Is yeast the whiskey weapon that Ireland has yet to tap?

by Gary Quinn

Most whiskey producers in Ireland use standard yeast strains that deliver a standard flavour profile - but change is coming and it’s packed with flavour.

There are only three ingredients in whiskey – water, barley and yeast – so you’d imagine that whiskey makers would have exhausted all avenues of experimentation to get the very best flavour compounds from each. But, in Ireland at least, you’d be wrong where yeast is concerned. Most Irish distilleries, it turns out, use very similar combinations of yeast in all their whiskey variants. But the craft whiskey movement is waking up to this potential flavour source and some new whiskey entrants will come fully loaded with new yeast-derived flavour.