Whisky Guide > Distillery Profiles > Glenrothes Distillery
Glenrothes - New & Old
There are certainly a few surprises as you wander through the labyrinth of buildings at Glenrothes Distillery, for example fine examples
of new technology working closely in harmony with traditional methods of distilling.
The old majestic copper domed Porteus mash tun sits silently whilst its streamline
stainless steel counterpart slowly rakes the hot mash for the day. The stainless
steel mash tun produces four tonnes of mash each cycle and is far more efficient
than the traditional mash tun. The more modern mash tuns today have semi-lauter
raking systems that enable the mash to be gently raked without either churning
or collapsing the 'mash bed'.
Glenrothes has a compliment of ten Oregon pine wash backs. Traditional wooden wash backs are made from a number of staves,
which are held in place by different sized metal hoops.
At Glenrothes, however, the wash backs are held together by a fairly unique system of steel ropes, which have a
mechanism enabling them to be adjusted periodically. (pictured bottom right)
In the large room, adjacent to where the wooden wash backs lie, is a very modern purpose built tunroom full of steel
wash backs - eight in total. Used in exactly the same way as the wooden wash backs they hold the 'wort', yeast is
added and the fermentation process begins, converting the sugars present into alcohol. The fermentation process will
usually cease after two days to leave a low strength alcohol liquid called 'wash' - hence the term 'wash backs'. Both
the Oregon pine and stainless steel wash backs are filled with 25,500 litres of wash.
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