Distillery Thursday: InchDairnie Distillery Does Things Just That Little Bit Differently

This week we’re crossing the border to Scotland. Not a Dutch distillery, but a Scottish one. We’re telling you about the InchDairnie Distillery in Fife, where whisky is crafted in a remarkable way with one clear goal: to delight our taste buds to the fullest.

You may have read about it last month: InchDairnie Distillery has released its first Scottish whisky, named RyeLaw. It’s the first in a series of whiskies distilled with an innovative approach. InchDairnie makes whiskies with tradition in mind, but innovation firmly in sight.

But before we dive into what InchDairnie does, let’s go back to the beginning of the career of Ian Palmer, the founder of InchDairnie.

He grew up in a family where whisky was part of everyday life. Palmer’s father had worked in the industry for years. The love for the water of life was passed from father to son, and Palmer began his career in whisky at Invergordon Distillery. He then worked with various whisky brands in his role at Whyte & Mackay. Brands he worked with during this time include Jura, Bruichladdich, and Tamnavulin.

Eventually, Palmer decided to found his own distillery. In 2011, he went in search of a site for a distillery he had been planning for some time. The ideal spot was soon found in Fife, where construction finally began in 2014. It wasn’t until 2015 that everything was ready and the first spirit could be distilled. The choice Palmer and his team made was to do almost everything just a little differently than other distilleries.

You can tell InchDairnie doesn’t follow the beaten path from the way the distillery was built. The distillery was literally constructed around the mash filter. It was the very first thing installed—before the roof and the rest of the distillery in Fife were even built. Only then did the building itself take shape.

InchDairnie is one of only two distilleries in Scotland that uses a filter instead of a mash tun. This mash filter is a crucial component for the operation. It allows the distillery to extract more from the raw materials, yielding more sugars and ultimately more flavor. Combined with a special yeast strain, it creates a unique recipe with which the Fife distillery crafts its spirits.

InchDairnie also works with a wide variety of grains. Think rye, as used in RyeLaw, but also wheat, oats, and hard winter barley. Roller mills won’t cut it for grinding all of that, so hammer mills are used—smashing everything beneath them like a wrecking ball. A traditional mash tun would clog with the resulting mash like a blocked artery, but the mash filter handles it all without a hitch.

The distillery does an incredible amount in-house, but also lets the local environment lend a hand in making whisky. When it’s time for fermentation, Fife’s climate steps in. Various yeasts are used, but fermentation takes place in the open air. After 60 hours, it’s time to distill.

Distillation happens in the distillery’s two pot stills and in InchDairnie’s pride and joy: the Lomond Hill Still. This copper still was designed especially for InchDairnie in Italy by manufacturer Frilli, and named for the view it offers. Stand by the still and you look out across the hills beside the distillery: the Lomond Hills.

InchDairnie Distillery distills year-round. Each season brings something different. For example, rye for RyeLaw is distilled for just two weeks a year. A week to ten days is set aside for producing a peated single malt: KinGlassie. The first bottles were filled in 2025.

Another week is reserved for one-off distillation runs such as oats, wheat, sour mash, and the like. These whiskies are eventually be released under the Prinlaws label. InchDairnie is also working on a single malt simply called InchDairnie Single Malt. If you want to taste it, mark 2029 in your calendar, that’s when the distillery’s first Vintage will be released.

By Vintage, InchDairnie refers to the different seasons in which they distill. Each season will yield its own character thanks to open-air fermentation and the use of different barley varieties. Casks from the various seasons will ultimately be married into a unique single-year Vintage single malt. When it’s gone, it’s gone:no second chances.