Traditional Scottish Distillation Meets Southern Grain-in Innovation

We distill Duality Double Malt from 50% smoked barley malt and 50% rye malt, then mature it in new, char 3 & char 4, American white oak casks of varying sizes.

As with most of our whiskies at ASW Distillery, we combine the Scottish tradition of double copper pot distillation (our stills are pictured here) with the Appalachian innovation of grain-in distillation, leaving the grains in throughout both fermentation and the first distillation in our 500 gallon Vendome Copper & Brass Works wash still. Similar to how tea becomes more flavorful the longer you leave the tea leaves steeping in hot water, the grain-in method pulls more flavor out of the process than a traditional, Scottish-style wash (which removes the grain solids at the first step in the process).

Effectively, most single malt whiskey distilleries in Scotland, Ireland, and Japan use our types of stills, known as pot stills, which are known for leading to more fine-tuned nuance over the final product, but remove the grain solids and so limit the amount of flavor the grains contribute. In most Southern distilleries, the opposite occurs, leaving the grain solids in, but using a type of still known as a column still that offer less of an opportunity to make precise cuts of various portions of the distillate that come off the still.

We combine the best of both worlds, using copper pot stills with grain-in distillation.

We made our cuts – determining what portion of the spirit to put into a barrel – in such a way as to lend a subtle element of smoke to the finish, then matured the spirit in a variety of American white oak barrels. We hope you’ll enjoy the results of this unique method, developed over more than twenty years of our Master Distiller, Justin Manglitz, experimenting with distillation methods.

Nose: Plum, coffee cake, honey, and malt on the nose.

Palate: Honey, caramel, coffee, toffee, chocolate, plum, cherry, and finishes with a dusting of smoke.