Whisky DYC Distilleries.
Last Friday, November the 14th, 2014, the students of the Official Language School, had the opportunity to visit DYC Whisky distilleries in an English tour.
Elena Esteban, the public relations of Beam Spain S. L., the current company owner of DYC factory, was our tour guide and showed us the installations and the secrets of the process of whisky distillations.
(Elena told us that spanish word DYC doesn't sounds well for English people so they call it D (di:), Y (wai), C (si:) )
The visit starts at the old mill of Molino del Arco, a beautiful building from the XV century.
The founder of this company was Nicomedes Garcia. He travelled to Scotland in the year 1950 to discover the secrets of Scoth whisky. After that, in the year 1958 he founded this company called, Destilerías y Crianza del Whisky, in Palazuelos de Eresma.
In this place, they can get the cereals from Castilla y Leon and the clear water from the river Eresma.
One year later he started to elaborate whisky, and after 4 years the fisrt whisky DYC was elaborated.
The whisky is made from cereals, that are usually called grain.
For Scoth Whisky only barley is used.
For Bourbon Whisky, from USA, corn at least at 51 % and other grain as wheat, barley and rye are used.
In the elaboration of Whisky DYC barley and corn are used, but for DYC 8 and 10 years the grain used is only barley.
The process to elaborate whisky follows several steps:
Malting, Mashing or scarification, Fermentation, Distillation and Aging.
Malting
In this process the grain starts to germinate to develop the enzymes that are necesary to transform the starch into sugars.
When the spring time arrives, the grain starts to germinate, so we need to simulate this conditions on the malting room. At that time the grain is soaking in water and heated at 15 - 20 degrees.
After 3 to 5 days the germination is halted by heating the grain with hot air.
In most cases, smoke from peat fire is introduced to the oven called klin to add flavour to the whisky.
Currently the process of malting is made out of the factories of whisky, but in the DYC instalations this process is made inside the factory.
Mashing
The malt is milled and then taken into a large kettle called mash tun.
In this process the enzymes transform the starch into sugars, and producing a liquid called wort.
Fermentation
In this step, yeast is added to the wort in a large vessel or container, called the whashback.
The microcospic fungi, that in fact is the yeast, convert the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
The liquid, called wash, has a low graduation of alcohol.
Distillation
In the next process the wash is distilled
Elena Esteban our tourguide, told us, that it is very important to distillates the wash in copper pot stills, thus, thanks to the copper, we can obtain a clear liquid.
This process is repeated twice, and Elena, gave us a sample of each step to smell it. The second one with higher graduation of alcohol. (I don't remember the percentage)
At this point it's very important to separate the Heads and the Tails.
The beginning of the distillation has a lot percentage of Methanol and it is sent for chemicals laboratories.
The Tails have many impurities.
There another part that is kept as VAT
The final product called spirit, has a high content of alcohol, about 60-70 %
Aging or Maturing
This important process takes place in American oak casks.
The whisky DYC has the following products:
3 years old whisky which uses malted grain. That is, it uses barley and corn.
In the year 1974 DYC started to sell the 8 years aged, that uses malted barley. The first bottle, reminded us the facade of the Diamond Tip House.
In the year 2010 DYC produced the 10 years old whisky.
Elena showed us some casks of whiskey that are dated from 2002 so, she suggested that DYC is likely to produce a new older whisky.
Vocabulary
Copper pot stills: Alambique de cobre.
Heads and tails: Cara y cruz. Cabezas y colas.
VAT: Value added tax.
Wort: mosto azucarado de malta
Wash: el mosto transformado en alcohol de 5º a 8º
American oak casks: Barricas de roble americano.
Single malt: come from a unique distillery
Single cask: come from a unique cask
Note:
Under Scotch whisky Regulations, a "Single Malt Scotch Whisky", must be made exclusively from malted barley, must be distilled using pot stills at a single distillery, and must be aged for at least three years in oak casks.
No comments:
Post a Comment