“Here at Thy Whisky, we self-produce almost everything we need for our spirit,” said co-founder Andreas Poulsen at one point throughout the distillery tour. “The only products we buy from the outside are the casks,” he went on, “and the wood chips we use for our beech-smoked varieties.” This single estate approach, which is defining of every last thing that Thy does, derives from and centers around two things: First, a glowing love for the beautiful farm distillery and the ground on which it stands. Second, an equally fervent affection for the flavor-rich, grain-forward whisky that is made there. When Andreas showed us around, we could hear it in every word he spoke and see it in every expression he made: This guy absolutely loves what him and his partners-in-crime are doing. It did not take long for Andreas’ passion to carry over to all who were in attendance!

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To understand what it is that sets Thy apart, it helps to know a bit about the place and its history. So here’s a wrap-up of 13 years of whisky making at Gyrup Estate, the family-owned grain and dairy farm that Thy is located on: It all started back in 2010, when the self-tought whisky makers distilled their very first drop of alcohol. Right from the start, they had one clear goal in their minds: to take their organically grown barley and create from it a world-class whisky that would capture the taste of the Danish soil. In the first years, however, they did not yet do everything on site. Of course, the Thy crew always used their own crops. Yet, they outsourced major production steps during their early days. Among others, they worked closely with a nearby distillery, a local brewery, and a foreign malthouse back then. From 2016 onwards, however, they took all operations “home”. Step by step, they built a new brewery, malthouse, stillhouse, and warehouse on the land that their family had owned for generations – until Thy Distillery as we know it today was completed. The spirit of collaboration, which helped to get things going for Thy in the past, is still greatly valued up there in the north: Today, Andreas and the team are happy to help out fellow distillers and brewers as good as they can, e.g., by malting their barley or drying their malt.

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In the course of the distillery tour, we did – of course – get to see every bit and piece of Thy Whisky from up close. We started out on the meadows, where Andreas told us  about the cultivation of the 500 hectars of fields, and about the role that the cows play in this. Next, we moved over to the barn, where we got to nibble some unmalted barley. (For its single malts, Thy uses, among others, a mix of the modern, high-yielding Laureate variety and the ancient, flavor-rich Imperial variety). Over in the malthouse, we then got see the custom-made malting cylinders that are one-of-a-kind in the industry. And we also got to try different types of malted barley – both smoked and unsmoked. Directly adjacent the malthouse resided the distillery, whose centerpiece is a shiny copper still by Müller Brennanlagen from Germany on which the Thy folks distill their whisky. The specialty: They don’t run the liquid through the still twice or thrice, but only once. As Andreas explained, this is possible due to the set-up of the apparatus. After the first run, it already gives you 80-per-cent spirit, in which the original aromas are largely undisturbed. Following up on this, we also saw the small smokehouse and the iconic warehouse before we moved on to finish our tour with an amazing degustation in the tasting room.

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The delicacies that awaited us there were plentiful and oh-so-tasty: All in all, we not only drank four drams, but also tried two IPAs made by local breweries with crops grown on Gyrup Estate’s organically cultivated fields. On top, we ate some beef and cheese from the cows. The spirits we got served were the traditional Spelt-Rye (which I had also reviewed here on my blog a while ago), the legendary No. 20 – Maltmod (which is made with a comparatively high percentage of caramal malt), and the beechwood-smoked No. 22 – Bog-PX (which has a fingerlicking-good raisin n’ coal profile). Our last dram was quite an oddity, namely The Gin We Never Made, which originated from the time in which Thy still shared a still with other spirits makers. No one really knows how this juniper-laden drop came to be. Yet, smell and taste are so close to barrel-aged gin that it seems obvious that something must have gone wrong in the production of this intended-to-be “whisky”. Still, The Gin We Never Made tasted mighty fine and put a fun closing point to an exceptional distillery experience, at the end of which my wife Dini and I bought no less than two whisky bottles, a handful of craftbeer cans, and a share in a soon-to-be-filled PX sherry cask!

by Tobi

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Name: Thy Whisky Distillery
Type: Whisky distillery
Address: Thy Whisky ApS ; Gyrupvej 14 ; DK-7752 Snedsted ; Denmark
Opening hours: Monday to Friday + 1st Saturday of the month: 11.00-15.00
More info: https://thy-whisky.com/ (Website)

*** We booked a tour online & were
shown around as regular visitors. ***