One of Japan's smallest distilleries producing from one small pot still, the distillery opened in 2016 and is owned by the Liquor Mountain liquor store chain.
Amahagan World Malt Edition No.1 is the first release in a series of three world blended whiskies from Japan’s Nagahama distillery.
About Nagahama
Nagahama Distillery, one of the smallest distilleries in Japan, located in the northern part of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture, has both a craft beer brewery and a restaurant. Few distilleries, including major whisky distilleries, have their own restaurants, and craft whisky distilleries are very rare.
The unique shape of the pot stills installed in the distillery reminds us of the very origin of whisky making.
Nagahama Distillery was originally a rice warehouse from the Edo period, which was renovated and started making beer in 1996. Later, in 2016, facilities for whisky production were installed. The building has a vaulted ceiling, with a saccharification tank and distiller on the first floor, and a crusher and fermentation tank on the second floor.
There are two pot stills for first distillation and one for redistillation, and the heating system is an alambic type pot still shaped like an indirect steam gourd, a pot still often used for distilling brandy. Among Japanese craft distilleries, Nagahama Distillery is the only one currently using this alambic type pot still. The advantage of this distillery is that it produces a clear, soft liquor with less cloying taste.
Trial and error was repeated between the establishment of the company and now. Major changes include a change in the malt crush ratio and a change in fermentation time, which was originally 60 hours but has now been increased to 72 hours. In addition, the number of distillers was increased from two to three. When the distillery was founded, the first distillation vessel had a capacity of 1,000 liters and the redistillation vessel had a capacity of 500 liters, but the redistillation vessel was also replaced, and all three distillation vessels are now 1,000 liters. Also, following the example of Scottish distilleries, the redistillation kettles are rarely cleaned. We have made many changes over the past four years since our founding.
We continue to make whisky under the spirit of “one brew, one barrel”
