whisky, grain , is the term used to define the high-ABV whisky produced in continuous stills in Scotland, Ireland, and Japan. (In Canada, the style is known as “base whisky,” a distinction without a difference.) Grain whisky tends to be made from corn (maize) or soft winter wheat with some high-nitrogen, high-diastase malted barley added for saccharification. See saccharification. Some distillers, however, also make grain whisky from mixed mash bills, rye, or 100 percent malted barley.
Grain whisky as a drink dates back to the 1830s, when continuous stills were first adopted in the Scottish Lowlands to turn out massive quantities of lightly flavored but pure whisky that could be sold very cheaply to urban industrial workers. (Distillation follows industrialization, as the saying goes.) Its acceptance as a distinct category of whisky is due to the 1908 British Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits, which settled (legally, anyway) the heated debate between the pot-still malt whisky makers and the continuous-still operators about whether this new distillate was whisky at all. Legally, it was—as long as you called it “grain whisky,” and not just plain “whisky.”
As the distillate is collected at such a high strength, grain whisky will always be lighter in character than malt whisky. It will age more quickly (after twelve years, it tends to taste mostly of the barrel) and on its own easily disappears in a mixed drink. It is, however, most commonly used in making blended whisky, but some 100 percent grain whiskies (either single distillery bottlings or blends of different grain distilleries) are becoming more widely seen.
See also Coffey still; still, continuous; whisky, blended; and whisky, Canadian.
Buxton, Ian, and Paul S. Hughes. The Science and Commerce of Whisky. Cambridge: RSC, 2015.
Lea, A. G. H., and J. Piggott, eds. Fermented Beverage Production. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 2003.
Royal Commission on Whiskey and Other Potable Spirits. Interim Report. London: HM Stationery Office, 1908.
Russell, Inge, ed. Whisky Technology, Production and Marketing. Amsterdam: Academic Press, 2003.
By: Dave Broom
The still house at the John Power and Sons distillery, John’s Lane, Dublin, as Alfred Barnard found it in the 1880s. Note the massive, squat pot stills characteristic of Irish whisky making at the time. Behind the ladder at right center one may discern the peculiar, off-center still head used to accommodate a mechanical rummager.
Wondrich Collection.
The still house at the John Power and Sons distillery, John’s Lane, Dublin, as Alfred Barnard found it in the 1880s. Note the massive, squat pot stills characteristic of Irish whisky making at the time. Behind the ladder at right center one may discern the peculiar, off-center still head used to accommodate a mechanical rummager. Source: Wondrich Collection.