What is peat, anyway?

Sure, it’s a stock image, but it does a great job of showing what peat looks like.

Last week, we released our fifth batch of Peated Whiskey, an American single malt standout. It’s full of smoky, oaky flavors balanced by subtle fruit, grain, and even green tea flavors. We think it’s a winner, but you’ll have to stop into a tasting room to try some and find out for yourself. 

Before we go too far in singing the praises of our own whiskey, we should take a moment to address a potential opportunity for education. Something we often take for granted at the distillery—but have recently learned, through teaching our Whiskey 101 classes, is more niche than we’d thought—is knowing what it means for a whiskey to be “peated.” 

When it comes to the role that peat plays in whiskey, most are on the right track. Many have heard of the mossy substance that comes out of the ground and know that it has something to do with Scotch whisky. But they’re not sure what role it plays in whiskey production or how it contributes to a whiskey’s flavor, which leaves them unsure what to make of its inclusion in an American whiskey. 

If you’re one of those people, you’re not only in great company, but you’ve come to the right place.

Let’s start with what peat itself is. Peat is a naturally occurring type of turf found in and around wetlands across the globe, including the bogs of Scotland. But don’t mistake it for boring ol’ mud. Peat has some surprising qualities. Despite its mushiness, peat can be cut into bricks and stacked (see above). Even more surprisingly, it is combustible. Accordingly, wetlands dwellers have harvested local peat and burned it for heat (and other applications) for as long as anyone can remember. It even plays an arguably important environmental role.

But where does this magical muck come from?

Peat is the result of thousands of years of plant matter collecting on top of itself, compacting and decaying more slowly than usual because of its acidity and submersion. Over thousands of years, peat continually accumulates, usually at a rate of about one millimeter each year. In a process that reminds us of the formation of fossil fuels like oil and coal, the organic matter slowly transforms into a dense, flammable substance. 

If necessity is the mother of invention, then the choice to use peat in making whiskey is assuredly a Scottish invention. Scofflaw Scots who were distilling whiskey in moors and bogs in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries–working in remote places left unexplored by spirits excise taxmen, presaging moonshiners in the U.S.–would have used what was handy for their processes.

This meant that when the time came to dry out their malted grains ahead of fermentation, they opted to use the more-available peat instead of wood to fire their kilns. Smoke rising from the peat seeped into the grains, adding flavors that would persist through the rest of the distilling process. This choice imparts flavors that are a fingerprint-unique product of drying locally malted barley with locally harvested peat.

Over centuries, neighboring Scottish distillers traded ideas about using peat (how much, for how long, cut from where and when, adding other smoking agents, etc.), accentuating local character and leading to the regional styles of Scotch whisky that we still see today. 

While peat was specific to Scotch whisky for centuries, Scottish distillers brought their whisky-making approaches with them when they eventually traveled abroad to places like Canada and the U.S. Additionally, foreign distillers would seek to learn from the Scots how to distill with peated malt, aiming to recreate for themselves the flavors they appreciated so much in Scotch. 

And so, now the use of peated malt in making whiskey is a global pursuit, including some of the whiskeys we make at Manatawny. Peaty smokiness combined with other flavors produced by our way of doing things yields spirits that bridge Scotch whisky and American whiskey. 

If you’re a fan of either, you’d surely enjoy Peated #5. Pick up a bottle today and set yourself up to learn more about peat…firsthand!