I forgot to mention this last week. When James and Oz were visiting a whisky distillery in last week's programme, they had a great bit showing an ancient-looking rake masher in action. It's been the highlight of the series for me so far.
The rake masher looked at least a century old. Maybe even older. I've only seen illustrations of thesee machines in old brewing manuals. I'd wondered exactly how they moved. Well, now I do. So thank you, James and Oz.
I suppose I should file this post under "sad old obsessive".
What distillery did they visit? I visited Jameson's Old Midleton distillery just over a week ago and in addition to a working rake masher, they have all the old equipment set up for use. Malting, mashing, fermenting, distilling, and even cooperage. Definitely worth a visit. The only downside is that the dimly lit buildings made a good photo tough.
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