Whiskey Production with East London Liquor Company

“The idea that you could use a Vienna or Munich or a Maris Otter in whisky making – to a traditional Scottish distiller, anyway – would be completely a no-no,” says Colin Johnston, now Crisp’s craft team sales and marketing manager. A few years ago, as someone new to whisky, but with lots of experience in brewing beer, he wondered, “why couldn’t you use these grains in whisky?”

It just so happened that there was a new distillery in London who had exactly the same thought.

Image courtesy of Charlie McKay

East London Liquor Co. was founded in the summer of 2014 with the ambition of producing affordable, top-quality, independent gin and vodka. It was never going to be just white spirits, so in December that year, they distilled their first whiskey, overseen by Andy Mooney, now the distillery manager.

It was a renewal of whiskey-making in the capital, something lost over 100 years earlier. With no recent history and detached from traditional practices, Andy and ELLC were able to draw inspiration from Irish whiskey, Scottish whiskey, and American whiskey, as well as ideas from the growing number of distillers and craft brewers, and produce something distinctly new.

“Apart from some of the smaller distilleries in the States, nobody was really using rye, wheat, and brewing grains for whiskey,” says Andy. From the beginning, he’s been using a variety of malts, including those typically used just for beer.”

The connection between beer and whiskey is a close one. Whiskey begins by mixing crushed malt (and crushed grain if it’s not a pure malt whiskey) and hot water in a mash tun. Then it’s cooled and fermented into what’s effectively a hop-less strong ale, known as the ‘wash.’ It’s that wash which goes through a two-stage pot still distilling process, with that distillate left to mature for years in wooden casks.

ELLC’s wash was made for them at a nearby brewery in Hackney until they installed their own brewing vessels in October 2017. It was then that Andy could really begin to experiment with Crisp’s malts.

“Malt gives you different flavours, different textures, different mouthfeels,” he says. “They can give your spirit more depth, or take it in a new direction that you wouldn’t get from using one grain.” He uses the analogy of bread: baking a loaf with just white flour is like making whiskey with just pot still malt. But adding even a small amount of rye flour can really change the flavour. “You’re making a richer and deeper overall profile for your spirit.”

It was looking to make whiskey from wheat which first connected Andy to Crisp, but it was thanks to rye that they realised a shared ambition: to discover what can be achieved by using different grains in whiskey. They had to overcome the challenges of mashing with a grain like rye, which becomes very ‘sticky’ in the mash tun, and they needed to determine the ideal percentages to use for particular flavors. As Andy explains, using lots of rye “gives you bitterness, beefy, umami and mushroom flavours, whereas a little bit of rye might give you delicate spice, some citrus notes, even some floral as well.”

ELLC’s London Rye® is now one of their core brands, and London’s first whiskey since 1904. It’s a whiskey inspired by American spirits but brewed in a new way. It uses less rye than American distillers would use, and more brewing malt. It co-ferments with a distilling yeast and a Saison beer yeast to add a spicy characte,r which works to amplify the rye’s own spice. And it uses a variety of different barrels, including ex-bourbon, ex-sherry, virgin oa,k and chestnut.

Image courtesy of Charlie McKay

“It’s not like your traditional rye where you’re getting fire, wood, coconut, spice, and citrus,” says Andy.  “Instead, it’s a lot of spice flavour, slight bits of chocolate and biscuit, sarsaparilla and cola, with a little bit of tropical fruit.” He explains it as, “almost a hybrid between your Scotch, Japanese, and American-style Rye.” Or as the name better says it: a London Rye.

Alongside the Rye, ELLC also makes a Single Malt. Andy describes the two most recognisable flavours as milk chocolate and biscuits, or “chocolate hob nobs,” much of which comes from the mix of specialty brewing malts used in the wash, including Crisp’s famous Maris Otter. The forthcoming 2021 single malt will be the first where the wash, distillation, and maturation were all done solely at ELLC, and all the malt is from Crisp.

The East London Single Malt and London Rye® are regularly available, but they aren’t reductively aiming for the same profile with each release. “The idea is to build on the previous one,” says Andy. Whereas ELLC’s gin and vodka are always consistent, the whiskey is where they can experiment. That’s led them to produce small batches of unusual and interesting whiskies to see how they might turn out.  This includes using untraditional grain bills and different barrels.

Image courtesy of Charlie McKay

It’s this creative curiosity to experiment that makes the work between ELLC and Crisp a lot of fun for both sides. “Crisp really understands what we’re about and what we’re trying to achieve,” says Andy. “Their willingness and openness to try and help us produce what we want to produce is the main reason we work with them.”

“They’ve educated me massively,” says Colin of his experience working with Andy and craft distilleries. It’s inspired him to learn a great deal more about spirits, especially whiskey from small US producers, where innovation abounds, and to use that knowledge to contribute to what ELLC is doing.

“When we’re thinking about innovation and the new malts we might produce, I’m putting myself in Andy’s shoes and thinking about what he might want next. That could be Heritage Rye Malts to go alongside our Heritage Barley Malts. It might be wheat or rye that’s roasted, smoked or flaked. Or maybe it’s different small-batch craft malts from the new Speciality Malt Plant, produced to create unique new flavours.”

Andy has already distilled a number of new whiskies, though all he’ll say for now is that “on the horizon are whiskies using grains that people might not have tasted in whiskies before.”

There’s a lot of excitement for the future of British whiskey as it evolves into its own category with its own distinct characteristics. With a growing number of craft distillers, many of whom are new to distilling, Colin worked with Andy to host a distilling seminar at ELLC.

“We were really proud to bring 20 new-start distillers from all around the country to see the work that ELLC does, and to hear detailed technical information about ingredients and distilling,” says Colin. The seminar included discussions on using specialty brewing malts, how those malts work with different woods, and the flavours they produce. “It’s always about flavour – and that always begins with the malt,” says Colin.

Whiskey takes at least three years to produce, and Andy and Colin are constantly learning along the way as they discover how different grains and malts combine with different barrels to produce new and interesting whiskies. There’s a lot to look forward to with the new possibilities of small-scale British whiskey production.