Whisky From Oats, Spelt and Other Grains
On 10 June 2019, InchDairnie began distilling an oat spirit with an unusually bold recipe: 51% oats. Kilbeggan takes a different approach, using just 2.5% alongside malted and raw barley. Between those two proportions lies much of the interest in oat whisky: the grain can play a supporting role or take the lead.[4][5][6]
Oats also have a documented history in Irish and Scotch production. Spelt, a hulled wheat used by producers including Denmark's Thy Whisky, brings another less familiar name to the whisky shelf. Understanding both starts with the grain, then follows what the distiller does with it.[1][9][12]
What makes these grains worth understanding?
The most revealing detail is often the proportion, not the unusual grain name. How much went into the recipe? What accompanied it? And what does the producer say about the resulting spirit?
A mash bill is the recipe of grains used to make the spirit. It distinguishes a small addition to a barley mixture from a recipe in which oats take the majority share. It also identifies the accompanying grains, giving a clearer picture than an oat whisky label alone.[4][6]
That makes a disclosed mash bill a useful starting point, not a tasting note. It tells you the balance of ingredients, but no percentage, on its own, establishes how strongly the finished whisky will taste of that grain. For flavour and texture, the producer's description is a separate piece of information, best read with its attribution intact.
For the broader category, turn to grain whisky explained. Here, the interest is in the ingredients themselves: the practical difficulties oats present, the variety found in historical recipes and the place of spelt and other less familiar grains.
Why oats are difficult to work with
Oats can make a mash troublesome or help it drain. The difference lies in how they are used.
The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails describes oats as relatively uncommon in distilling. Used alone, they can be viscous and difficult to handle; mixed with other grains, they can make the mash easier to manipulate.[1]
The practical questions extend from drainage to the amount of spirit a distiller can recover:
| Production question | What the sources report |
|---|---|
| How can oats help drainage? | In Dave Broom's reporting, Irish Distillers' archivist Carol Quinn describes oat husks helping liquid drain as “a sort of natural filter”.[2] |
| Why combine oats with malt? | Oats are low in the enzymes needed to convert grain starch into fermentable sugar. Reporting on InchDairnie's experiment explains that it used distilling malt to address this.[4] |
| Do more oats mean more spirit? | Blackwater's Peter Mulryan told Broom that increasing the oat proportion reduced wash strength, leaving less spirit to recover from the fermented liquid.[2] |
Mulryan's account describes the practical consequences of those recipes, rather than a universal yield figure for oats. Together, these accounts show why a grain that creates difficulties in one mixture can earn its place in another.[1][2]
InchDairnie's oat wort was also very turbid: cloudy with suspended material. According to Broom's reporting, its managing director linked that characteristic to the spirit's flavour. That connection is the producer's explanation, rather than a separately measured effect of oats on flavour.[2]
Oats were part of whisky before the recent experiments
Oats were in whisky mashes long before today's experiments. The Oxford reference records their use in some Scotch whisky mashes in the early nineteenth century, and alongside malted and raw barley in Irish pot still whiskey until the 1950s.[1]
The Irish story includes a change in how the grain was prepared. Distillers once malted oats as well as barley, but Broom reports that the malt duty of 1785, charged on volume, made malting oats too costly. His account also quotes historian E. B. McGuire's view that oats “produced a better-flavoured whiskey”.[2]
Later records reveal no single standard recipe. Richard Woodard's account of evidence discussed by the Royal Commission reports six mash bills from J. A. Nettleton's 1893 The Manufacture of Spirit. Their “other cereal”, mainly oats, ranged from none to 30%, with intermediate recipes at 10%, 15% and 20%.[3]
That variety continued in testimony. The same reporting records Andrew Jameson accepting at the 1908 Royal Commission that oats, wheat and rye might make up “about a fifth” of the mash. James Talbot Power gave about 10%. These are reported historical examples, not a formula for every Irish distillery; the original commission minutes were not opened for this article.[3]
Broader accounts put those individual recipes in context. The Oxford Companion's oats entry gives their usual share of Irish pot still mash as 10 to 30% until the 1950s. Peter Mulryan argues that historical mash bills contained 20 to 70% other grains, a broader measure than oats alone.[1][2][3]
Story box: A recipe with oats in the middle
A 1953 Irish Pot Still Distillers Association submission described pot still whiskey as about 80% barley, 15% oats and 5% wheat, according to Broom. Here, oats were a substantial part of the recipe, sitting between the barley majority and the smaller wheat component.[2]
Source: Documented through trade reporting. The original submission was not opened for this article; the proportions and date rest on Broom's account.[2]
The proportions continued to change. Broom reports that Vincent Bowers, the last distiller at Bow Street, recorded an oat share of about 5% in 1970. Oat use then stopped in 1975 with the move to New Midleton. The history is one of changing practice, rather than an unchanging traditional percentage.[2]
Oat whiskies: read the recipe and the attribution
Kilbeggan offers an unusually precise recipe: its Single Pot Still contains 2.5% oats alongside malted and raw barley. The brand says it drew inspiration from historical recipes used in the distillery's late nineteenth century production. That inspiration does not establish that the modern recipe reproduces a particular historical mash bill.[6]
Kilbeggan describes a “rich creamy mouthfeel” and credits the oat influence with dryness. These are the brand's tasting notes and attribution, rather than this site's observations or an isolated demonstration of what oats contribute.[6]
The Shed Distillery names three grains for Drumshanbo Single Pot Still: malted Irish barley, unmalted Irish barley and Irish Barra oats. It describes the oats as a small addition, but gives no percentage in the source used here.[7]
The Shed credits those oats with creaminess. Its production account also includes triple distillation and maturation in Oloroso sherry and Kentucky bourbon casks. Together, those details give a fuller picture of the whiskey than the oat ingredient alone.[7]
InchDairnie's Scottish experiment puts oats at the centre. Distillation began on 10 June 2019, and trade reporting gives the recipe as 51% oats. The distillery explains that it borrowed a minimum 51% approach for its own oat project.[4][5]
The official designation available to it, InchDairnie says, is “Single grain Scotch whisky”.[5]
Its PrinLaws page expects the first oat bottling in 2027. That remains a future bottling expectation, not a confirmed November 2026 release.[5]
Spelt whisky: a wheat with its own name
Spelt is wheat: specifically, the hulled wheat Triticum spelta L. A 2018 scholarly review identifies it as such while discussing competing explanations of its origins. Its interest to distillers does not depend on treating it as an entirely separate cereal.[12]
At Thy Whisky, it appears in a whisky called Spelt-Rye. The Danish distillery is based on the family farm Gyrup in Thy and says it uses only its own grain, malted, mashed and distilled on the farm.[9]
Spelt-Rye names two grains, but the published information used here does not give their proportions. It tells you which grains are named, without supplying a complete mash bill or establishing a distinctive spelt flavour that can be carried across to other whiskies.
The wider grain picture includes millet as well as oats. KOVAL names both among the alternative grains it uses in its own production account. Their presence expands the range of ingredients in whisky; it does not make every uncommon grain a reliable shorthand for a particular flavour.[8]
Common mistakes when reading grain claims
Assuming oats are an easy substitute for barley. Viscosity, enzyme limitations and possible yield difficulties all matter. Oats can be useful in a mash, but that usefulness depends on how they are incorporated, rather than a straightforward exchange of one grain for another.[1][2][4]
Assuming an oat percentage predicts creaminess. Kilbeggan and The Shed both describe creaminess in their whiskies. Those producer accounts are useful descriptions of particular spirits, not a controlled comparison linking the proportion of oats to texture.[6][7]
Treating spelt as unrelated to wheat. Its botanical classification is clear: spelt is a hulled wheat. Giving it its own name in a whisky description does not change that relationship.[12]
Read a grain claim alongside the recipe and the production account wherever those are available. A disclosed proportion tells you more than a name alone; an attributed description tells you who is making the flavour claim. Where only the grain name is given, leave the rest open.
Where to go next
- Grain Whisky Explained: understand the category behind many unfamiliar grain recipes.
- Single Cask Whisky Explained: separate a cask claim from an ingredient claim.
- Cask Strength Whisky Explained: understand what bottling strength tells you instead.
Sources
[1] Risen, C. “oats”, in The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. Oxford University Press, hosted by Spirits & Distilling. https://www.spiritsanddistilling.com/dictionary/acref-9780199311132-e-621
[2] Broom, D. How oats are making a world whisky comeback. ScotchWhisky.com, 20 June 2019. Trade reporting. https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/features/26163/how-oats-are-making-a-world-whisky-comeback/
[3] Woodard, R. What is the true taste of Irish pot still? ScotchWhisky.com, 14 March 2019. Trade reporting. https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/in-depth/24638/what-is-the-true-taste-of-irish-pot-still/
[4] Broom, D. InchDairnie distils first Scotch oat whisky. ScotchWhisky.com, 10 June 2019. Trade reporting. https://scotchwhisky.com/magazine/latest-news/26039/inchdairnie-distils-first-scotch-oat-whisky/
[5] InchDairnie Distillery. PrinLaws. Producer account, checked November 2026. https://www.inchdairniedistillery.com/product/prinlaws/
[6] Kilbeggan Irish Whiskey. Kilbeggan Single Pot Still. Producer account, checked November 2026. https://www.kilbegganwhiskey.com/whiskeys/kilbeggan-single-pot-still
[7] The Shed Distillery. Drumshanbo Irish Whiskey. Producer account, checked November 2026. https://www.thesheddistillery.com/our-creations/drumshanbo-irish-whiskey/
[8] KOVAL Distillery. About Us. Producer account, checked November 2026. https://www.koval-distillery.com/about-us
[9] Thy Whisky. Home page. Producer account, checked November 2026. https://www.thy-whisky.dk/
[12] Poltoretskyi, S., Hospodarenko, H., Liubych, V., Poltoretska, N. and Demydas, H. Toward the theory of origin and distribution history of Triticum spelta L. Ukrainian Journal of Ecology, volume 8, issue 2, pages 263 to 268, 2018. CyberLeninka copy. https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/toward-the-theory-of-origin-and-distribution-history-of-triticum-spelta-l
This article is desk research drawn from the supplied verified fact sheet, distinguishing reference scholarship, trade reporting and producers' own accounts.
Last checked: November 2026