The start of Brora

Distillery Brora was built in 1819 with the name Clynelish by George Granville Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford. The first tenant was James Harper, who distilled with one 909-litre and one 259-litre boiler. The rest of the distillery was also small, but complete. A malt floor, a malt-drying kiln in which a fire of locally stoked peat was used to dry the malt, a malt mill, a brewing kettle and a fermenting vat; they were all there. ‘Bere’ - a small primordial barley - was used and the leftovers as ‘beer brew’ after brewing were fed to pigs kept specifically for this purpose. At the time, the moving parts in the distillery were moved by horses.

Annual production was around 25,000 litres of pure alcohol.

Brora, further history ...

Some considerable time later - the third tenant George Lawson was now in charge - Alfred Barnard visited the distillery for his book ‘The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom’. It had been extensively refurbished and rebuilt just before and its production capacity had been increased. There were then three barley storage rooms and two malt floors, one with a soaking vat made of stone and another of iron. The malt drying kiln had been renewed shortly before and in it only peat was used to dry the green malt. Moving parts like malt mill, pumps and cooling fans were now powered by a water mill. The fermentation room contained four fermentation vats, each with a capacity of 13,500 litres. The two pot still type stills had just been installed. Unfortunately, the capacity of the boilers was not mentioned, but it can be safely assumed that they were larger than their predecessors. Over 90,000 litres of alcohol per year were produced during this period.

Leaseholding came to an end in 1896, as the fourth Duke of Sutherland decided to sell the distillery to James Ainslie, a whisky blender from Leith, and John Risk of distillery Banker near Bonnybridge. The new owners had clearly bought ‘Clynelish’ for its good reputation and the high price at which it sold. The distillery was demolished except for one whisky warehouse, and a completely new distillery was built in 1896 and 1897 to produce more. Among other things, a canal and a reservoir were dug to allow running water to flow through it to power a water mill and a dynamo. The water mill drove the moving parts in the distillery and the dynamo generated electricity to light the distillery, allowing longer working hours, especially in winter. In the one warehouse that remained standing, the whisky produced from 1870 to 1896 was aged.

Another new distillery Clynelish, and a name change to Brora

After the major refurbishment described above, little changed at Clynelish distillery, apart from some maintenance work. This changed when a new distillery came into production alongside the old Clynelish in August 1967. This was built to produce the same whisky as at the old distillery. Exact copies of the stills were put down, but three times as many as at the old one. The only difference was that the new boilers had tube condensers instead of spirals. The new distillery was called Clynelish A and the old one was renamed Clynelish B. In 1968, Clynelish B's malt floor was closed, with malt coming from Glen Ord's drum maltings from then on. In April 1969, Clynelish B was temporarily closed. The old coal-fired boiler was replaced with one heated by fuel oil and the distillery returned to production in 1970. From then on, Clynelish B was renamed Brora and distilled with peat-smoked malt that also came from Glen Ord's maltings. The reason Brora started using smoked malt was to absorb production from distillery Caol Ila. This distillery on Islay could not produce for a number of years because there was no room to build a new distillery next to the old one like Clynelish. So the old Caol Ila was demolished and a new distillery was built on the same site.

When Caol Ila was finished and opened in 1974, Brora closed again at the end of the same year. The brewhouse was renovated and Brora returned to production in April 1975. From then on, unsmoked malt was used, and the same whisky was made as at neighbouring Clynelish.

And now its 2021 ...

So the question is which whisky will be made at the ‘newly’ reopened Brora distillery. Will it be the smoked or the unsmoked version? What is certain is that it is not the pre-1968 version where the malt still came from its own malt floor, and when peat was still used to dry rather than smoke the malt.

Brora came back into production in 2021 amd is now producing 800,000 litres per year.