Dallas Dhu Distillery

Chris Milne
Published on 05 January 2012

As part of St. Andrews day on the 30th of November, Historic Scotland opened up many of its tourist attractions for free on the nearest weekend.  One of these places was the whisky distillery, Dallas Dhu near Forres which closed almost 30 years ago in 1983.

It was an interesting museum and whilst I made my way round photographing I made sure to read about what each part of the process did.  I've tried to condense the process down for you to be able to read quickly enough but if you get the chance to visit I recommend that you do so!

Firstly, we visited the barley loft which is where the barley was taken to on arrival, it is where the process begins with the barley going through the dressing machine to remove impurities.  It was then placed in one of the two steeps where it was soaked for 60 hours before being poured on the malting floor where the wet barley was to sprout.  Here the starch in the barley was broken up into sugars and starches which could be dissolved in water.  The produce, green malt, was then dried in the Kiln.  The process lasts for a week.

 

 

Next we visited the Kiln where the barley was dried.  Immediately you notice the coke/peat fire, the temperature given off by the fire is cooled by the dampers before hitting the deflectors which spread the heat.  The malt to be dried is placed above those components on perforated Kiln floor which is brought in by the elevator pipe where the green malt arrives from.  At the top is the Kiln head which to me has always been the standout feature of distilleries due to their unique shape!  Their function is to allow the moist air to escape.

The meter room was the next room of our tour which housed the various electrical controls and had an abundance of levels and controls, it used to serve as the home for the steam engine which powered the machinery in the distillery.

The mill room was where the malt deposit was weighed before being crushed with steel rollers together with grist.  The mixture was then raised by elevator to the top of the mash house where the mash tun sat, it mixed hot water and grist and the process of starch to sugar conversion in malts were completed.  The produced sweet liquid called worts was then pumped into wooden vessels in the tun room via a cooler.

 

In the tun room there were six wooden washbacks where the cooled worts were mixed with yeast fermenting the liquid so the sugar turned into an alcohol and carbon dioxide gas.  The process lasted roughly two days and at the end the alcoholic mixture known as wash was ready for distillation.

The wash is then moved into the wash still where the steam heated cylinders boil the wash giving off a weak vapour mixture of alcohol and water.  After being passed through the worm in a vat of cold water it produces a product called low wines which is collected in a receiver room based tank.  These low wines are then passed through the spirit still where they are distilled for a second time.  There are three cuts – first, middle and last – and the first and last are collected for re-distilling however the middle part is known as plain British spirits and is the to-be whisky.  It is collected in the receiver room before being passed on to the filling store.

 

In the filling store the spirit was put into the casks, the main types used were the hogshead which could hold 52 gallons (170 litres) and the butt which could store 110 gallons (360 litres).  These were then taken to the warehouse where they would be stored in a dark room, after three years they could officially be classed as Scottish Malt Whisky but most were kept in there for longer where they would gain and lose flavours.

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