XLIV

Linkwood-Glenlivet Distillery, Near Elgin

March 14th, 1924

Linkwood-Glenlivet Distillery is delightfully situated in the midst of a small wood two miles south-east of the town of Elgin. A vast stretch of undulating open country surrounds the distillery on all sides, and the quiet beauty of the site is the more charming by reason of its natural isolation.

Passing to the back of the premises, the visitor encounters a scene that makes him forget for the moment the existence of the solid distillery buildings. Almost surrounded by graceful trees and studded by a number of green mossy islands, a placid sheet of water lies near the western wall of the distillery. Actually this large pool is the dam containing the water supply for distilling purposes, but if it were set in the depths of a forest far from towns and distilleries its flawless beauty would attract scores of tourists.

Supplies are brought to Linkwood Distillery from the surrounding barley district, and it is elevated in the customary fashion to a dressing machine, and subsequently distributed on the floors of the two large barley lofts. The distribution is made by a trolley which runs along a band above the loft, and automatically ejects the barley through twenty wooden chutes placed over the floor at suitable intervals. There are five steeps, but only four have been used recently, and these hold forty-five quarters each.

Linkwood is exceptionally well provided with malting accommodation. For the process of germination six floors of various sizes are available, and afterwards the malt is elevated to two kilns, both floored with Hermann’s patent wire. A King’s patent turning machine has been installed in both kilns, and this apparatus appears to give excellent results. The usual mixture of peat and coke comprises the fuel, and the furnaces have patent regulators. Four malt hoppers receive the dried malt after it leaves the kilns, and the grinding is carried out by one of the old-style two-roller mills.

Linkwood Distillery is among the few that have been using only Scotch barley this season. Seventeen hundred bushels of malt are mashed in a week, and there is a good market for the residue of draff, which is sold wet to local farmers. Two immense heaters are placed high up at one end of the mash-house, and the wort receiver, refrigerator, and a capacious hot-water tank are compactly grouped in a separate room.

The tun-room possesses six wash-backs with water-driven switching plant, and the stillhouse contains two excellent stills each of 4,000 gallons capacity. Bond storage is available in the warehouse for 10,000 casks, and the normal weekly output of Whisky amounts to roughly 4,500 proof gallons.

Burnt-ale, spent lees, steepings, and washings are pumped to collecting tanks and carried away to various farms for manuring purposes.

The proprietors of the Distillery are the Linkwood-Glenlivet Distillery, Ltd.