Furthermore, they use a two-step process where they first ‘peat’ their barley before then drying it to impart its famously characteristic peatiness. Interestingly, the Laphroaig distillery on Islay is one of only a few distilleries that still use the traditional floor malting process. (Not all distilleries use peat to make whisky.) Today, peat is usually only used by certain distilleries for flavouring and drying the grain in their peated whiskies. In traditional Scottish and Irish whisky making, peat was originally burned to heat small pot stills and to dry wet (malted) grain. Secondarily, heat from the kiln below halts the germination process of the damp barley by drying it. This is what gives the whisky its peaty, medicinal tasting notes which often differentiate particular distilleries and their range of spirits. They’re then burned to create heat and smoke which rises upwards through a perforated floor and then through a thin bed of malted grain above.Īs the smoke fills the room, it permeates the grain imbuing peaty and smoky flavours. To make peated whisky, locally cut peat briquettes are stacked inside a kiln.

Historically, it was used as one of the few locally available fuel sources for making fire. It can be found in many parts of the world, but in the context of whisky, the majority of the UK’s peatlands are in parts of rural Scotland, on the islands, in the highlands and western mainland. Peat is most abundant in the northern hemisphere, usually occurring in boggy marshlands across northern Europe and North America. Despite its age, peat isn’t technically a fossil fuel as it isn’t fossilised, however, it has even higher C02 emissions than burning coal. Today, peat is still used as a fuel source and is commercially harvested via machines and burned for heat or electrical energy. Plentiful, dense and naturally occurring, peat was and still is traditionally cut from bogland, stacked and then dried for use as fuel for burning. Peat is an earthy matter formed by partially decomposed vegetation in the waterlogged and often acidic conditions of moors and bogs. What it is, how it’s made, what smoky and peaty whisky tastes like and more. In this blog post, you will learn everything you need to know about peated whisky. The intensity of peat flavour within whisky depends on the malted barley’s duration of exposure as well as the type of peat burned in the kiln beneath.

Peated whiskies are typically produced in Scotland, Ireland and Japan however other regions are known to use peat in their malting process too. Peat (a dense bog soil) is burned to create the fire which imparts a characteristic and smoky flavour via aromatic hydrocarbons. Peated whisky is made with malted barley which has been steeped in water and then dried with heat from a peat fire beneath.

Peat whiskey brands