Marvelous Mash

All good whiskey comes from a good mash. All good beer comes from a good mash. I think one could argue meaningfully that all good things come from a good mash.

A carefully chosen selection of cereal grain is malted and dried, ground to grist and mixed with measures of water and heat to become the mash. Before it was mash, it was grain and as grain it was full of possibility. Mash is the animation of grain, the step in which its purpose becomes the fermentation of spirits.

From the mash flows the wort bearing the starch-born sugars necessary for fermentation. Here it may find itself boiled with hops and fed to yeast to take the path of a beer. It may also take the longer road, fermented instead into a wash and distilled twice or more, placed within oaken casks for years to develop into the wonder that is whiskey.

The humble grain, the hopeful malt, the selfless grist, the marvelous mash.