One of the great things about opening a new distillery is that you get to experience alot of 'firsts' that established distilleries had a century ago. One of those moments is when the first spirit starts running through the stills. You are reminded that's the reason we've all been working so hard to get the project going, it's all about the liquid at the end of the day.
Casting our minds back to the 16th January last year and our first mash was filled into Number One washback. A few days later on the 23rd and 24th January, the first distillations in our wash still were on and the first spirit distillation happened on the 26th January.
When Peter and Andy switched the steam on mid morning and a few hours later at 12 noon, the spirit had started to come through into the spirit safe. For any new distillery this is real moment, our Forsyths spirits safe was in action! The spirit run lasted 3.5 hours on this first run and the steam was switched off by 4pm where everyone had a well deserved dram to celebrate!
Peter remembers, "This was a really exciting moment to see! Our fully working distillery became a lot warmer that day. A year on our spirit run lasts around 4 hours as we are getting a better percentage of alcohol from the wash distillation."