The Malting process turns dried barley grains (which have usually been stored for between 2 to 24 months as each seasons production is utilised) into Malted Barley.

Malting used to take place at each distillery using traditional malting floors but greater efficiency has now been achieved (since the 1970’s) by malting taking place, almost exclusively, at large mechanised malting plants by malsters who deliver a range of different specification malts to the distillers.

Batch sizes at modern malsters are much larger than batches from traditional malting floors, so inevitably a degree of individual, or one could say more variable, distillery character has been lost by this change.