Cereals Intake

  • As well as malted barley, grain whisky is produced from whole cereals such as maize or wheat.
  • Traditionally, North British grain spirit has been manufactured from maize.  Occasionally, we use other cereals.  These cereals are used for their starch content, which is normally in the range of 65% to 70%.  At full capacity, the distillery uses around 3000 tonnes of cereal per week in addition to the green malt.
  • The maize is normally imported from South West France into the local docks at Leith and is brought into the distillery by a fleet of lorries.
  • The distillery requires over 100 lorry loads of maize each week to keep the distillery in production.

Each lorry contains approx. 26 tonnes of grain and can be discharged in about 8 minutes.

  • There are two silos alongside the maize intake which hold 650 tonnes each.  This is enough to keep the plant running over the weekend when the docks are closed.