Triple Distilled, Twice As Smooth, One Great Taste
Trip Start
Jan 01, 2012
1
12
67
Trip End
May 26, 2012
What I did
Midleton, County Cork, Ireland
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The three main ingredients include:
malted barley, unmalted barley and pure water creating a unique Irish whiskey.
Barley doesn't contain fermentable sugar, only starch. And, as early distillers discovered, if you trick the barley into thinking it’s spring, it sprouts and produces sugars. And sugars are very handy for making alcohol. Dry it after a few days and the amount of alcohol you get from brewing and fermentation is much greater than normal. Barley which has gone through this malting process is called malted barley.
Then the precise amounts of malted and unmalted barley are milled and then mixed to create a flour called grist.
The grist, or milled and mixed barley, is added to hot water in something called a mash tun. During mashing, the sugars are dissolved producing a hot, sweet but oddly named liquid called "wort".
The wort is separated from the residual grains and pumped back into wash backs. The action of the distillers’ yeast produces fermentation and the sugars in the wort are converted to a low strength alcohol or wash. The wash ferments for three days.
The Jameson family uses three different types of cask in which to mature its whiskey. Namely sherry barrels, bourbon butts and port pipes. Every cask is seasoned and crafted by coopers and at any given moment we have 33,000 casks maturing in each of our Midleton warehouses.
Casks are vatted together to create blended whiskey, the final stage of Jameson Irish Whiskey’s remarkable journey from barley to bottle.
Jameson is sold in 138 countries worldwide.
On every bottle you can find "Sine Metu" which means without fear and is the Jameson family motto. This mottor was awarded to the Jameson family back in the 1500's for their bravery in battling pirates on the seas. John Jameson was actually born in Scotland. He ventured to Ireland to make Irish Whiskey. The Irish were quick to adopt him as one of their own and believe he became more Irish than the Irish themselves.
He established his whiskey distillery in Dublin, and began to make his mark. He insisted on the finest ingredients and personally selected the barley and casks and was not afraid to pay the top dollar for the very best.
Scotland distills their whiskey twice and America usually only once. Jameson went the extra step and insisted on triple distillation to create a whiskey that was twice as smooth.
Jameson set up a Single Distillery, which means everything from the selection of grain and cask to triple distillation and maturation take place in the one distillery to ensure totally quality control. The first distillery was in Dublin, but then moved to Midleton. Today, every bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey is made and shipped from Midleton, Ireland.
Before it became a distillery for Jameson, it was a textile mill. Then the Murphy Family were the first to create it into a distillery and then sell it to John Jameson.
After the tour, a select 8 were chosen for a whiskey tasting between Jameson, a Scottish Whiskey, and America's Jack Daniels. Jameson was the favorite. It was embarrassing having an American Whiskey as an option, it was clearly the least favorite and many did not even finish it.
http://www.jamesonwhiskey.com/Our-Whiskeys/Jameson-Irish-Whiskey.aspx
