See for yourself....

Deviant Distillery, Australia’s first green-tech distillery has launched in Tasmania and has surprisingly produced the flavour of a 10-year-old whisky in 10 weeks!

Did you know that more than 200 million litres of whisky worth nearly $10 billion evaporate from barrels into thin air each year? When John Hyslop realised that two years ago, he decided there had to be a better way to make spirits – and so he invented one.

While working at another Tasmanian distillery, Hyslop did the math and realised they were losing about a bottle of whisky every 20 to 30 minutes during the ageing process. Using his background in industrial chemistry, he built a technology that could create a spirit with a chemical composition and flavour identical to a 10-year-old whisky – but in just 10 weeks.

Hyslop recently launched Deviant Distillery with a limited release of Anthology, a series of new malt and dark spirits aged with his one-of-a-kind technology.

It's a thrilling story of Two birds: the environment and time. One deviant stone.

Hyslop identified how to replicate the reactions that take place in a barrel and enhance them by controlling physical and environmental factors that influence oxidation, esterification and evaporation. The technology can create a spirit identical to whisky in a fraction of the time while staying true to the natural whisky-making process.

Deviant products are made from the same four all-natural ingredients in whisky – barley, water, yeast and oak. However, they cannot legally be called ‘whisky’ because they are not aged in a barrel for the minimum amount of time, so their legal definition is a ‘single malt spirit.’

“Other than the ageing process, everything about our spirits is what you would expect from an ultra-premium craft whisky – we just can’t call it that”, Hyslop says. “I explain it like this: instead of putting a supercharged engine into a car and racing it to the finish line, we just remove all the obstacles in its way and let it become what it wants to be”.

All Deviant spirits are brewed and distilled by hand using premium malt barley without any additives or chemical catalysts. Hyslop uses a hand-made, direct-fired copper pot still and wood from the same barrels the local cooper provides other distilleries and vineyards.

Because the production cycle for each new batch takes only 2% of the traditional ageing time, Hyslop can experiment with different grains, casks and flavours every 10 weeks.

“With the traditional distilling model, what is bottled today was barreled 10 years ago. But now, in theory we can conduct several centuries’ worth of flavour tests and arrive at an ultra-premium drink that no single generation ever could before.”

What if Henry Ford smashed one of every two new cars he made?

Deviant is on a path to become carbon neutral and one of the world’s cleanest distilleries. Only 4% of the spirits evaporate in total during ageing compared to the industry average of 30% to 50%.

“We wouldn’t stand for it if Henry Ford smashed one of every two new cars he made”, says Hyslop. “While losing whisky from evaporation has been a necessary part of the ageing process, it doesn’t have to be anymore.”

The Deviant distillery is virtually waste-free and produces less than 10% of the waste of traditional distilleries, most of which is repurposed or converted to electricity. The distillery saves 1 million litres of fresh water every year, and its water usage is less than 5% of a traditional distillery of a similar size.

Hyslop has received criticism from whisky purists and realises that disruptors like his technology will cause division in the industry.

“Respecting tradition is important to me, and I’m not suggesting that this approach replace traditional barrel ageing altogether. At the same time, with one foot in the past it’s important to take another step forward.”

‘This is not whisky’ from mum’s garage

After several setbacks including flooding in his Sandy Bay pilot plant, Hyslop now runs the distillery out of his mother’s garage in Somerset, with capacity to produce 120 bottles in a month. With additional funding, he hopes to open the commercial distillery in Hobart by early 2018, with a 900-litre still capable of producing 30,000 bottles a year.  

“We’ve been through a lot to get here and are proud to launch with our Anthology Series online and in select bottle shops and craft bars in Tasmania, with a strategic rollout coming to Melbourne and Sydney over the next few weeks.”

Four products in the Anthology series are available now, with a new one coming each month. Hyslop will explore new flavours with each batch, which will ultimately influence the brand’s flagship product line, ‘This is not whisky’, expected to launch mid-2018. 

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