Chill-Filtration

If you've ever picked up a bottle of whisky that read non chill-filtered and didn’t know what it was, no worries my post today will hopefully help explain it. As I am far from a technical person, I wanted to provide a simple, quick, non-technical explanation everyone could understand, if they didn’t know already.

For starters the chill-filtering process is a subject for debate. There are those that are for it and those that are against it. Purists believe the process removes flavors from the whisky while the other side believes that process makes their whisky look good without taking away from it.

The reason why the process was initially introduced was because whiskies with an ABV of 46% or less when brought down to lower temperatures, to include adding ice, would commonly get a hazy look to it. Many people didn’t like this hazy/cloudy look and to satisfy those people, distilleries introduced this chill-filtering process.

The chill-filtering process removes all the residues that create this hazy look and is done before bottling. To put it in a very simple way, chill-filtering was only introduced to make a whisky look good. With is this process that haze no longer appeared. This satisfied those whisky drinkers that didn’t like the haze but others strongly believe that the process takes away from the final product. Whisky distilleries that are against the process clearly indicate this on there bottles by labeling it Non Chill-Filtered.You can see that pictures below on the Ardbeg bottle.

I honestly can’t tell you that I prefer one way or the other. If you’ve ever drunk Dalmore 12 and/or Glenfiddich 12 then you’ve had a chill-filtered whisky. From personal experience and from my last blog I can tell you that I personally loved Dalmore 12. I also love non chill-filtered whiskies, which include:

• Ardbeg - This is one of my favorites, which I have yet to write about

• Jura - I wrote about Jura Prophecy on my July 29th post and I very much enjoyed it

• Bruichladdich - Also another great whisky I enjoyed

In the end I truly just enjoy a good whisky! To me if it is a good whisky I don't care whether it underwent a chill-filter process or not.  I will continue to try chill-filtered and non chill-filtered whiskies. You on the other hand can be your own judge and decide what you prefer.

If you need help searching for a chill-filtered or non chill-filtered whisky, I found this site while rummaging through the internet. It's something that can possibly help you tell which whiskies are chill-filtered and which are not if you want to look that information up:

http://www.royalmilewhiskies.com/advancedsearch.asp

No go out there and enjoy your weekend!

Cheers!