Our coastal peat smoking journey so far…

Since 2019, we’ve been experimenting with smoking our Tasmanian barley with local, coastal peat on a very small scale to bring out a new nutty, earthy flavour profile in our whisky.

Over the years, there have been multiple iterations of peat smokers as we have refined and upgraded our equipment to achieve the light coastal peat style that we set out to.

Peat Smoker Iteration # 1:
Our very first peated spirit was created in our lab using a glass smoking apparatus and distilling the spirit in tiny 5L copper stills. Very soon afterwards, we began smoking our barley in Rob’s 44L gallon drum smoker (the same smoker he uses for his famous chicken wings). This enabled us to trial 20+ coastal peat samples from different areas and refine the level and flavour of peat influence we were after.

Peat Smoker Iteration # 2:
We were incredibly excited by the subtle influence our coastal peat was having on our spirit so in 2020, we decided to build a more scalable method. Enter smoker iteration # 2 - Rob’s 1000L milk vat turned tumbler. Rob welded up a cradle to hold the round metal vat, using a chain to slowly turn the vat, ensuring the smoke would adhere to the barley. This enabled us to smoke 300kg of grain at a time and the result was a beautiful nutty, earthy note with a super light smoke influence.

Peat Smoker Iteration # 3:
Skip forward to 2025 and a very exciting new project is in the works, hoping to be completed in the coming weeks!