Kythe Distillery to bring back ‘old-style brewing’

A new single-malt distillery is under construction in Perthshire, promising to revive a style of whisky not produced since the 1960s.

Kythe Distillery will begin distilling in 2024, using locally grown, low-yielding and protein-rich heritage barley varieties as main ingredients.

The process will involve the wort undergoing a fermentation of up to two weeks in wooden washbacks by the microbial shuffle of traditional spent brewer’s yeast, to produce an exotic fruit flavour.

The high acidity wash will then be distilled by a directly wood-fired wash still, returning to “true direct firing” in Scotland.

The distillery aims to operate sustainably, using a direct wood fire to create the bulk of its head load to power the rest of the process with electricity, including the spirit still which will be direct electric heated.

“Our process engineers calculate the CO2 emission from Kythe to be 94% less than a standard kerosene distillery when run from a renewable energy source,” the company said.