Irish Whiskey

When came we home to reclaim the distilling heritage of Donegal the dream seemed like a long way off, but today our Grandads and most certainly Poppa would be very proud this evening. After 2 long weeks a concerted team effort, an immense amount of hard work and some help from Seamus and Edward at Football Special and David Stapleton at Connacht Whiskey we have distilled the first legal whiskey in Donegal since 1841.

In true blues brothers style we put the team that distilled the gin back together. Kevin and Jo were with us then and they came back to help the team do it again now. Deco is helping with mashing when he comes in from school. Sean is putting his IBD skills to work and we even roped in Mum and Dad over the weekend!

The mashing in has been an experience! The mash is too thick, and we all now have blisters. The pump runs a bit too fast; we need a better solution for wort cooling but it’s all worth it, it’s just so exciting, a dream coming real.

True to our way we have pulled together a small brew kit, and mashed in some Irish barley, peated with turf from the parish and have laid down some double distilled peated single malt. We used cut points similar to Lagavulin though not quite as deep into the tails and it tastes good – soft, smoky, citrusy biscuit sweet.

Happy, excited and very very tired.

Heritage reclaimed! That’s ours forever!