Hello welcome to Kate's Ag today I'm here with my name is Lasse Vesterby and I'm one
of the founders of Stauning whiskey a Danish whisky Distillery located
on the west coast of Denmark West Coast of Jutland this is very exciting [Music]
I'm very interested in learning about the distilling process and everything that goes
into it could you tell me a little bit about your history yeah and I also got into the the
process but I think a little better when we walk around and see The Distillery yes the history of
Stauning whisky is actually it started back in 2005 just as a hobby nine friends and family
decided to it could be fun to see if we can make a Danish whiskey so actually three kilometers in
that direction where my parents are living we started the first testing in a small Butchery
my dad is an old butcher so that's why we did the first testing matching and very small distilling
and well that turned out pretty good so we had the appetite for trying something more
and then we bought this place where we sit now an old farmhouse and we renovated and made it
ready for making a Distillery still very small and actually you can see these are some of the
the parts that we used in here so from 2009 until 2018 this is actually the room the location where
we did distilling we did floor molting just on the other side of that wall and then all
the matching and Distilling in this room here wow that is a great story thank you it is and that is
also a big part actually of the story of Stauning is that we just started out with out of curiosity
could we make high quality whiskey here in Denmark using local ingredients we work together with two
local farmers who grow both the the Rye and the value that we are using our story of curiosity and
just trying to do something is definitely the big part of this down and whiskey story that's really
neat and how many whiskeys do you produce well we have three KAOS whiskeys at the moment and then we
also have some research we have our Rye with the majority of the grain of which is rye all malted
all the grain we're using hands down has all been been malted by showed you at the later on and then
we have a smoke that's a single malt whiskey one in the drying process of the of the malting we add
we burned some Heather and some peat add the Smoky flavor to it and then we have our KAOS and that
is a a product which is actually a combination of our non-smoked single malt our smoked single malt
and the right whiskey all in one bottle and then we have some research to it we have an El Clasico
which is an rye Whisky in the vermouth cask and we have an uh a Bastard also a rye whiskey AIDS and
then a Mezcal cask and then you can see around the shop here we have a lot of different Distillery
editions you can only buy Here Distillery will be trying different Cask finishes Etc that all
sounds very nice well it is very interesting and we can see that people who are visiting us they
like the that they are able to taste different types of Stauning whiskey so we don't have just
this one single flavor we're not only just a smoked whiskey and not only just the Rye Whiskey
we have the different variations so then also it means that a lot of people they can find a style
and the type of whiskey that they like but at the same time because there still is Staunding style
and that gets back to the small pot stills the direct fire and the under the stills how we do
the floor malting Etc and the quality product it has to be a quality product because us maybe you
can sell a bottle of whisk based on a good story once but when you bring it home and if it doesn't
taste good you'll never sell the second bottle and also because of curiosity and the pride in
the product we are doing we high quality is is the definitely a goal for us and high priority
yes very true and could you tell me a little bit about your background and how you were educated
about whiskey well actually that's another part of the fun story of Stauning whisky that the nine
Founders of Stauning whiskey they actually didn't knew and we didn't know anything about making
whiskey me myself I educated as a construction engineer and three of the other Founders I met
on when I studied for engineering then we have a helicopter pilot we have a doctor a chef
a butcher and a teacher so nothing in actually relevant for making whiskey so it's all based
on curiosity and then just try to research and try to experiment and try to learn it on our
own but I also think that has been one of the the beneficial parts of where we are today because we
didn't have a lot of knowledge we didn't have a lot of tradition of making whiskey in Denmark so
we could just do what we felt was right and not do what people normally do and that's also what when
you see how Distillery and how we make whiskey it's very different from what you see in all
other distillers around the world because we just make whiskey the way we felt like making whiskey
and make the style of whiskey that we want to do and not just do something like everybody else is
doing and I think that's the most important part is to be different and differentiate yourself in
the marketplace and not coming from a whisky background allowed you to become more creative
which is just awesome yeah it definitely allowed us to yeah to think of of new way of making
whiskey also you're going to see some equipment that we invented ourselves and actually now
other distilleries are coping the way we do floor malting and copying the equipment you're doing
because they can see oh that's actually quite a nice way you can go back to do floor molding like
we did in the old days without using a shovel so some of the equipment over there we know
that we have had different visitors from other distilleries who are now planning on installing
that kind so that's that's for us that's kind of fun is that nine guys not knowing anything
about whiskey have invented together with local Craftsman equipment that is now being installed
in different distilleries that's kind of nice yes that's an absolutely fantastic story yes it
is thank you very much well Welcome to our floor malting areas this is where we do all the floor
malting of both the Rye and The Barley what we use for making a Stauning whisky we have four floors
so we make four batches of grain malt every week both rye and and barley depending on which variant
of whiskey we are making and at the moment we're making our rye whiskey so that means what we need
to malt both rye and barley and we're going to do that until late fall or something like that so is
this both rye and barley now this we use one grain at the floor each time and then it's been mixed up
later on in the batching process so right now on the floor we have Rye actually because of Summer
people on vacation so we are not actively malting right at the moment but we have the grain to lay
here to visualize what it actually looks like so the process here when we do the floor malting is
that normally when you do malting you start the steeping process you add a lot of water to the
grain normally in big steeping vessels but here in Stauning because yeah we like I told you earlier
we do things quite differently because that has been a better solution for us so actually we add
the water and the steeping process when the grain is on the floor okay so we have just added if you
look at this piece of equipment over here this is our we call it a grain turning Machinery but on
this we actually added some spray nozzles so this is the water system so the first 24 hours this
equipment goes back and forth and just spray water on the grain while this is rotating and turning
the grain so we get an even absorption of of moist so we reached about 44% of moisture content in the
grain because it needs the water to start to grow and start to germinate and then after the
first 24 hours approximately then the germination starts and the grain starts to grow but and when
the grain is growing it develops some heat so it increases in temperature so we need to turn it to
keep the temperature down and we also have you can feel this a little cool nice chilly in this room
that's because we need to have the temperature in general in this room down for about 17 -18 degrees
we have some cooling hoses in the floor so we can also extract some of the heat through the floor
out because if it gets too warm doing germination it it damaged the enzymes that we are creating
and it also end up just being bad so it needs to be kept at a lower temperature in the beginning
20 hopefully and this goes back and forth for the next four days keeping the temperature down we're
preventing all the roots because when the grain is starting to grow and also Roots is coming out
and if it just lays there it's Tangled into each other but getting turned by this it doesn't grow
together and so that's a how germination and floor malting floor malting and how you did in the old
days but then you use the shovel by turning and you've got to hurt your back and that's why we
invented this piece of equipment so we can turn it automatically but we need to monitor it every
day because we can't just say you need to go every second hour because just a little change
in room temperature a little change in the in the thickness of the layer little change in the
moisture constant then it developed differently from the last time we do a lot of measurement
of moisture content and a lot of measurement of of temperature and looking at the grain how far
have they grown so we know where we are in the process through this go a little more often a
little longer time between roasts should have had a little more water Etc so it's the guys
operating in this floor malting area you need to manage very closely to have a good product in here
and a very technical process yes it's well it's kind of simple but it takes skills to know what
to do when to get the best germination and best malting possible because after the germination is
finished because if it keeps growing too far then it starts to use the sugar that we want to use for
making alcohol so we need to dry it down to stop the growing process and this is it that's the next
step in in floor malting we're going to move the grain after germination actually with this simple
shovel driving into the to the grain and put it into that stainless steel equipment over there and
then by a screw a conveyor is moved into the Kiln where we add some heat blowing hot air through
it to dry it down and it's also in the Kiln you can see that later on where we add the the Smoky
flavor to it if we want to make our smoked malt then that's why we burn some Heather and peat
outside and then blow that Smoky air through the Grain and that's the Smoky flavor oh okay that's
very interesting and so the floor malting would that be in replacement of a malting drum so I'm
familiar with a malting drop yes normally today it's often a big drum or big salad inbox is more
of a commercial and a more efficient way but for us when we started pot stills back in The Butchery
and and over in The Farmhouse floor malting for us was the way that it was possible for us with
very simple solutions to set up and do our own malting because for us it's very important that
we are able to use local ingredients that we want to make a Danish single malt whiskey make a Danish
whisky and we can't buy a Danish smoked malt so well we have to make it ourselves and then we just
kept through to what we did in The Farmhouse and and copied the same principle over here so we kept
being using local products and doing our floor malting I think it's amazing how you've really
taken malting back to its original state and form because traditionally the way they started doing
malting must have been worked very well yeah yeah and I think that's a thing about Stauning is that
we actually we are kind of a modern Distillery but we're making whiskey kind of old school and you're
also going to see that in our pot stills we have very small couple of pot stills direct fire nobody
else is pretty much using that because it's a lot of work and there's a lot of pot stills to clean
but in terms of flavor both the small Stills and the direct fire is just so important so in January
yeah we're making whiskey like you did in the old days but instead of breaking our back and working
too hard we invented the piece of equipment that made it necessary for us to make whisky in that
way that we want to make whiskey and Stauning that's really neat thank you so well this is where
we put in the finished germination of the barley or the rye into this piece of equipment then we
have a screw conveyor moving the grain into the tube kilns we have so if you follow me this is
kiln number two and I think it has a little more lighting and kiln number one you can see that's
where the the grain from the floor has been moved into and it lays in a 45 or 50 centimeters thick
it's very important that the thickness of the bed is called a bed in here it's the same because then
the air going through is going to be even all over the in the Kiln because if there's a little more
shallow in one end that's going to dry faster and then all of the the air going through is
gonna keep going through in that end and then it takes too long time to dry the Grain in the other
end so it's very important that we haven't even even layer in here and that's actually also our
own invention those piece of equipment you see in here they're conveyor belt and there's a scraper
that puts it down on a screw conveyor going across because it's just so important that we don't stand
in there again doing a lot of hard work when we can invent our own solution of actually
Distributing it very nicely and this is also where when we at the when we make our smoke whisky so we
have a full basement underneath them here and then outside we burn some heather and some peat and
then in the beginning of the drying process pretty much in the first 12 -16 hours we had this smoky
air going through and that smoke add the flavor to the Grain and then after the 12 or 14 hours we
start the actual drying process but then we have the Smoky flavor the phenols it's now in the Grain
and that end up in the bottle so we had got this Smoky flavor when we make our whisky okay that
makes sense yeah and I'll say for us being we have had the privilege of being able to build both the
malting and the distillery from scratch so you can really think into reusing energy and environmental
considerations that's also why we have two kilns because then we can reuse a lot of the energy
from one kiln so if this kiln almost dry the air going through still have a lot of drying capacity
then we fit that with the very wet grain from the second floor going into the second kiln and then
we can reuse that air go underneath the second kiln and when we get later on in the process
then this is completely dry we can empty it the second kiln that's kind of dry a lot of drying
capacity when they are going through that and then we fill some new wet grain in here and reverse the
airflow so we can reuse it again so there's a lot of consideration of how to we use a lot of energy
distilling is energy consumption but we try to reuse as much as possible to use as little energy
as possible so I think that's fantastic that you have such a large emphasis on sustainability and
the environmental factors of distilling well you you have to have today and also when we
have the chance of and again the previous of being to build from scratch it would just be
stupid not to have that in your consideration when designing malting and distilling yes yeah
so that's the kiln that's the drying process your facility is incredible no thank you!