The Filling of the Casks

Filling of Casks at Glenturret

Whisky is filled straight into the casks in small distilleries. Bigger distilleries use intermediate spirit receiver in which the spirit is collected until it is pumped to the spirit vat for filling the casks. In this spirit vat the whisky is mixed with other runs of the stills which tends to a more stable quality of the spirit.

Each single cask has to be marked with an unique number, the name of the distillery and the year the cask was filled. This was done in former times with a template. A few years ago the distilleries started to use computers and bar code labels. What a shame!

The distilleries use different sized barrels for the maturation. There are four types of barrels:

1 Barrel = 158 Litre
1 Hogshead = 250 Litre
1 Butt = 500 Litre
1 Pungeons = 600 Litre (seldom used)

The production of raw-whisky ends with the filling of the casks. Now the long time of maturation follows in the warehouses.

The Maturation in Casks - Back to the Beginning