Page 11 - Food & Drink - June 2018

There is a big surge in craft distilling at the moment. And as new craft distilleries come on the market and their whisky becomes available, one consistent thing is that pricing puts it out of reach
of many young people.”
Deviant Distillery’s marketing is edgy and fun, appealing to “adventure seekers, avocado eaters and Spotify addicts”. The word “innovative” is used a lot, but there’s a respect for history.
“We’re trying to make the best spirit we can, so everything is done by hand and we brew and distill everything we sell on-site.
“So everything up until the product’s age is what you would expect from an ultra-premium spirit. We just age it a bit differently and that allows us to put the product out at the price point that people can afford.”
EARTH-FRIENDLY
Another key driver for Deviant Distillery is the environmental impact of production.
“We want to be kind to Mother Earth because it’s
flavour compound, so it’s hard to tell how much is actually evaporation and how much is the reaction that needs to take place as the spirit ages.
“But in saving that three to four per cent, even in our small size, we save hundreds of thousands of litres of water. We save hundreds of kilograms of oak. And we save on grain usage and irrigation as well; because we don’t have that evaporation, we use 25-50 per cent less grain. So when all of those things are combined, we’re able to create a very similar product with about half of the resources going in and less than 10 per cent of the waste going out in just a fraction of the time.”
QUALITY INPUTS
Most of the grain comes from varous local sources.
“We like working with a lot of different grain types. We prefer to use Tasmanian grain, but because it comes in 300 or 600 kilo lots once it’s been malted, it’s hard for us to get hold of it at our small size, so we use a
Deviant Distillery’s founder and production manager John Hyslop.
“ Affordability was one of the key issues for me. I love Tasmanian whiskies,
but I couldn’t afford to drink them.”
different kinds of oak, so every month we aim combine them in different ways to try to create different flavours. In this way we have a different Anthology series each month. We’re looking for the flavours that we really want to highlight for our main product lines, which will be then launched a bit later on this year.”
Up until March, Deviant Distillery was working with its original 50-litre still, which limited production to 20-25 bottles a time and therefore limited how far it could market itself. In April, it upgraded to a 150-litre still, which has enabled it to triple production.
“With our new still geared up, we’re partnering up with some distributors and we’ll be available in a few more bottle shop as well as starting to enter a few hospitality venues.
“However, 150 litres still is tiny, but this next step does enable us to increase output and push into retail on the mainland as well.”
EXCITING OPTIONS
Along with the move into bottle-shop retail and hospitality, Deviant Distillery will continue its online sales and Hyslop expects the latter to still account for about half
of sales, which are shipped Australia-wide.
Ivor Vaz, Deviant Distillery’s head of marketing and creative, says they’re exploring different ways to move into hospitality, and the company has a proposal with a pretty large hospitality venue in Melbourne wanting a unique product that’s only sold within their premises.
“It’s something we’re really excited about and it’s been met with tremendous market support,” he says.
Deviant Distillery has also been quietly preparing for another market: the traditional whisky market,” Hyslop says.
“Somewhere between 20 and 25 per cent of our output is directed towards traditional barrel ageing. I wanted to appeal to different markets.
“We’re ageing until it’s ready, so the time depends on the barrel size. The smallest will be around two-and-a-half years, but we have some larger casks which will be ready in another three or four years.”
In March, Deviant Distillery won a silver medal against 287 entrants from 86 distillers in the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards for its Anthology 7. It’s a mark their quality has got right up there. Quickly. ✷
important for every company to look at minimising the impact of making its product on the environment, and while I really do love whisky, when I started working at the [other] distillery, I was shocked to see how much waste can be involved in the process. It’s substantial.
“We’re not able to 100 per cent eliminate evaporation, but our process does cut it down quite a lot. In total, we lose somewhere around three to four per cent of the alcohol content that we put in originally. Some of that alcohol reacts to form the
reasonable amount of grain from Victoria and NSW.
The company also imports heavily peated grain from Scotland, and other grain from either Poland or Finland.
“At this stage, we’re using all different varieties of malt barley, but we will experiment with different grains moving forward.”
The company’s first product launched in October 2017 was the beginning of their Anthology series.
“We use grains grown in a different part of the world and
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