our whisky

In a collaboration with Yorkshire’s legendary Theakston Brewery, join us at Ellers Farm on a journey to create a carbon-neutral English whisky the world can be proud of.

Having disappeared for over a century, English whisky is embarking on a renaissance.

At Ellers Farm, we’ve always used our passion for innovation to make good spirits differently, with good people that do good by nature. This passion led us here – on a journey to creating a carbon neutral English whisky born from the beauty of the Yorkshire countryside around us.

Our flavour philosophy at Ellers Farm is what grounds us at every stage of the distilling process. We believe if we combine the best ingredients, the best equipment, deep knowledge, passion and patience, delicately guiding flavours at every step, we’ll produce a whisky worth waiting for.

Every malt whisky begins with a rudimentary beer brewed without hops, something the whisky industry calls a ‘wash’. You wouldn’t want to drink it! Staying true to our philosophy, we partnered with Theakston Brewery to create ours – a wash so packed with flavour, it’s a beer in its own right. We call it our Distiller’s Beer. Legendary among these parts, with nearly 200 years of brewing heritage behind it, we couldn’t think of a better partner than Theakston to collaborate with on creating our Distiller’s Beer.

We know perfection takes time. It’ll need three years, in fact, until we can even legally call it a whisky. Until then, our ‘new make’ spirit will age gracefully in first-fill bourbon barrels from Kentucky in the United States. Before our whisky comes of age, we’re calling our spirit ‘The Bairn’ – Northern English for ‘child’ – and with our Evolution Collection, we’ll be taking you on the journey with us.

 

JAMIE BAGGOTT | MASTER DISTILLER | ELLERS FARM DISTILLERY

“I’ve been distilling for over 15 years and have created numerous award-winning spirits, including Ballykeefe’s first release single malt and triple-pot still Irish whiskies. I’ve taken all of my knowledge and experience and put it into creating our new whisky, designing a custom distillery with handbuilt stills from Italy to make it. What excites me the most about what we’re doing today, compared to any that have come before, is that this is the perfect marriage of the very best production methods, with nearly 200 years of brewing experience by the Theakston family. There is no other English whisky like this, by heritage or by process.”

 

The Brewer

One of Britain’s oldest independent family brewers, Theakston began making beer nearly two centuries ago in 1827. In the Yorkshire Dales, Robert Theakston first began brewing his own beer in the cellar of his pub, The Black Bull. Demand quickly grew and, before long, he was brewing beer for other licensees.

From these humble beginnings, the company expanded, culminating in the construction of his ‘new’ brewery in 1875, in Masham, North Yorkshire. In this ‘new’ brewery, his beers are still brewed to this day. Theakston’s ‘Old Peculier’ is widely regarded as an iconic beer all over the world, and one of many examples that shows how the brewery is just as obsessed with innovation and flavour as we are.

the distiller’s
beer

Our story begins in the golden barley fields of East Yorkshire, where we harvest winter pearl barley grown from late autumn to July. Its longer growing season gives it more starch, which results in a richer malt. The harvested barley is then malted by a local, seventh generation family business with another 200 years of experience behind it. Wherever we can, everything is local so we can limit transportation emissions and support fellow Yorkshire businesses.

All whiskies are created from something traditional distilleries call a ‘wash’. By combining the grain with water and yeast, a rough ‘beer’ forms through fermentation. It usually doesn’t taste great – lip-smackingly bad, usually – but we wanted our whisky to have the best possible start. So, with Theakston Brewery, we created a Distiller’s Beer we’d happily drink with our Sunday roast. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

  • The mashing process begins with flavour, where three varieties of malted winter pearl barley are milled at the Theakston brewery in Masham: chocolate malt, pale ale and crystal. These traditional beer varieties contain more flavour than typical whisky malts, which usually prioritise alcohol yield instead. Combined in Theakston’s century-old mill, the barley is crushed to give the perfect balance of husk, flour, and coarse and fine grist. It’s then lovingly blended with hot mashing water from the well deep beneath the brewery, and rested in the original mash tun from 1875 to bring out the sugar and flavour of the barley.

  • The mash is then sparged, cooled and moved to the fermentation room, in traditional ‘Yorkshire Squares’ fermenting vessels, where Theakston adds its unique twin-strain yeast (top and bottom fermenting yeasts). Over the next 96 hours, the yeast gets to work, converting the sugars into alcohol and creating our Distiller’s Beer. This longer fermentation takes patience, but means delicate flavours can develop naturally – unlike rapid fermentation techniques used elsewhere.

  • Once fermented, our Distiller’s Beer is left to cool and rest for another 12 days, giving time for the flavours to develop further. Whilst traditional whisky distilleries take between just 48 and 100 hours to create their ‘wash’, our Distiller’s Beer takes 16 days. The result is a full-bodied porter-style beer packed with flavour; cherry and ripe bananas, toasted malt with a rich, luxurious mouthfeel and a sweet, creamy finish. Good enough to sup with a Sunday roast.

 

SIMON THEAKSTON | MANAGING DIRECTOR | T&R THEAKSTON

“In the brewing industry, it’s said that expertise comes with years of practice, but perfection takes a little longer. After nearly 200 years of brewing in Masham, we think we know what it takes to brew the perfect distiller’s beer for our partners, Ellers Farm Distillery. We are at the dawn of a most exciting journey to create a Yorkshire whisky of unimpeachable provenance, authenticity, and character.”

 

Distilling with patience

Our Distiller’s Beer is still a long way off becoming a whisky. Once the Distiller’s Beer has been delivered from Masham, within our handcrafted state-of-the-art distillery at Ellers Farm, we first turn the beer into ‘low wines’ – a 40% ABV alcoholic spirit weaker than the final product.

Embracing our flavour philosophy and spirit of innovation, we use an eight and a half metre 20-plate column still, unlike traditional whisky distilleries that use single ‘wash’ pot stills. This gives us greater control over guiding the Distiller’s Beer through a distillation process that brings the maximum amount of flavour through into the low wines. Heated by steam injection, we add our Distiller’s Beer two thirds of the way up, and it then gently falls through the hot plates that eventually turn the alcohol in the beer to a vapour. As the vapour rises, its alcoholic strength does too until, eventually, it passes through a copper section that begins to remove sulphates and phosphates for a smoother mouthfeel. Once condensed, the liquid is already starting to show some of its unique flavour characteristics.

The low wines are then moved to our 2,500 litre copper pot still, with the addition of the ‘feints’ and ‘foreshots’ from the previous distillation, adding their own flavour contribution. The pot still is gently heated with a steam jacket, which slowly distils the liquid into a spirit. The consistency of the heat from the steam jacket avoids hot spots and the risk of bad flavours developing whilst the copper contact continues to purify the spirit. The trick here is patience. All-in-all, it takes around 14 hours to complete a spirit distillation. At 75C, the alcohol once again begins to evaporate, rising up the still’s diamond-shaped neck and into the lyne arm, a significant flavour driver, precisely angled at 92 degrees to cause reflux, where the vapours rise, condense and fall over and over in a slow distillation process focused on maximising copper contact and flavour. This process allows the heavier congeners to condense and fall back into the pot while the lighter alcohols, with the flavour profile we desire, pass across to the condenser to turn back into a liquid.

This is where our distillery team’s skill and craft comes in, judging the liquid’s taste and aroma and using flavour to dictate how and when we make the ‘cuts’ – dividing the liquid into the foreshots (heads), hearts (the new make spirit – before it is a whisky) and the feints (tails). Once happy, the new make spirit, or ‘The Bairn’ as we affectionately know it, sits at around 80% ABV. We carefully reduce The Bairn to our cask strength of 63% ABV, using water from our 260 metre-deep borehole on the farm.

Waiting with
care

We’re maturing most of our new make spirit in first-fill bourbon, American oak casks from Heaven Hill Distillery in Kentucky, United States. These casks have a medium char (where the cooper literally sets fire to the inside of the barrel for 40 seconds), which caramelises the oak’s sugars and releases vanilla into the liquid as it ages.

It takes a minimum of three years before the new make spirit can be called a whisky. Until then, it is our ‘Bairn’, and we look forward to watching it age. Our ageing new make spirit sits in a very limited ‘Evolution Collection’, at 0 months, 6, 12, 18 and 24 months. Only 500 collections are available, made of 500ml bottles of new make spirit plus one bottle of our First Release Single Malt English Whisky in late 2025.

It’s already clear what effect our lovingly created ‘Distiller’s Beer’ has had on the Bairn; the 0 Month New Make is now multi-award-winning, and brings notes of pear drops meets ripe bananas, subtle chocolate, toasted oats and barley.

We’re now looking forward to following the flavour all the way up to our First Release Single Malt English Whisky.

  • Gold at the Global World Whisky Masters 2023

  • Silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2023

  • Bronze at the World Whiskies Awards 2023

Good for
nature

We’re already using local suppliers and materials to reduce our whisky’s carbon footprint, as well as recycling the heat we use during the distillation process all the way through. At every step of bottling our New Make spirit, we’re calculating and offsetting its total lifecycle emissions. Once our whisky reaches maturity and we bottle the First Release, we’ll offset that too.

We know offsetting isn’t a long-term solution or even a replacement for carbon reduction, and so we’ve set a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2040 at the latest. We’re working hard to decarbonise our own operation and working with supply chain partners who share our goals. Together, we’ll achieve net-zero – and it starts with producing a carbon-neutral English whisky the world can be proud of.

Visit our Sustainability page to learn more about our carbon neutral initiatives as a Certified B Corp® distillery.

 

The 
Evolution
Collection

A Limited Edition 6 Bottle Collection 

£500

 

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