Stillhouse Stories--Tunroom Tales

by Gavin D. Smith

  Gordon notes that, ‘At Aultmore the dark grains plant closed in 1985, when I went there, and re-opened in the early nineties. It worked for four years, then the plant at Glenlossie Distillery, at Birnie, near Elgin, started up to handle draff and pot ale from lots of the company’s distilleries, and the Aultmore facility was shut down for good in the mid-nineties and dismantled a few years later. Now all the waste is tankered away.

  ‘It was just another part of the whole business of distilling to be lost at Aultmore. Now barley comes in malted, it isn’t malted on site, and at the other end of the process, the new spirit is all filled into tankers and taken away for filling at Dewar’s Westthorn site in Glasgow. The warehouses at Aultmore were demolished in 1996.’

  When it comes to relaxing with a dram, Gordon is as ‘on message’ as most of his colleagues, retired or otherwise, and he says that, ‘Personally, I like a twelve-year-old Aultmore or a Dewar’s twelve or eighteen-year-old, but every whisky has its unique quality. It doesn’t matter what you put in whisky if you enjoy it. It used to be unthinkable to put anything in malt, but I like it with water, and I drink a blend with American Dry Ginger.’

  Musing on his lengthy career, Gordon sums up by saying that, ‘When I started in distilling, things were pretty antiquated. For example, you had to physically go in and clean the mashtun. You kept old clothes to do that, nothing was provided, and afterwards you would hang them up to dry. One day one of the guys who had been cleaning the mashtun thought he would have a shower after doing it, so he stripped off and got into the underback to use the hose there. Unfortunately for him, just at that moment the manager appeared with a group of visitors.

  ‘Distilleries had a bit of fun about them. The work was done, and while there was horseplay, there were no accidents. Everyone was happy at their work. Now there is so much health-and-safety legislation that you need a permit for everything. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be safety-conscious, but maybe it’s all gone a bit too far.’

  Gordon’s talk of ‘horseplay’ is common among distillery workers of the pre-health-and-safety era, with one anonymous former staff member recalling a colleague who had a habit of taking too many drams during the night shift, and subsequently falling asleep, to the mild irritation of his co-workers. One night they got their revenge by tying his feet to the grating floor while he slumbered, before climbing to the level above and pouring a glass of water over his face. He immediately awoke and tried to leap to his feet, only to fall forwards as though pole-axed due to his feet being tied to the grating!

  Gordon concludes by saying that, ‘I really enjoyed my forty years in the distilling industry and missed it for a while when I retired, but like everything else you get accustomed to it. Obviously I have seen lots of changes in terms of automation. I don’t know what changes you will see in the next forty years. Will you see distilleries with no operators at all and just a team of maintenance men going from distillery to distillery? It’s gone from being a cottage industry to a factory industry now. Big business, factory-style manufacturing. But if I had to do it all again, I wouldn’t change much really.’

  CHAPTER 5

  Rodney Burtt – Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor

  UNLIKE MOST OF THE WHISKY FOLK featured in these pages, Rodney Burtt is not a Scot, and his association with the Scotch whisky industry was not a lengthy one. However, his memories of working at Mackinlays & Birnie Ltd’s Inverness distilleries of Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn during 1969/70 are so vivid and detailed that they more than merit inclusion here.

  Rodney was born into a Lincolnshire Quaker farming family, with roots going back some 450 years in the Kesteven area. As a young man he was employed for a time by the National Farmers Union before becoming involved in the wine trade, subsequently working in London, Germany and France. However, at the end of 1969 Rodney chose to swap the lowlands of Lincolnshire for the Northern Scottish Highlands and a job in the ‘Highland capital’ of Inverness. ‘I was keen to expand my drinks industry knowledge in a practical way,’ he says, ‘having previously learnt about the wine trade from the vines up, picking grapes in the Rhine region, in Burgundy, Beaujolais and Bordeaux.

  ‘A relative knew Willie Birnie, owner of Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn distilleries, which was how I came to be there. After a while I was told that I was unlikely to progress too far as a southern Englishman in the slightly ‘clannish’ north of Scotland, and so I moved on to East Anglia and joined Victoria Wines in the drinks retail trade.’ Rodney ultimately found a long-term niche as a typesetter, working in Lavenham, Suffolk, and today lives in retirement not far from Ipswich.

  Speaking of his days as a trainee in the whisky industry, he recalls that, ‘The western approaches to Inverness off the old A9 road occupy the east banks of the Caledonian Canal, and this community is called Muirtown Basin. Glen Albyn was the first distillery to be built within close proximity to Inverness town centre. The strong advantage of building a distillery at this point was the easy access by ships, which berthed within ten yards of the grain hatches. Glen Mhor, however, was not built until 1892.’

  Glen Albyn was said to have been constructed on the ruins of the Muirtown Brewery, which had catered for the thirst of the men who laboured to build the Caledonian Canal, and The Inverness Courier for 10th January 1840 reported the opening ceremony of the fledgling distillery. An entirely new Glen Albyn Distillery was constructed in the mid-1880s, and in 1892 the trade journal Harper’s Weekly noted that annual output had more than trebled within the previous five years, stating that, ‘The growth of the business is largely due to the active management of Mr John Birnie, the manager and distiller, who is well qualified for the responsible position he occupies’.

  It is believed that Birnie became frustrated in his ambition to gain a shareholding in Glen Albyn, and as a result, in 1892, formed a partnership with Charles Mackinlay & Co, whisky and wine merchants, of Leith. They acquired a site just across the road from Glen Albyn, establishing Glen Mhor distillery, which commenced production in 1894. The new venture traded as Mackinlays & Birnie.

  The partnership was converted to a private company in 1906, with the participation of a major trade customer, John Walker & Sons Ltd of Kilmarnock, which held 40% of the shares. Some years later, Mackinlays & Birnie Ltd, with the intention of doubling output, replaced the small Glen Mhor mashtun with a larger one and installed two additional washbacks, but had not got round to putting in a second pair of stills when the First World War broke out. All malt distilleries were closed, in the interest of conserving barley, from 1917 to 1919, when Glen Albyn became a US naval base for the manufacture of mines. Mackinlays & Birnie bought Glen Albyn in 1920, and by 1925 had added a third still at Glen Mhor, operating both distilleries in tandem.

  Rodney notes that, ‘At that time, and until the Second World War, supplies for both distilleries, including peat from Orkney and some barley, were delivered by sea to the doors of the maltings; and Mackinlays and Birnie dispatched some of their whisky from the distillery quay through the canal to Glasgow. The distilleries had to close in the Second World War, for the same reason as in the First World War. Glen Albyn was silent from 1941 to 1945 and Glen Mhor from 1943 to 1944.

  ‘Glen Albyn was on the downstream side of the Canal Bridge and Glen Mhor on the upstream flank, and they were to be my daytime working quarters for the next six months when I started there in late 1969. Arriving at them was neither colourful nor inviting. The outbuildings were constructed of stark blotchy granite of pinks and greys, and there was a cluster of metal hoists and chimneys jutting out at random. The major characteristic was the pagoda-shaped protrusion of the kiln, from which white smoke emitted at various intervals.

  ‘Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn faced one another across the busy A9 at Muirtown. They abutted on the Caledonian Canal, at the point where it falls in a series of five locks into the Muirtown Basin. Loch Ness, part of this waterway which links the west and east coasts, supplied the water for both distilleries by way of a seven-mile piped linkage. Th
ere were six houses for occupation by workers at Glen Albyn and seven for workers at Glen Mhor. Glen Albyn had the larger site: seven acres, compared with four acres at Glen Mhor.’

  At the time when Rodney was employed there, Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn distilleries were jointly owned by Mackinlays & Birnie Ltd and the Distillers Company Ltd.

  William Birnie was a chartered accountant by training, and had taken over the family distilling business in 1936. He therefore worked alongside novelist, nationalist and Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn excise officer Neil M Gunn for a short period before Gunn resigned his position with the excise service in order to concentrate on his burgeoning career as a writer.

  Gunn was based at Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn from 1921 until 1937, writing such well-received novels as Morning Tide and Highland River during the relatively large amount of free time which his duties afforded him. Gunn also penned the seminal book Whisky & Scotland (1935), in which he writes of Glen Mhor that ‘ … until a man has had the luck to chance upon a perfectly matured malt he does not really know what whisky is.’

  As Rodney notes, ‘Gunn advocated the banning of blended whiskies because he was of the school of thought that malt whisky was pure and blended whisky was not. Mr Birnie was also an ardent admirer of the malts, but his view departed from Gunn’s because blended whisky called on nearly ninety-eight percent of his warehouse stock. This high ratio of output was needed to keep business up and running.’

  Rodney describes William Birnie as, ‘The grand old man of whisky,’ and remembers that he would ‘arrive during mid-morning in his Riley Elf, wearing a Panama hat, tweed jacket and pale-coloured trousers, and usually accompanied by his Golden Labrador.’

  As a young, southern Englishman working in a distilling environment in the Highlands of Scotland, Rodney met many fascinating characters, but inevitably he was treated with a degree of initial suspicion. Dramming provided the ideal opportunity to show that he could be ‘one of the boys.’

  ‘Distillery routines and their product offered “perks” and these were issued in a typically spontaneous fashion,’ he says. ‘These were distributed on a daily basis and several times a day, before festive occasions or any other excuse one could muster – weddings, births and so on. At lunchtime and near the day’s end the stillman of the rota would issue free drams of new whisky to all members. These measures of one-fifth of a gill contained the strongest portion of the spirit at 111 degrees proof [63.5%abv]. In order to become a fully-fledged member of this completely new type of environment I had to show that Sassenachs were particularly “hardy” and could consume new spirit without flinching.’

  Rodney’s period of training consisted of spending time in each “department” of the distilleries, starting with the maltings, where he worked for a month. He remembers that, ‘My first contact with a department overseer was in the malthouse where Willie Simpson held the leading position at Glen Mhor. Here was a jockey if ever I saw one. He had the shifty eyes of a thoroughbred and a long, broad, flattened nose with rippling bones to deviously sniff out other people’s affairs.

  ‘During our tea breaks Willie would bustle into the bothy and clamour for his “Medicine Cupboard”. Was he ill, in pain or depressed, I asked myself? I offered help to this seemingly anxious man. However, with relief I discovered that the “cupboard”, situated in a corner, revealed a host of expectations. Small, unmarked bottles lined two shelves off which Willie seized one insignificant bottle, twisted off the crown top and drank a healthy draught. Willie was soon restored by the uplifting reactions of new-make whisky from a seemingly neurotic person to a steady being.’

  Rodney recalls that, ‘Malting was distinctly the most strenuous part of the whisky-making process and presented a world of extremes in temperature. I recall one morning standing alongside a pile of peat, which was fuel for the fire underneath the kiln. The temperature was a steady 27°F [3°C]. This was opposed to the ultimate conditions of heat in the kiln itself where the mercury registered 92°F [33°C]. Remember, this was the Scottish Highlands during one of the coldest Februarys since 1947.’

  In the Glen Mhor maltings, the initial process of ‘steeping’ the barley in water to create a ‘piece’ was carried out in the same manner as most other distilleries at the time. However, Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn were unusual in being equipped with Saladin maltings, and the piece was placed in the Saladin Boxes where the rest of the business of malting took place.

  ‘The Saladin Boxes [named after that same French engineer who invented those war veteran tanks] were introduced to Glen Mhor in 1949 and to Glen Albyn in 1961,’ says Rodney. ‘The former distillery was one of the first to have a box installed on a trial-run basis. A pair of these was operating in each distillery by 1962 and they proved to be invaluable until 1980 when production costs reached exorbitant heights against the economic returns of updated mechanical maltings.

  ‘Each Saladin Box consisted of parallel, concrete walls, 60-feet long, eight-feet apart and six-feet high. They were joined at each end by removable iron gates, and the metal plates covering the floor area were perforated. The twenty tons of barley remained in this box for ten days, during which time the corn adopted its essential change in the enzymes from starch to malt.

  ‘What happened visually was this. After six days, small rootlets formed at the end of each grain, where roots would normally have appeared underneath field soil. The sprouting end which would otherwise have produced the stem is called the acrospire. This should never develop as it would absorb valuable food and energy stored within the husk that we want for malt conversion. Therefore it was imperative that selected strains of barley were of the best nitrogen content. In other words, the distiller wanted more root energy rather than plant enhancement.’

  The Saladin boxes represented an improvement on the hard, manual labour of the traditional malting floor, and Rodney explains how they operated. ‘Above the iron gates, at the end of the box, spanned a solid girder-type bar which supported four massive worm screws, vertically attached. The whole frame was electrically powered to travel on cogs along toothed rails which ran along the top of the sides of the boxes.

  ‘Every eight hours, when a box was full of corn, the mechanism set off on its journey at the rate of one foot for every twenty seconds. As the worm screws twisted round they lifted the barley from the bottom reversing the top surfaces. This was the modern aerating method of turning. The barley was maintained at the correct temperature of 62°F [16°C] and moisture content of twenty-seven-and-a-half percent was sustained by the “turning” process, together with jets of water. These sprayed on to the barley from behind the worm screws as they moved along.’

  The maltings were one production area where Neil Gunn and his successors in the Excise service were not in evidence. This was because their involvement only began once alcohol was created. As Rodney puts it, ‘The malthouse was the sole department in any distillery that ran completely free from double padlocks, deer-stalkers, saccharometers and hydrometers. The absence of piping everywhere was evidence alone that the malthouse was the least regimented part of malt whisky manufacturing. But there was a lot of discipline needed to maintain timing and quality so that the remaining departments could rely on the best quality barley for mashing.

  ‘Some men had worked at the malthouses of Glen Mhor and Glen Albyn for over thirty years, and a great deal of pride existed. That indicated to me that however humble or basic you may feel the malting process was, to those men it was a vital way of life. They produced a special Scottish luxury for people who appreciated the best things in life. Meeting these Highland individuals in their own settings left a lasting, clear impression on my mind that still remains forty years later.’

  Recalling time spent shovelling barley prior to steeping, Rodney goes on: ‘The work was both hot and dusty, and we were required to wear muslin-lined face-masks. My colleagues would periodically talk in Gaelic during our monotonous task and then translate the outline of their conversation for my benefit so I never felt l
eft out. This illustrates the considerate nature and general courtesy of the Scottish Highlander, sterling qualities which existed at least up until 1970.’

  During the first week of March 1970, Rodney moved on to the mash house as a trainee under the care of Glen Mhor brewer Sandy Campbell. His opposite number across the road at Glen Albyn was Ian McDonald. As Rodney says, ‘If the Scots bear grudges this is an understatement, for the Massacre of Glencoe still incites as much feeling today as it did in 1692! The two brewers never met unless accidentally, and items of communication were conveyed by other people with the strict instructions, such as “Give this note to him, laddie” or “Tell him not to be so churlish!”

  ‘Sandy was a well-built man of rolling muscle, tending to be excessively flaccid around his neck. He wore a cap which concealed a sparse headline of tundra, and he met you with a generous, open expression, albeit with a pouting lip. Although this feature meant he could grumble and exaggerate, I found these rare occurrences. Instead, I always found him to be considerate and patient, and he taught me a great deal about both the practical and administrative sides of a typical mash house.’

  From the mash house Rodney moved to what he describes as ‘The department where responsibilities reached a peak,’ in other words, the stillhouse. ‘The overseer here was the highest paid member of a distillery. He was the stillman or distiller himself, who produced what was recognised as a long-term project, because what he manufactured did not manifest itself until his product reached maturity at least three years later, and sometimes as long as fifty years on rare occasions.’

  Rodney remembers that, ‘The Glen Albyn stills stood side-by-side on top of a brick platform underneath which used to be the fires. These coke furnaces presented many problems during the first distillation as the heat was concentrated in one area of the bowl of the still. If the distiller did not utilise ‘rummagers’ or revolving chains, the inside surface would burn. The updated method was another source of relief to me – the introduction of steam-heating through metal coils of piping inside the bottom of each still. These heated the contents in a more widespread and reliable fashion, along the same lines as an electric kettle. Rummaging, dust and dirt were out; speed and efficiency were in.’