Triticale may be little used and little known, but it has history and a lot to offer both farmers and distillers. However, this hybrid of wheat and rye has been slow to gain ground as a workhorse in the stillhouse.
The grain has its origins in Scotland in the late 1800s, but systematic breeding only got off the ground in the 1960s. For farmers, triticale offers some great benefits.
Curtis Hennings, who has been growing triticale in Washington state for about 40 years, says it tends to offer high yield—about 10 percent more per acre than wheat. And, when it comes to drought tolerance, “it is every bit as tough or tougher than wheat,” he says.
In recent years, this grain has also been gaining traction among distillers.
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Dry Fly Distilling in Spokane, Washington, is among its earliest adopters. Distillery president Patrick Donovan says that using triticale originally stemmed from wanting to make a whiskey with rye.
“We’re pretty much dedicated to using local raw materials,” he says. In Washington, however, rye is considered an invasive species. Dry Fly turned to triticale to drive the whiskey toward the peppery-spicy notes they wanted to achieve.
Matt Lessnau, head distiller and partner at Adrift Distillers in Long Beach, Washington, is another whose hopes of making a rye whiskey were dashed.
“I quickly learned about Washington state’s unique designation of rye as a Class C noxious weed,” he says, “which significantly hampered commercial availability.” Triticale intrigued him, he says, after he’d tried versions that some other distillers in the state were making.
In New Zealand, the Auld Farm Distillery grows its own triticale in Otautau, near the southern end of South Island. Rob Auld’s family has farmed there for more than 100 years, and he and his wife turned to distilling to add value to the farm.
Growing rye on his land is tough, Auld says, because it will grow tall, fall over, then grow up again. “It just grows and grows and grows.” That not only makes it challenging to harvest, but the grain quality isn’t great, either.
“We can buy rye in, quite easily, from further up New Zealand,” he says. “But who we are is growing everything on the farm.”
And at Branch Point Distilling in Dayton, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley, co-owner and distiller Steven Day is similarly committed to careful sourcing of raw materials.
“One of the foundational principles of Branch Point is to use hyper-local grain in partnership with local family farmers,” he says. Triticale is just such a grain, and he can easily access it without looking too far afield. “We try to buy as much as we can, even from within the same county.”
Photo courtesy Auld Farm Distillery (Otautau, South Island, New Zealand
In terms of how triticale behaves in the distillery, experiences vary among distillers.
At Dry Fly, Donovan says it acts more like rye than wheat. “The grain’s a little huskier, it’s got a little bit higher protein content, so yields are not as good.” He also says that—much like rye—gumminess can be a challenge during milling and processing.
At Branch Point, meanwhile, Day says triticale behaves well for his on-grain fermentation process. (His mash bill: 75 percent triticale, 10 percent rye malt, and 15 percent malted barley.) He says he finds that it has better yield than rye but with fewer viscosity problems.
For Adrift’s Lessnau—who’s often used wheat as the base for his neutral spirits—integrating triticale was a smooth transition. “We simply adjusted for whiskey production, using lower fermentation temperatures, longer fermentation times, and lower distillation proofs compared to our neutral spirits,” he says.
Lessnau says he’s also experimented with a custom-roasted caramel triticale malt made in collaboration with a local malthouse. “This addition brought a wonderful toasted-marshmallow note, along with a subtle smokiness, to the final product,” he says. Their current mash bill blends raw triticale, malted triticale, and this special caramel triticale malt.
At Auld Farm, Auld says there are some challenges with using triticale. Getting good efficiency took some trial and error, as the team struggled to run a traditional lauter at a good speed. Yet he says it’s worth the effort: “It’s our worst grain to work with, but it’s the most exciting grain to follow through cask maturation.”
They’re using a mash bill of 80 percent triticale and 20 percent malted barley—and the latter provides ample enzymes for the mash, Auld says. As a small-scale experiment, they did try adding enzymes but were not seeing markedly different results.
Aging and Finishing
When he first used triticale at Dry Fly, Donovan says he expected that the rye aspect would be most noticeable on the finish. On the contrary, he finds that the pepperiness presents up front, and that the finish is light, mellow, and creamy—closer to a wheated whiskey.
However, there are some key differences.
“It’s got a little bit more backbone than the wheat does,” he says. That personality makes the triticale whiskey ideal for use in the distillery’s secondary barrel-aging program. Working with wineries from Spokane and Walla Walla, Dry Fly sources barrels “that literally were emptied the day before we’re putting whiskey back into [them],” Donovan says. “It’s a way to kind of manipulate whiskey in a way that’s unique and fun, and then also tie it back to our region.”
After aging whiskey for three to four years in virgin oak barrels, the team then moves it into syrah or zinfandel barrels. While soft, mellow wheated whiskey needs to be blended out following the wine-barrel finish, the triticale whiskey doesn’t need that, Donovan says. “It doesn’t get overpowered and holds its own.”
At Branch Point, new-make triticale goes into new, charred American oak barrels—typically a char no. 3—for five to seven years. Ahead of aging, the flavor of the new-make stands out. “There’s a vanilla note that’s there even before exposure to the barrel,” Day says of the spirit. The distillery occasionally releases bottled-in-bond triticale, and the most recent special release was a single-cask, cask-strength version matured for seven years.
Ken Miller, CEO at The Distillarium, also makes triticale whiskey at his Yakima-based distillery; they recently released a five-year triticale. “I tell people, a lot of times, it’s kind of a bridge between a rye and a bourbon.” He also says that his team hasn’t found working with the grain to be too challenging.
Customer Education
At The Distillarium, Miller cites customer awareness as a core challenge. “The consumers aren’t familiar with the grain,” he says.
Introducing new people to it at festivals and other events with a guided sales process works well for The Distillarium team—and, in those contexts, Miller says it’s often their best seller, by far. That’s where novelty plays well: People approach saying that they’ve heard that they must try this grain.
“But as far as sitting on a shelf,” Miller says, “people just don’t know what it is.”
At Branch Point, Day says it’s important to help potential customers understand it. “It’s not a grain that people have heard of, generally speaking,” he says. “It plays well in the distillery. It’s tougher out on the shelf.”
Awareness challenges aside, triticale’s star could be rising among enthusiasts and distillers.
“A lot of whiskey geeks are looking for the new thing,” Day says. And triticale delivers, in terms of being in the ballpark that bourbon and rye drinkers will enjoy.
“I feel like its ahead of its time to be honest,” says Donovan at Dry Fly. “I’m just excited for more people to learn about it.”
Adrift’s Lessnau agrees that it’s a special grain.
“For us, triticale is more than just an ingredient,” he says. “It’s a way to craft a distinctive whiskey and share a compelling narrative. We’re proud to partner with local farmers, repurposing a grain traditionally used as a cover crop and introducing it to a new market.”
