Ki One and the Three Societies Distillery

Type: Distillery and brand

On a north-facing hillside on Baekbongsan Mountain, Ki One’s whisky matures in a climate of striking extremes. A published profile reports temperatures at the site reaching the mid-30s °C during the hottest summers and falling as low as minus 25°C during the coldest winters. This is Namyangju, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, where Scottish master distiller Andrew Shand’s stated approach is to work with the climate rather than against it.[3][7][9][10]

Ki One and Three Societies are one distillery. The producer renamed Threesocieties as KI ONE Whisky Distillery during a wider rebrand between November 2024 and April 2025. Ki One is also the name on its whisky.[1][2][3]

What Ki One is known for

Three backgrounds gave Three Societies its name: a Korean location and team, founder Bryan Do’s American background and master distiller Andrew Shand’s Scottish experience. The newer name puts the whisky first. Ki One has been explained as meaning both “a beginning” and “to hope or wish for”.[3][4]

Cask choices help define the range. The producer dates its three core expressions from November 2024: one uses sherry and wine casks, another new oak and bourbon casks, while the third uses peated malt. It describes its whiskies as non chill-filtered and without added colour.[1][2]

Smaller projects explore Korean barley, yeast and oak, alongside a collaboration involving red pepper-seasoned casks. These releases give local materials a distinct role, but do not establish that every Ki One whisky uses wholly Korean ingredients.[8][10]

Bryan Do and Andrew Shand

Bryan Do came to whisky through beer. He founded The Hand & Malt Brewing Company in 2014 and sold it to AB InBev in 2018. A UCLA graduate and former Microsoft employee, he brought experience of building another drinks business to the Namyangju project.[3][6]

Shand began with the cask rather than the still. Trade reporting dates the start of his career to 1980, as a cooper at Glenlivet, followed by work at Chivas, Ben Nevis and Speyside. Another profile records experience at Nikka, connecting his career with both Scottish and Japanese whisky production.[4][5] For another distillery and brand relationship in Asia, see Omar and the Nantou Distillery.

Together, their backgrounds explain the original name. Three Societies meant the people and national connections behind one Korean site, not three companies or three distilleries.[4]

Story box: establishing the Namyangju distillery

How the whisky is made

Forsyths copper pot stills sit at the heart of an international equipment line-up: German mash tuns, a US mill and Chinese steelwork also feature. The producer describes the stills as a proprietary design; their number and individual capacities are not established in the supplied record.[1][4]

Fermentation gives yeast time to turn sugars in the grain-derived liquid into alcohol before distillation. An earlier production profile reports a two-tonne mash and 120 hours of fermentation; another gives around 144 hours, including during summer. These separate accounts show the attention given to fermentation, rather than a single fixed specification, and do not supply enough detail to link its duration to a particular flavour.[4][7]

Imported malt and Korean ingredients

Most of Ki One’s barley is imported. Just Drinks reports that about 98% comes from UK suppliers Crisp, Bairds and Muntons, with about 1% from the distillery’s own fields. A separate profile describes 85% of the malt as Scottish.[6][9]

The sourcing figures are marked as disputed in the supplied sheet. Scotland is part of the UK, and the reports do not establish a common basis for their percentages, so the figures cannot be combined into a single breakdown.[6][9]

The Korean ingredient experiments are more clearly defined. In October 2024, a small release used Korean barley and yeast, with three years of maturation in Korean oak. The reported outturn was 228 bottles from Mongolian oak and 202 from daimyo oak. Those bottles represent a specific local-materials project, not the recipe for the entire range.[10]

Maturation in Namyangju

Shand’s response to Namyangju’s seasonal contrasts is direct: “We don't fight the climate. We use the climate to our advantage.” That published interview captures his approach to maturation, without offering a numerical conversion between ageing in Korea and elsewhere.[7]

The growing cask inventory traces the project’s development. Asia Times recorded 1,030 casks in 2021; a 2024 profile reported about 4,500. These snapshots show stock held at different dates, rather than annual production or installed capacity.[10][12]

From the Society Collection to the core range

The first Tiger was a small, young release with a number built into its story. Contemporary reporting records 1,506 bottles, a reference to the first distillation date, 15 June 2020. It had spent 13 months in new oak. The producer dates the official launch of this Ki One Society Collection to September 2021.[2][3][4]

The later core-range Tiger shares the animal name, but not the same production description. Its casks and maturation details should be read separately from those of the first edition. The producer’s chronology dates the three-expression core range below from November 2024.[1][2][4]

Production and release timeline

The red pepper cask project

Seven first-fill ex-bourbon barrels, seasoned with hong-gochu peppers, formed the basis of Ki One’s collaboration with chef Edward Lee. Unveiled on 16 December 2025, the Red Pepper Cask whisky was reported as three years old and bottled at 57.5% ABV, with 1,500 bottles produced.[8]

Here, the Korean culinary ingredient entered through cask preparation. Pepper-seasoned barrels distinguish this collaboration from the distillery’s separate experiments with Korean grain, yeast and oak.[8][10]

Common mistakes

Treating Three Societies and Ki One as separate distilleries: they are the former and current names of the same site. Older profiles retain Three Societies; the producer’s current material uses KI ONE Whisky Distillery and explicitly records the change.[2]

Dating the first whisky release to 2023: later coverage of the reported 2023 opening can obscure the earlier releases. The producer dates the Society Collection launch to September 2021, supported by contemporary reporting of the first limited edition.[2][3]

Where to go next

• Kavalan: continue with another Asian distillery profile.
• Omar and the Nantou Distillery: explore another distillery and brand relationship.
• The Chuan: broaden the comparison across Asian whisky producers.

Sources

1. Ki One Whisky Distillery. KI ONE Whisky Distillery home page. Undated, producer’s account, version checked November 2026. http://www.kione.co.kr/
2. Ki One Whisky Distillery. Our Footprints. Undated, producer’s account, version checked November 2026. http://www.kione.co.kr/journey-footprints.php
3. The Korea Times. Korea's first single malt whisky produced in hills of Namyangju. 24 September 2021. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/lifestyle/travel-food/20210924/koreas-first-single-malt-whisky-produced-in-hills-of-namyangju
4. Whisky Magazine. Distillery focus: Three Societies, home of Korea's first single malt. Publication date not supplied in the verified sheet; version checked November 2026. https://whiskymag.com/articles/distillery-focus-three-societies-home-of-koreas-first-single-malt/
5. UCLA Magazine. Bryan Do: Ki One, first Korean single malt whiskey. Publication date not supplied in the verified sheet; version checked November 2026. https://newsroom.ucla.edu/magazine/bryan-do-ki-one-first-korean-single-malt-whiskey
6. Just Drinks. Three Societies on building South Korean whiskey amidst pinch in global market. Publication date not supplied in the verified sheet; version checked November 2026. https://www.just-drinks.com/interviews/three-societies-on-building-south-korean-whiskey-amidst-pinch-in-global-market/
7. Whisky Magazine. Discover Ki One Distillery: South Korea's pioneering malt maverick. Publication date not supplied in the verified sheet; version checked November 2026. https://www.whiskymag.com/articles/discover-ki-one-distillery-south-korea-s-pioneering-malt-maverick/
8. The Spirits Business. Ki One unveils world's first red pepper cask whisky. December 2025. https://www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2025/12/ki-one-unveils-worlds-first-red-pepper-cask-whisky/
9. Maeil Business Newspaper. Ki One (Origin) whisky feature, November 2024. November 2024, title as recorded in the verified sheet. https://www.mk.co.kr/en/business/11174279
10. The Ag Digest. Korean Whisky: Grain, Casks, Tax, and the Cost of Waiting. Version checked November 2026; includes reporting concerning 2024. https://www.theagdigest.com/en/magazine/korean-whisky-long-bet-on-time
11. Asia Times. Spirited ambition: whisky making in the land of soju. August 2021. https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/spirited-ambition-whisky-making-in-the-land-of-soju/

This article is desk research based on verified fact sheet TOP-A382, distinguishing the producer’s account from trade reporting and retaining the sheet’s disputed founding chronology.

Last checked: November 2026