Ross Shaw’s farm shed is brimming with glass beakers and old oak barrels.<\/p>\n
The agronomist and sixth-generation farmer from Victoria’s Gippsland region grows crops and runs livestock on his family’s property.<\/p>\n
But recently, Mr Shaw has also dabbled in distilling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As a sixth-generation farmer, Ross Shaw did not have any background in distilling. (ABC Rural: Faith Tabalujan)<\/p>\n
“We grow excellent grain here in Gippsland, but most of it goes into the feed market because we don’t have a receival for malt or flour-grade grain,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to add value to our crops, so I decided to open a distillery.”<\/p>\n
Whisky wisdom<\/p>\n
Over the past two years, Mr Shaw has dived deep into the world of whisky and spirits.<\/p>\n
His latest projects involve two unconventional crops: red wheat and sugar beets.<\/p>\n
“We had a crop of red wheat and thought, ‘Why not turn it into vodka,'” he said.<\/p>\n
“We did a few trials and landed on a recipe, which produces a bottle with a pleasant graininess and honeycomb sweetness.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Emerging red wheat heads at Ross Shaw’s Victorian farm. (Supplied: Ross Shaw)<\/p>\n
Mr Shaw said working with beets was like stepping back in time.<\/p>\n
“The local town of Maffra was built on the sugar beet industry,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Given you can make alcohol from anything with a sugar or starch source, we took that historic crop and decided to make a sugar beet spirit.<\/p>\n
“Flavour-wise it’s quite earthy, so it’d go well in a spicy margarita or just with a bit of ginger beer and lime juice.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sugar beets were grown in Maffra in the early 1900s. (Supplied: Maffra and District Historical Society)<\/p>\n
Early hurdles<\/p>\n
Mr Shaw said perfecting his beet spirit involved a lot of trial and error.<\/p>\n
“It was tough to find seed, so we imported some from Europe, grew the beets and workshopped ways to get the sugar out of them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t have the right equipment, so [we] had to hand-harvest all the beets.<\/p>\n
“But we’ve finally found a process that works.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sugar beets can be difficult to harvest without the right equipment. (Supplied: Ross Shaw)<\/p>\n
Mr Shaw said all good things, including spirits, took time.<\/p>\n
“You need about three years to make a bottle of whisky: one year to grow the grain and then at least two years to age it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to be patient.<\/p>\n
“But the clear spirits don’t have to sit in a barrel or anything, so you can get them to market a lot quicker.”<\/p>\n
Spirits Victoria Association industry development officer Sebastian Costello said distillers were increasingly exploring new ingredients.<\/p>\n
“This new generation of craft distillers want to give people a sense of place, so you can almost taste different parts of Australia,” he said.<\/p>\n
“For example, I know some using rye grown in the Mallee, but people are testing out any crop that can be malted and distilled.”<\/p>\n
Driven by ‘passion’<\/p>\n
For Mr Shaw, distilling has been the perfect challenge.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know all the science behind it, but just took my passion and did plenty of experimenting,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The Australian distilling scene is quite collaborative, so now I’ve got friends all over the country who I can call if I get stuck.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ross Shaw has crafted unique spirits from red wheat and sugar beets.\u00a0 (ABC Rural: Faith Tabalujan)<\/p>\n
Mr Shaw said his family was apprehensive about his distilling venture at first.<\/p>\n
“But now everyone is involved, including my dad, who loves helping me malt the barley.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Spring-sown wheat (left) and barley (right) from Ross Shaw’s farm. (Supplied: Ross Shaw)<\/p>\n
Mr Shaw is now hoping to grow his spirit side hustle.<\/p>\n
“We’re definitely scaling up our whisky production by adding equipment and slowly perfecting our process,” Mr Shaw said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve still got about 400 bottles each of the red wheat vodka and sugar beet spirit on the shelves.<\/p>\n
“But we’re keen to make more if the market demands it.”<\/p>\n
And Australian consumers are searching for new flavours, according to Mr Costello.<\/p>\n
“The trend is people drinking less but with more variety,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And they want to know the story behind each bottle.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ross Shaw’s farm shed is brimming with glass beakers and old oak barrels. The agronomist and sixth-generation farmer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23321,64,63,99,13330,172724,172726,172723,172725,46320,30873,172727],"class_list":["post-302476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-alcohol","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-farming","tag-grain-crops","tag-red-wheat","tag-spirits","tag-sugar-beet","tag-unique","tag-vodka","tag-whisky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}