Our Whisky Making Process

Once fermented, the distillation process comes into play.

The 8% ABV wash is split equally into our two 2500 litre Wash Stills; these stills are named Tara and Margaret. Tara is our original Wash Still (installed in 2014) and is named after one of our founders' daughters.

Margaret, an identical replica of Tara that was installed in 2019 as part of expanding our production capacity, is named after Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh the influential artist known for her work with metal and for helping to create the iconic Glasgow Style alongside her sister, Francis. Margaret married Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the two, alongside Margaret's sister Frances and her husband Herbert Mcnair were known as 'The Glasgow Four'.    

Within our Wash Stills our wort is distilled slowly over 6 hours to create a 20-25% ABV spirit known as the Low Wines. 

After this, the low wines go through a second distillation over five hours in our spirit stills, Mhairi and Frances.

The low wines now get broken into three sections, the foreshots, the middle cut and the feints. With our hands-on approach here at The Glasgow Distillery, we use time, sight, smell and taste to distinguish between each.

We run our stills at a very slow pace; this ensures the spirit within has as much contact with the copper insides of the stills as possible. Increased copper contact naturally removes undesirable impurities and sulphates from the spirit, leaving us with a very desirable sweet and fruity spirit character.

As spirit starts to come off the stills, it is split into three sections: The Heads, The Hearts and The Tails. 

The heads, also known as the foreshots, are a little bit herbal and too sweet for what we would like and potentially contains harmful non-ethanol chemicals, so we run this off before the desired middle cut is taken - this middle cut is what will be captured and used to fill our casks and is known as the Hearts. 

Our Hearts are captured at different strengths for our three different distillation styles. Our unpeated triple distilled spirit starts to be captured from approximately 81% ABV to 75% ABV to give us fresh and wonderfully smooth hearts.

The unpeated double distilled runs from 72% ABV to 63% ABV providing us with intensely fruity and well-balanced hearts.

Our double distilled peated spirit runs from 72% ABV and is then cut at 57% ABV to give us heavier and waxier robust smoky hearts.

As the hearts come to an end, we begin to nose the spirit as the sweetness begins to fade and becomes slightly oily, we head into the feints. The feints, also known as the tails, is the spirit that is not quite fruity and sweet enough to become our single malt scotch whisky.  

We combine the heads and the tails of the run and will add them to our next distillation of low wines in a continuous circle of recycling.

The hearts from each spirit run is the spirit we use to fill our casks.

Just like all distilleries, the shape and size of our stills are unique to us and have a great impact on our spirit. Our wash stills have a capacity of 2,500 litres each with steam coils as their heat source and a moderate decline in the lyne arm angle which is attached to shell and tube condensers.

Our spirit stills are very similar to our wash stills but with a slight difference in size holding a capacity of 1,500 litres. The shape and size of our stills allow us to produce a wonderfully fruity spirit that will mature nicely in oak casks. The stills we have at The Glasgow Distillery are shaped so that they allow us to make our three styles of new make spirit using the same equipment.  

Our original wash and spirit stills are named Tara and Mhairi. In 2019 we installed Margaret and Frances – identical replicas of the original set and named after two Glaswegian artists, and sisters, Margaret and Frances McDonald. Both were prominent members of 'The Glasgow Girls', a group of pioneering female artists who forged the iconic art nouveau style which the city still celebrates to this day.