Page 10 - Food & Drink - June 2018

✷ RISING STAR
Deviating from the norm
Chemistry, price point, and environmental consciousness all play a part in delivering a 10-week single-malt spirit from these whisky-loving Tasmanian entrepreneurs, writes Samantha Schelling.
HAVING a few drinks after work one night, John Hyslop and his colleagues were estimating how much of the whisky they were looking at in the barrels below them was evaporating.
“We did some rough calculations and worked out that a bottle of spirit was evaporating every time we drank a beer. That represents a pretty big loss – especially for a small to medium distillery.
“But it also represents a massive amount of waste. At a minimum, every bottle-worth of spirit that goes into a barrel represents 20 bottles-worth of water that’s gone into
the process.
“Then there’s all the grain and all the energy used to make it. Sitting there, I thought: ‘there has to be a better way to do this – a more efficient way of getting to the same result’,” Hyslop says.
So the industrial chemist went home and began experimenting. Two years later, Hyslop launched his first product: a single-malt spirit under the brand name Deviant Distillery. Official production began in July last year, with the launch and first sales in October as they built up stock.
So far, Deviant Distillery still has its original staff, three friends who are “dreamers” and fiercely proud of their Tasmanian heritage: Hyslop, the founder and production manager (or “chief science guy” in Deviant Distillery speak), Ivor Vaz as head of marketing and creative (who is now based in Melbourne), and Caitlin Boyes as the business and relationship manager.
The business is based in Somerset, where Hyslop grew up. It’s clean, green, pure and simple with fine attention to detail, and fits the desires of their target market perfectly.
THE NICE STUFF, QUICKLY
While Hyslop has always enjoyed drinking whisky, he’d “never really been in a position to be able to afford much of the nice stuff ”. When it came to distilling
his own version, he wanted to address the price point as well as issues of wastage and time.
In Australia, product must be aged for two years in barrels to legally be called “whisky”, hence Deviant Distillery’s product description of “single-malt spirit”. The distillery name comes from the fact it doesn’t make its spirit in the usual way. Using ultrasonic cavitation, Hyslop accelerates the ageing process by manipulating the physical elements that govern esterification, oxidation – and evaporation.
“In simple terms, ultrasonic cavitation helps you put the jigsaw pieces together in a way you want them to be. On one hand it’s like a really, really fast stirrer that makes molecules touch each other, but on the other hand it puts energy into the system.”
Process aside, the spirit does use whisky’s traditional four ingredients: barley, water, yeast and oak. They use no additives and distilling is done by hand in a copper-pot still.
AVO AND AFFORDABILITY
“There is a very small taste difference, and we’re working on closing the gap with each batch we do. We’re getting very, very close,” Hyslop says.
Acceptance varies depending upon the audience.
“Whisky has a lot of people who have very strong feelings about how it’s made, and many of them are simply never going to accept a different approach.”
Hyslop gives this analogy: “It doesn’t matter how good an electric car is, some people will still want a carburettor and a gear stick, and it’s the same for us.
“This is a product for a new generation of whisky drinkers: it’s targeted towards the 24 to 35-year-olds, who are more concerned about how the product tastes and whether or not care was put into it when it was made.
“Affordability was one of the key issues for me. I love Tasmanian whiskies, but I couldn’t afford to drink them.
10 | Food&Drink business | June 2018 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au