Day three at whisky school

Starting at the beginning is usually the best place to start, right?  When I enrolled in Whisky School, I thought the first lesson was to prepare the barley for malting, because that is how you start the process, right?  Yes, but…  that is not how it fits into the production cycle.  The school as to operate around the distillery, and not the other way around.

So it is on day three that we transferred the barley from the floor to the kiln to be dried.  This was the lesson I had been waiting for since we arrived.  I was nominated to light the fire for the kiln, as I acquired good fire lighting skills from my days in Scouting.  The malted barley we were preparing was for distilling a Springbank.  This meant that the fire would have peat burning in it.  I appreciate a nice peaty single malt, so it was extra special to be able to light the fire, and get the first hand smell of the burning peat!

Me lighting the fire.