Spring 2025 Banquet

  • Gavin Smith
  • January 13 2025

Heriot-Watt_©Sarah McDaid

Visit almost any Scottish distillery today, and the likelihood is that the people charged with overseeing production and developing innovation are graduates of Heriot-Watt University’s International Centre for Brewing and Distilling (ICBD).

This world-leading Edinburgh institution is part of the university’s School of Engineering & Physical Sciences, and not only supplies many of the graduates working in maltings, breweries and distilleries all around the globe, but offers training, research and consultancy facilities and services. It represents a highly effective partnership between academia and industry.

As the ICBD prospectus states: “Heriot-Watt University is regarded as one of the best places to study Brewing and Distilling. Our reputation is reflected by our unrivalled campus facilities, respected academic faculty and the ongoing impact of our graduates in the drinks sector.

“The programme has been developed in cooperation with senior representatives of the brewing, malting and distilling industries who are members of the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Brewing and Distilling. Graduates have detailed knowledge and understanding of science and technology, along with the practical skills to become leaders within the food and drink sectors.”

Beginnings

Heriot-Watt takes its name from the Scottish inventor James Watt and the philanthropist George Heriot, and was granted university status in 1966, while the ICBD was established during 1990. However, the Centre can trace its origins back to 1903, when the then Heriot-Watt College appointed Danish brewer Emil Westergaard as a part-time lecturer.

He taught an innovative summer school, based at Campbell, Hope & King’s Argyle brewery, and the success of this venture led to his appointment on a full-time basis three years later, accompanied by the creation of the Department of Mycology – the first brewing and distilling department in Scotland.

Today, based on an airy campus to the west of the city, Heriot-Watt University offers a four-year BSc Honours Degree in Brewing and Distilling and post-graduate qualifications – a nine-month diploma or 12-month MSc, and PhDs. A recent addition is an MSc in Brewing and Distilling with an entrepreneurship element, while a new MSc in Advanced Sustainability for Brewing and Distilling will be introduced next year.

Faculty member Professor Annie Hill has been at Heriot-Watt University since 2001 and is editor (with Dr Frances Jack of the Scotch Whisky Research Institute) of Distilled Spirits. She says: “There are currently between five and 12 students in each undergraduate year, and 40-plus post-graduates on campus. A significant number of MSc students complete research in collaboration with companies depending on their individual areas of interest.

“We have a large proportion of international students and we operate an international distance learning programme. At present, there are around 150 participants all over the world. Some are already based in breweries or distilleries and others are looking for a career change. There’s a real mix of ages, up to people who are retiring.”

Skills

Teaching comes courtesy of a mix of lectures, workshops, practical experience and site visits. Professor Hill’s colleague Assistant Professor Matthew Pauley explains that: “In the first year of the BSc programme, biology, chemistry, maths and chemical engineering are studied to get everyone to the same level of knowledge, and the actual brewing and distilling really starts in the second year.”

Pauley is one of a number of members of the ICBD teaching staff to have spent time working in industry, in his case product development at Bacardi, Thames Distillers and Bombay Sapphire. He has also established the Distillers Nose consultancy.

He notes: “All students work with brandy, gin and whisky low wines. Each of them is given a small copper still and at one stage they have to judge cut points purely on the nose. Their spirits are then compared in a horizontal tasting. There’s nowhere to hide!”

Overall, in terms of processes, the ICBD covers everything from malting to maturation, and the Centre is equipped with a mill room, complete with roller and hammer mills, a malting lab with steeps and a kiln, a two hectolitres brewery, equipped with a lauter tun, a mash filter and six 200-litre fermenters. Bottling and kegging facilities are available, and students may rent out 30 and 50- litre tanks in which to produce their own brews.

The stillhouse is named in honour of drinks industry titan the late Dr Chris Greig and contains a pair of glass stills, created in the 1950s for what was then the Distillers Company Limited by Abercrombie of Alloa. The pair of stills came with copper ‘covers’ which when fitted give the illusion of conventional pot stills, as Abercrombie was determined nothing would leave its workshop without at least some copper content.

The wash still has a capacity of 25 litres, while the spirit still holds up to 18 litres, and the stillhouse also contains a Carter Head still with a botanicals basket that is a 10-litres replica of the one operating in the Borders Distillery at Hawick. Within the ICBD, single botanical distillations are undertaken and a botanical ‘library’ in jars has been assembled. This is a useful reference tool for distillers seeking to know what each might contribute to their gin.

Spirit maturation experiments come courtesy of blocks of either American or European oak in glass jars filled with spirit, while new-make samples are kept for purposes of comparison. Matthew Pauley observes: “Some first-year students make spirit, and by the time they graduate it is legally whisky. They get to taste it on their last day!”

Relationships

One of the ICBD’s most attractive ‘selling points’ is the close relationship it enjoys with all sections of the drinks industry, and alumni regularly return to the Centre to discuss their careers and distilling innovations, and ensure that current undergraduates are aware of job vacancies as they arise.

The valuable practical and theoretical links between the ICBD and the wider brewing and distilling worlds beyond are often remarked upon by students as key attractions, with Canadian Maddie Dysart, currently in the first year of her PhD, noting that “There are great contacts in the industry and crossovers with others. I was interested in whisky and decided to come here to study for the BSc. I wanted to be a distiller when I started the course, but now I feel I’d like to work in research.”

Third year BSc student Andrew Marr says: “I like the practical application of chemistry and I’d love to go into the whisky side of things. Maturation is my speciality. I like how close Heriot-Watt is to the whisky industry – literally and metaphorically – with breweries and distilleries in Edinburgh.”

Fellow third year student Daniel de Haas from France adds that: “I was working in a distillery in France and learning on the job was fine, but I wanted more. I kept hearing about Heriot-Watt and how good it was – just about everyone I was working with had a Heriot-Watt qualification! It’s a very international thing – the way the course is set up. Postgraduates and undergraduates get to mix, it’s very diverse.”

Diversity is also clearly present in current PhD research projects, which underline the crucial dynamic between students and the distilling industry. They include a Diageo-funded study of high gravity brewing in Scotch malt whisky production, a Mossburn Distillers-supported exploration of all-grains distillation, a Nikka Distilling Ltd-funded study on distillery microbiomes, and Yeast Selection for High Gravity Brewing in Scotch Malt Whisky production, funded by IBioIC with the Scotch Whisky Research Institute.

Furthermore, a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Diageo is in place, exploring the analysis of wood chemistry and prediction of maturation characteristics, specifically to make the rejuvenation process more efficient and consistent. This is a three-year partnership that commenced last August, and a spin-out PhD studentship relating to the project is due to start in October.

Other interactions between students and the wider world of whisky take the form of part-time employment at the likes of Edinburgh’s Scotch Malt Whisky Society, Scotch Whisky Experience or Glenkinchie distillery in East Lothian, while Danish second year BSc student and Heriot-Watt Whisky Society president Markus Christensen is due to undertake his second work placement at Springbank distillery in Campbeltown this summer.

Any concerns that the distilling industry might be developing a degree of uniformity when so many of its brightest stars were taught ‘the Heriot-Watt way,’ are allayed by Annie Hill, who points out: “There isn’t a ‘Heriot-Watt way’ of doing things. The industries are constantly evolving, and we have an industry advisory board that helps keep us informed, so there are lots of opinions.”

But let’s leave the last word to one of the ICBD’s graduates – and also an astrophysicist – now forging a successful career in the distilling industry. Having served as head distiller and distillery manager at Glasgow and Holyrood distilleries, Jack Mayo acts as a distilling consultant courtesy of Maven Spirits Ltd. Asked about the ICBD, he declares: “The meeting of like minds; production-focused and product-passionate people all studying and socialising together provides you with a real sense of purpose and motivation. The course itself has opened countless doors and many more interesting opportunities in my chosen career.”

 

This article first appeared in the summer 2024 issue of The Keeper

 

Share this post

Leave your thought here

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *