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Latest News from 8 Doors Distillery - 12 Nov 2021

In our last newsletter we gave a sneak preview of the stills in the workshop of Speyside Copperworks in Elgin. Derek Brewster and his team have done a brilliant job hand crafting the heart of our distillery and we’re thrilled with the results. The individual hammer marks are a thing of beauty!

Since then the stills made their way the 157 miles up the road to John O’Groats, carefully transported by local firm Vauldale Engineering who did a fantastic job of looking after our precious cargo!

The rest of our equipment is also in place and we’ve moved onto the pipework install. Here’s the equipment in situ… full colour pics from inside the distillery will be revealed when the stills are all polished up and gleaming!

The eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that we have a couple of different vessels on the right hand side of the distillery. We have chosen a Mash Conversion Vessel and Semi-Lauter Tun for our set-up. We’ll use both of these vessels for mashing in, and this set-up also gives us flexibility in future to experiment with additional grains. We’ll be focusing on our Single Malt first, but as a small distillery we’ve got the opportunity for some exciting experiments over time.

A few weeks ago when the stills were being transported, Kerry channeled her best Anneka Rice impression (…youngsters ask your parents!) chasing the stills on their way up the road. It was a beautiful autumnal day and she managed to jump ahead and capture some great footage - check out her favourite clip of the stills coming through Berriedale Braes here.

All the internal building partitions are completed and we love the fact we can stand in our tasting room and see 2 amazing views. Look to the front across the car park to the John O’Groats sign post and the Pentland Firth, look to the side and you’ll be treated to a view of the stills! Which way will you look first?

So lots of progress but leaves the big question - when will we start distilling? Despite our best efforts, the impact of Covid19, supply issues and other elements outside our control mean it won’t be this year sadly. But the good news is that it will be early in 2022. We’re holding off sharing a specific date until we know it can’t move but we’ll be shouting it from the rooftops as soon as possible.

Thanks again everyone for your continued support over these last few months, it’s great to be ever closer to getting our first spirit running through the stills. We couldn’t have done it without you and can’t wait to welcome you on site as soon as we can.

Have a great weekend!