Cooper King Distillery®

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Maturing Malt

Chris Jaume

EXPLORE THE NEW MATURING MALT SELECTION BOX

It fills us with joy to share with you the new Maturing Malt Selection Box, crafted by our small and dedicated team.

In this box you’ll find two bottles of Maturing Malt to savour, presented alongside a New-Make Malt Spirit, bottled at cask-filling strength. This gives you the opportunity to nose and sample all three, side by side, providing a deeper understanding of how the characterful New-Make is influenced by the cask on its journey towards whisky.

The mashing, fermenting, distilling, maturation and bottling of Cooper King malt all happen on site, creating an authentic spirit influenced by our Yorkshire surroundings and inspired by experiences in Tasmania.

Spirit Specifics

Maturing Malt, 29 months, 100ml, 58.8% abv

  • Grain: Maris Otter heritage two-row barley

  • Malting: 100% floor-malted, Warminster Maltings

  • Yeast: distiller’s, dried

  • Fermentation time: 6-7 days

  • Distillation: double distilled, 900 litre copper pot still

  • Cask filling: 60% abv, cask #24

  • Cask: NEOC, ex-red wine (Bordeaux, France), 110 litres, French oak, strong toast

  • Bottling: single cask, cask strength, 29 months’ old, natural colour, non-chill filtered

  • Tasting: layers of warm Stollen, vanilla pods and cola cubes intrigue on the nose, lightened with a touch of fresh linen. Treacle sponge cake follows on the palate, wrapped in a satisfying malty sweetness. A blend of festive spices bring balance, complemented with youthful notes of Bramley apple. A satisfying mouthfeel leads to a complex finish of oak, spice and caramel.

Maturing Malt, 15 months, 100ml, 59.7% abv

  • Grain: Maris Otter heritage two-row barley

  • Malting: 100% floor-malted, Warminster Maltings

  • Yeast: distiller’s, dried

  • Fermentation time: 6-7 days

  • Distillation: double distilled, 900 litre copper pot still

  • Cask filling: 60% abv, cask #7

  • Cask: ex-bourbon corn whiskey (1st fill bourbon, 2nd fill corn whiskey), 100 litres, American oak, char #4

  • Bottling: 59.7% abv, cask strength, single cask, 15 months’ old, natural colour, non-chill filtered

  • Tasting: sweet toffee and malt leads on the nose, interwoven with layers of chamomile, white pepper, a touch of smoke and youthful notes of fresh linen and green bell pepper. Rhubarb and custard sweets follow on the palate, combining wonderfully with salted caramel Hobnobs, barbecued pineapple and a hint of menthol. The mouthfeel is viscous with a long and satisfying umami note to finish, showing surprising complexity for such a young spirit.

New-Make Malt Spirit, 100ml, 60.0% abv

  • Grain: Maris Otter heritage two-row barley

  • Malting: 100% floor-malted, Warminster Maltings

  • Yeast: distiller’s, dried

  • Fermentation time: 6-7 days

  • Distillation: double distilled, 900 litre copper pot still

  • Cask filling: NA

  • Cask: NA

  • Bottling: 60.0% abv, cask-filling strength, unaged, natural colour, non-chill filtered

  • Tasting (batch #5): a wonderfully complex spirit with tropical fruit and salted caramel on the nose, barley and heather on the palate, with an oily mouthfeel and long finish.

  • Tasting (batch #9): a tantalising spirit with vanilla, toffee and a hint of green bell pepper on the nose, creamy hazelnut and digestive biscuits on the palate, followed by a long, malty finish.

Production

Since whisky distilling began in June 2019, we’ve orchestrated and observed many changes in our spirit character. Experimenting with mash temperatures, sparging rates, yeast pitching temperature and distillation cut points has allowed us to extract the best character from our heritage barley variety, Maris Otter.

Fermentation temperatures are guided only by the extent to which we cool the wort before pitching the yeast, allowing seasonal temperature variations to influence the character of the wash. Brewing and distilling an agricultural product such as grain, in a way that embraces climate fluctuations (minimal temperature control throughout fermentation and maturation), makes us intimately aware of the effect of man-made climate change. It presents additional challenges to us as distillers, but brings us closer to the growers and people trying to reverse the ecological crisis.

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have read about the major whisky kit upgrades we completed last year (see here), which aimed to reduce energy and water use. This included changing the still’s heating method, utilising insulating paint developed for NASA, and pre-heating the wash prior to distillation.

You might ask how this affected the character of our new-make spirit, which usually has plenty of sweet barley and fruit on the nose, toffee pennies and a beautiful maltiness on the palate, and a long rich finish. Through careful adjustments to the new distillation process, we have maintained those barley and fruit flavours, and added a rich, hazelnut note to both nose and palate, and increased the luxurious oiliness to the mouthfeel. We have improved on an already gold medal-winning spirit, which we’re sure you’ll love even more than before.

Explore further:

  • Visit the shop to purchase your Maturing Malt Selection Box

  • Click here to read how we make whisky

  • Discover how you could own a private whisky cask of Cooper King single malt whisky