Royal Lochnagar Distillery

Production

More about Royal Lochnagar Distillery

Status Operational
Established: 1845
Owner: Diageo plc
Capacity: 500,000 litres per year
Visitor Policy: Visitors welcome throughout the year
Tel: +44 (0)1339 742 700
It is a confident man who uses his own name to market a product. “Take a peg of John Begg” went the slogan, referencing the man who created Royal Lochnagar Single Malt Scotch Whisky. An even smarter marketing move was to invite the new neighbours round for a dram – particularly shrewd as he had built his distillery next to Balmoral Castle in Deeside, and his neighbours were Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They repaid his hospitality with a Royal Warrant. ‘Lochnagar’ is not a loch but a mountain. At just 1,155 metres (3,789 feet) high it’s not much of a mountain, as mountains go, but it provides a stunning backdrop to Deeside, the home of Royal Lochnagar Single Malt Whisky in Scotland’s Highland whisky region.

Address

Ballater
AB35 5TB
Aberdeenshire, Scotland
United Kingdom

Royal Lochnagar Single Malt Whisky sources its very lightly peated (only 1-2 parts per million) barley from the Roseisle maltings near Elgin, using 28 tonnes per week. This is ground in a Porteus grain mill producing a grist with 10 per cent flour, 70 per cent grits and 20 per cent husk. The process water comes from a dammed mountain stream and the small lake this has created just up the hill from the distillery.

The Royal Lochnagar distillery mashes 5.4 tonnes of grist five times a week in a traditional cast iron open-topped rake and plough mashtun, each mashing lasting nine hours. Unusually, four rather than the more common three waters are added per mash. The first water, 19,000 litres at 64°C is filled to the top. This is drained through the fine plates in the base of the mashtun and the second water, 5,500 litres at 77°C added. The third and fourth waters, at 80°C and 85°C respectively are used as sparge water for the first wash of the next mash. The draft (spent grain) is used by local farmers as cattle feed.

The 24,500 litres wort produced by the mashing of the first two waters is cooled by a heat exchanger to 15-17°C and 80kg of distiller’s yeast added and premixed before the wort is pumped to one of the three Scottish larch wood washbacks – No.1 and No.2 are both 27,000 litres capacity, though the third, a mere 14,000 litres, is not generally used.

The fermentation period lasts up to five days, producing a wash at approx nine per cent alcohol by volume and this long ferment is credited for helping produce the light spirit, with a grassy character, that Royal Lochnagar Single Malt Whisky is renowned for.

As previously mentioned, this is a tiny distillery and the still house is home to just two onion-shaped copper pot stills – the wash still has a 7,410 litres capacity and the spirit still 5,450 litres capacity. Both stills are indirectly steam heated and unusually have lyne-arms which dip downwards rather than the typical horizontal orientation.

Royal Lochnagar’s traditional cast iron, worm tub condensers sit outside, the riveted sides looking quite rightly like relics from the Victorian age of steam. These are rectangular in shape rather than the more normal cylindrical. Even more unusually, these are run hot – the flow of water surrounding the copper worm is slow enough to allow the vapour within the worm to heat it, so the vapour does not condense until about half way down the worm. This increases the copper’s contact with the vapour, so producing a lighter spirit. This runs contrary to the usual rule-of-thumb of worm tubs producing a heavy spirit.

The wash still is charged with 6,100 litres of wort, and one mash will fill the wash still four times. The low wines produced by the first distillation run at 23-24.5% alc.vol.. The charge on the spirit still is 4,200 litres, well below the still’s capacity. Foreshots start to run at 80-75% alc./vol. and after around 20 minutes the cut is made at 75% alc./vol.. Hearts flow for around 70 minutes before the switch to feints is made around 60% alc./vol.. Feints are run off, leaving a 1% alc./vol. pot ale which is spread on neighbouring fields along with spent lees.

The average strength of the new make spirit in the spirit receiver warehouse vessel (SRWV) is 68% abv. The new make is light, with a nose reminiscent of freshly loaded hayloft with green apple skin aromas. This is transferred to the very rare square wooden filling vat in the filling store where casks are hand-filled. The Avery scale on which the casks are weighed looks as though it belongs to a bygone age: empty casks are weighed before and after filling so the volume inside can be calculated by the difference in weight.

Hogsheads (250-litre – broken down and reconstructed ex-American whiskey casks) are used for ageing as well as 500-litre European oak sherry-seasoned puncheons and butts. These are filled at the industry standard 63.5% alc./vol..

The on-site, traditional bonded warehouse, formally a maltings, holds 1,300 rare and exceptional casks. The bulk of ageing stocks is stored at Diageo’s facility at Glenlossie distillery. Total production at Royal Lochnagar is around 500,000 litres per year, most of which is used in Johnnie Walker Black Label and Blue Label blends, as well as Windsor, the leading brand of blended whisky in Korea.

Welcome to Difford's Guide

All editorial and photography on this website is copyright protected

© Odd Firm of Sin 2024