What are wash and low wines?

Wash is the fermented mash from the washback: wort in which fermentation has begun, with 6 to 8 percent alcohol.

The British Spirits Regulations 1991 literally define wash as wort in which fermentation has begun, and wort as a solution or mixture intended to be fermented in the making of spirits. In the distillery that is the sweet liquid that is cooled to about 20 degrees and goes into the washback with yeast.

The yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and into compounds that later give flavour. After about two days the fermentation dies down and there is wash of 6 to 8 percent in the vat. For Scotch malt whisky, around 8 percent is the usual strength: research in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing takes a wash of 8 percent as its starting point, and Heriot-Watt University calls that the industry norm.

Low wines is the distillate of the first distillation: the liquid that comes out of the wash still, with about 20 percent alcohol.

The Spirits Regulations 1991 define low wines as the distillate of the first extraction that is fed to a low wines receiver. The wash still thus does one thing: separate alcohol from water. From 6 to 8 percent in the wash to about 20 percent in the low wines.

What remains in the wash still is called pot ale, also burnt ale: the liquid left in the still after the first distillation. It does not go into the bottle. The low wines go on to the second still.

The second distillation selects: from the low wines only the middle part of the run is drawn off, the middle cut, at about 68 percent alcohol.

The spirit still starts with the most volatile compounds and ends with the heavier, oily compounds. In between sits the part the distiller wants. Only that part, the heart of the run, flows into the spirit receiver. All fractions pass the spirit safe on the way, where the distiller can assess and measure them without touching them.

That new distillate is colourless. It is brought back to maturation strength, 63 percent alcohol, before it goes into oak.

Foreshots and feints are the first and the last fraction from the spirit still. They are kept separate and redistilled with the next charge of low wines.

The foreshots are the first fraction that comes over when distilling the low wines, the most volatile compounds. The feints are the last runnings, in which the oily compounds come along. In the Spirits Regulations 1991, feints are simply the distillate that is fed to a feints receiver.

Both still contain alcohol and are therefore not thrown away. They are added to the low wines of a following batch and sent through the spirit still again. This way, part of the previous distillation always goes along with each new one: that is the cycle in the still house. What remains in the still after the second distillation is called spent lees.

Every individual distillation must stay below 94.8 percent alcohol. That limit appears both in EU Regulation 2019/787 and in the Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009.

Regulation 2019/787 requires for whisky a mash of malted grain, saccharified by the diastase of that malt, fermented with yeast, in which each individual distillation takes place below 94.8 percent by volume, after which the distillate matures for at least three years in wooden casks of at most 700 litres. The Scotch Whisky Regulations 2009 set the same upper limit for Scotch, with maturation in oak casks of at most 700 litres, for at least three years, and at least 40 percent alcohol in the bottle.

Staat er op een etiket dat een whisky twee of drie keer is gestookt, dan gaat het over dit traject: wash naar low wines, low wines naar nieuw destillaat. Hebt u een vraag over hoe een bepaalde fles gestookt is, loop dan binnen aan de Brink in Bathmen of bel. Alcohol verkopen wij niet aan iedereen onder de 18 jaar. NIX18.