‘is it legally whiskey?’ Chaplin says. In Australia it is, compared to other countries with quite strict and very, I’d say traditional set of rules, such as Scotland or even America and France. They have very specific rules and specific ingredients that you can have for your whisky. In the case of Australia, we’re really the wild, wild west of distilling so there’s not as many rules apart from it’s got to be aged in a barrel for two years and off you go. “With single malt whisky, you’re only using essentially malted barley, water and yeast. There’s no hops, there’s no corn, there’s no wheat, there’s no rye, and the percentage that we get it to is a lot higher. So you’re thinking 7.5-8.5, almost nine per cent ABV and then we distil from that. Obviously, most of the beers you see at the pub are four to 4.5, maybe 5 per cent at most, and then you’ve got mid strengths as well which are a lot lower. So extracting the alcohol from those beers is a lot harder and takes a lot longer because there’s a lot more water. It’s a very different process.” Chaplin still laughs at that process, which involved around 150 kegs of pretty much every beer you see on tap at your favourite local. “It was pretty odd. You’ve got everything from CUB beers, Lion Nathan beers, Hobart Brewing Company, Hop Nation, I’m pretty sure there is a few others like
Shambles in there as well. It was an interesting batch, and of course having Great Northern in there I’m sure will displease a few Queenslanders! “Firstly we got the kegs, we pushed out all the beer using gas into giant 1000 litre IBCs [tanks] and from there we transferred those into the still. We did one distillation, which is called your low wine distillation, which is the first one, and the alcohol tends to be around 30-35 per cent. Then from there, we had to add a little bit of our own low wines which we use for our single malt whisky, purely so we could get enough liquid into the still to do another distillation, which is our second and final distillation, which is where you get your new mix. “This was a completely clear spirit, in this instance it had quite a few hoppy notes going through it and then from there, we chatted to the to the Jubbs about what kind of barrels they wanted. We got a lovely shiraz barrel, a lovely ex-bourbon barrel and we also used a couple of our second fill barrels. We filled up those barrels and we essentially let them sit there patiently until this point.” Repurposing ingredients is nothing new to 7K Distillery, who are among the industry leaders when it comes to innovation and sustainability. Examples include Pam’s
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