Eden Mill

Eden Mill is a microbrewery and artisan distillery producing beer, gin, gin liqueurs and single malt whisky. It is located near the famous Fife town of St. Andrews and was the first combined Scottish brewery and distillery. Their gins have gained accolades and prizes around the world, but now the small batch single malts are doing likewise. The award-winning visitor experience offers tours and tastings, and benefits from its relatively close proximity to Edinburgh. 

The distillery produces single malt whisky in both the peated and unpeated style. The unpeated is produced for most of the year and is described as having distinct notes of green apple, toasted cereals, white pepper and vanilla. The peated variant has a gentle, sweet and soft peat smoke with notes of heather, dried grass and bonfire ash. 

The annual capacity of Eden Mill is currently 100,000 litres. However, this is due to be doubled to 200,000 but work has been delayed by the Covid pandemic.

They use a variety of barley styles to produce their whisky including pale malt, chocolate malt and crystal malt. These botanicals are more regularly used in brewing rather than spirits production. This contributes to a wide range of flavours in Eden Mill spirits.

Eden Mill is equipped with a small mash tun and two washbacks. The fermentation time is between 72 and 96 hours, depending on the time of the year - shorter during warmer conditions and longer for cold weather. There are three Alembic stills, each with a 1,000 litre capacity. Distilling levels are kept low and they fill just eight barrels with new make spirit per week. This makes Eden Mill one of the smallest whisky distilleries in Scotland. These barrels are then matured in a set of warehouses on site. 

Eden Mill began life in 2012 when the Eden Brewery was founded by Anthony Kelly and Paul Miller, a former director of brewing giant Molson Coors. They purchased and converted the buildings of an old paper mill in Guardbridge, a small village to the west of St. Andrews, in Fife. 

The mill was on the site of an old distillery named Seggie. It was operated by the Haig family, owners of the famous Haig's blended Scotch whisky brand, between 1810 and 1860. Upon closure, the distillery was converted to the Guard Bridge Paper Mill and it remained in operation until 2008 when the owners went bankrupt.

Once the distillery equipment was installed the production of whisky began in 2014. The inaugural single malt was released on St. Andrew's Day (November 30) in 2018. It was the first of what has become a limited edition annual bottling. The inaugural release was matured in a combination of three cask types - virgin American oak, virgin French oak and ex-Pedro Ximenez sherry barrels.

There has been a series of 20cl bottlings released in a range called The Hip Flask Series. It was also launched in 2018 and is designed to showcase the distillery's unpeated and peated single malts in combination with different and unorthodox cask types. In addition, they run an active cask ownership programme.