Kingsbarns Journal

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...

We're taking to 4 wheels this May and June by trying out a free minibus transfer from St Andrews to make it even easier to enjoy a tour of the distillery. Starting on 1st May and running for 2 months until the end of June there will be 3 pick ups a day from the St Andrews Visitor Information Centre, calling at the Fairmont Hotel on the way. The minibus is free of charge and you can reserve a space by telephoning the Visitor Information Centre on 01334 472021. You can book a tour on our website, by calling the...

23rd March 2015 First Cask Filling Day Peter and Andy set to work in reducing the spirit in the Spirit Receiver Warehouse Vat (SRWV) down from around 73% abv to the cask filling strength of 63.5% abv. The first time this was done was elegantly managed with a garden hose! These days, they have a flow meter to add the correct amount of water from our aquifer. The spirit was carefully circulated to ensure a good mix before cask filling began. After a few adjustments of the new Cockayne filling head, Cask number 1 was filled with 115.9 litres of...

The 16th January 2015 was a very important day for Kingsbarns Distillery as it marked the first mash in our new distillery. The mashtun was filled with our milled malted barley and water for the first time around noon. Understandably, as with any new equipment, there were a few teething problems on the first run, with the final collection in the washback some 10 hours later. The collective memories of the day from our distillery team were ably summed up by our distillery manager, Peter: "It was an exceptionally long day, but very rewarding to get into production at last....