of Adelphi just winced and said, "You are right about the origin of the whisky", but never actually said the name Glenfarclas ;-) As if there was a Big Brother watching us...

Cheers, Rajmund

Here's a quote from a detailed article on chill filtering in Whisky Magazine no. 33:

Once chilled, the whisky continues to what is typically a "plate and frame" filter. This features a cellulose pad, resembling blotting paper, which may be impregnated with kieselguhr, essentially fossilized plankton (sea creatures) mined from seabeds.

The relevance to whisky is that the kieselguhr initially attracts fatty acid molecules, though it is essentially a case of mechanics as the fine lattice structure is an ideal filter... The choice of filter pads also affects the degree of filtration, with filters available in a range of thicknesses and densities. The amount of sheets placed in a filter also varies, and sheets with varying elvels of kieseguhr are available, enabling distillers to tailor the process to each product.

Al Jones