You may have heard of Monkey Shoulder scotch before, but do you know where the term ‘Monkey Shoulder’ is derived from? Check out the Haiku below.
Single Malt or Blended Malt whiskies are made from barley. Malted barley to be specific. And if you’re not sure how the malting process works, but it can be broken down into three main steps: steeping, germination, and drying.
The grain is put into warm water to steep, tricking it into thinking it has been planted. The grain then begins to make its starch reserves available as energy to grow. The grain is removed from the water and put onto a malting floor for approximately 4–6 days where it develops enzymes, the main one being called amylase (which we will be talking about in a Haiku in the future). These enzymes start breaking down the starches (aka complex sugars) into simple sugars like glucose and maltose. After a number of days, the grain begins to sprout, and this is the cue to halt the growing process. The grain is air-dried on the malting floor (and is continually turned over and rotated throughout the day). Then, heat is applied to fully dry/toast the grains. And voila, you have malt!
Now as I just mentioned, the grain is air dried on the malting floor and continually turned over and rotated to dry. While some distilleries (or malting companies) use machinery to do this, back in the day it was all done by hand.
Imagine this, distillery workers had to spend long days shovelling the malt and manually rotating it. Naturally they shovel with their dominant arm and over time this caused injury. One of their arms would end up hanging down more than the other, making them look like a money. And hence the term ‘monkey shoulder’ was used to denote this ailment.
Fortunately these days, there are less ‘monkey shoulders’ happening, but the term still lives on, on the bottles of Scotch and in Haikus.
MALT RELATED TERMS TO KNOW
| Green Malt: Grain that is softened by steeping in water and allowed to germinate but not yet subjected to drying. Maltman: A distillery worker who makes malt. |
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