The Paraphernalia: Stills and Barrels
There are two main sets of equipment to be considered.
Types of stills
There are two types of stills – pot stills, which are used to manufacture liquor batch by batch, and column stills, which can be used for continuous processing. Pot stills are costlier to operate both in terms of time and labour. After every batch is produced, the still must be emptied and recharged. However, what you gain is flavour and mouthfeel. Column stills are much cheaper to operate on the same basis due to continuous processing.
Single malt scotch is made with pot stills, though it’s not uncommon to have blended scotches made with column stills. Bourbon is just the opposite – the legacy and mindset of moonshine still remains. Almost all US bourbon is made in column stills.
Given the above, the price per batch of single malt produced is by definition going to be higher than the price per batch of bourbon. Some US bourbon makers do use pot stills. For example, Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn, NY uses custom-built Forsyth copper pot stills to twice distill their straight bourbon made from NY corn and UK barley. The end product would be priced higher than the run of the mill bourbon made in the US.
Both types of whiskies are made in copper stills, typically, so there may not be much there. However, the initial cost and upkeep of equipment used to manufacture cheaper varieties of bourbon may be lower than comparable equipment used by single malt scotch manufacturers.
The barrel
Scotch is aged in barrels that are sometimes bought from bourbon makers. There is the old joke about bourbon being the liquid that is used to “age” barrels for manufacturing Scotch. It’s not 100% clear whether the cost of new oak barrels (to make bourbon) is substantially less than the cost of aged sherry wood or bourbon wood, especially given that scotch barrels are re-used while bourbon barrels are typically used only once – by law, a bourbon barrel can be used just once in the US, though new oak barrels that have been charred to make bourbon have a shelf life of nearly 60 years.
On the other hand, aged (usually 2 years or less) bourbon barrels are often resold to scotch, tequila and rum producers. They even have a market as novelty items. So, a part of the cost may be recouped.
On the whole, we can conclude that the pot still process definitely adds cost to the manufacture of single malt scotch compared to column still manufactured bourbon, regardless of whether the cost of the barrel is higher or lower.
