Hans Martin Hansgaard, Stauning Distillery, Denmark

Nordic whisky is having a moment. And in this month’s episode Gordon chats to one of its pioneers: Hans Martin Hansgaard, co-founder of Stauning Distillery.

This former teacher clubbed together with a group of friends (a butcher, helicopter pilot, doctor, several engineers and a chef) to found Denmark’s first ever single malt whisky distillery. And why not? They’d heard a radio programme about exactly how Scotch whisky is made and realised that, when it comes to the essentials - the water, the grains, the peat and the sometimes dreich climate – Denmark has it all!

Here Hans shares his fascinating story with Gordon: from devouring books on making whisky the old fashioned way to designing Stauning’s stunning ‘Nordic Noir’ distillery on Denmark’s west coast and winning awards with his first bottlings. 

And while anCnoc and Stauning may be over a century apart in the timeline, there’s no difference in the ethos of these two whisky makers when it comes to their craft. It’s all about the beauty of ‘small’ and a making whiskies for the modern age that never lose touch with tradition.  

Transcript

GORDON

Welcome back to Knock Tales, my deep dive into the world of well-crafted products from around the world with some of my fellow makers. One of the best things about being the whisky business at the moment is seeing an exciting wave of modern producers making their mark in the world stage. They're making whisky their way, respecting tradition, but bringing some really interesting new ideas to the process. And making some pretty good drams in the process, too. It's my pleasure to have one of these producers as my special guest today. Hans Martin Hansgaard is one of the co founders of Stauning, hailed as a new Nordic whisky from the west coast of Denmark. Welcome Hans, it's great to have you here today.

HANS

Thank you so much, Gordon. It's a pleasure to be here.

GORDON

Before we chat about your whisky, can we start with Stauning Distillery, which opened, I think it was 2018. I've seen quite a few distilleries in my time, but wow yours is really out there, it's pretty futuristic. It really is quite the opposite of what I can see out the window from up here at anCnoc. How did you guys come up with the initial design?

HANS

Yeah, we kind of drew on inspiration from two things. First of all, we wanted it to not look too much out of place on the Danish west coast. So we looked at local architecture for inspiration. And we have in area around a fjord and in small villages around the fjord and these harbour villages we have fishing huts and they have a certain shape and we took this shape, the pointed roof and the colour and how they are laid out, kind of built next to each other but not in a neat pattern. So we took that, that design for the inspiration for the distillery. And the modern thing, the sharp lines, the clean architecture, it's basically a greetings to the Danish design. We are very well known for Danish design in Denmark, which is this very clean, neat design.

GORDON

The Distillery itself, the equipment itself, it was very much make, mend and do and make use of what you have. Certainly in the initial one, the start-up early stages.

HANS

Yeah. When we started back in 2005 and kind of laid out the philosophy behind Stauning whisky, what we learned from was books about how to make whisky and all this literature that we read and it was all about how you made whisky back in the old days in Scotland before it was like really industrialized. So it was double distilled, it was small pot stills, it was floor malted and it was pot stills with the direct flame underneath. So that fit really well with what we wanted. We wanted to make whisky like it was done from the very basic methods of whisky making. Also, we had to start out from very little money. Our initial investment was very small. And these old methods were by far the cheapest to set up when we started. And as we grew, we just we never left these methods. We became very….that's all we've ever been working with, like the floor maltings, the open flame. So we stuck to that through all the years.

GORDON

Hey that’s what’s made your product’s a success in the first place. You'd be mad to move away from that philosophy.

HANS

Definitely. Yeah. We wouldn't dare to!

What brought us together early on was we were a group of friends. And the initial idea behind Stauning whisky was it just came actually from a radio programme on Danish national radio where it was…that talked about how to make whisky in Scotland. Oneof the other founders Martin, he was listening to this programme and it was just it just occurred to him, we have everything they have in Scotland. We have the very clean water. We have access to very good barley and rye, and we have local peat and, and we also have the same climate actually. So everything just told us to make whisky in Denmark. It just made no sense that no one was making whisky in Denmark. And being a group of friends, we came from many different backgrounds and some of us were not even drinking whisky. But it still was an appealing idea for everyone to, to, to gather this group of friends and do something together. And making whisky just sounded like a lot of fun to do.

GORDON

That's a pretty cool story. I know you're a teacher. That's your background. What about the rest of the gang?

HANS

Yeah, it's. We come from many different backgrounds. As you said, I was a teacher. I'm an educated teacher. I was teaching for 14 years. I stopped in 2009 and then became a full time working in Stauning. But the other founders we have we have a butcher, we have a helicopter pilot, we have a medical doctor, we have four engineers and a chef.

GORDON

Being a teacher cannot bring anything to the whisky making role. Or is it just something totally different.

HANS

It's of course, totally different. So I don't think I can bring too much from my teaching background. But what I do now is that I do a lot of travelling. I do a lot of promotion, promoting Stauning whisky, talking about Stauning whisky. And it's often in front of many people, from 20 people to 50 or 100 people. And that situation and managing a bunch of mostly guys is I think I can often draw upon my teaching background. It has some similarities, I would say.

GORDON

Okay.

HANS

But in terms of whisky knowledge, of course it came from even before we started Stauning whisky. My interest in whisky goes back a long, long time, even though I'm not that old. I started reading about whisky and travelling to Scotland many years ago and also collecting whiskies from mostly Scotland.

GORDON

And did you say you're the first whisky distiller in Denmark?

HANS

Yeah Denmark, we don't have a tradition for whisky making. So Stauning is the first Danish whisky distillery from 2005 and but it's become a thing now They are showing up all over the country now. The last like 5 to 10 years, we have seen a real growth in the number of distilleries in Denmark, which I think is an amazing thing because they all have their own unique character. It's like in Scotland we are kind of exploring regions in Denmark. Now. What can West Jutland do and what do they do in North Jutland and what do they do in in the centre of Denmark? And it's all different expressions that come out of it, which is very interesting. And we are becoming slowly a whisky nation, a whisky making nation.

GORDON

Your cereals, your barley, your rye. Are they sourced locally as well?

HANS

For Stauning they are. From the beginning it was one of our keystones in the company was to source everything locally because we have access to this great water underneath the distillery and also it's farmland. So when we look out of the windows at the distillery, we are overlooking fields where we can get the grains from. And in Stauning's case, we work with the two local farmers and we can see their farms from the distillery. They're very close within few kilometres from the distillery. All the grains are harvested and grown. So it’s a very locally rooted product.

GORDON

Your rye, that’s something we really don't use in Scotland a great deal. I know a couple of independents that have done some batches of rye. Do you malt the rye, is it malted cereal as well?

HANS

It is, yeah. Since we got very good at, at malting, we thought we might as well malt the rye as well as the barley because it does contribute to the taste in the final product when it's all malted. So our rye whiskies are all malted 100%.

GORDON

We run Knockdhu seven days a week, 24 hours a day, 48 weeks a year. What sort of production levels are you guys on?

HANS

Yeah, we also…we run through most of the year and we have two breaks, one during Christmas where we shut down the distillery. But otherwise we are basically making whisky all year round. And the output now of the distillery is around 750,000 litres of hearts per year.

GORDON

That's a lot of spirit. Is this all destined for single malt, or single rye, single Stauning products? 

HANS

Yes, yes we bottle everything ourselves as of now, yeah.

GORDON

So how’s the brand going. Has it been pretty well received around the globe?

HANS

It definitely has. The amount of bottles we have for sale now is not that much, because we are always some years behind, of course, because of maturation times. So what we have available now is of course made in in the old distillery. We had a farm distillery that we closed down in 2019, right next to the new distillery. So everything basically comes from that distillery, the older distillery now. But the next few years we will be releasing more and more bottles into the market. But it's been very well received. We are slowly moving into new markets like Germany and France and Holland and Belgium and also a little bit to Asia and the US. So…and it's been very well received. We are winning awards and getting some great reviews from people out there as well, which is super important.

GORDON

That's great to hear. 

At anCnoc, I suppose in modern terms, we're a very, very traditional distillery. It's really easy to automate things these days and I think we tend to make things for the wrong reasons just because we can do it rather than because it's going to add quality or add value to the product or make things more efficient. So we've deliberately avoided the 21st century to be honest. The 21st century is grossly overrated. You guys still have a hands on approach in Stauning?

HANS

Very much so. We… if you visit our distillery…

GORDON

I will someday, trust me!

HANS

Which I would hope you would, you're very welcome!

I would take you to the butchery first where we initially started the production in 2005 and six and then to the farm distillery, because we would take you kind of through our Stauning history because you would really see a red line in how we initially made it in the butchery and then at the farm and then now in the bigger purpose built distillery. There’s really a red line in that all the methods even from early on, they are still repeated in the new distillery. Of course in a bit of a larger scale, but we scaled in a very unusual way. The floor maltings look the same, even though the machines we are using for floor maltings, they look exactly the same, they're just wider. The still room which is so important where we have always had small stills and directly fired stills on both the wash and spirit side. They are still small stills and still with the direct flame under each of the stills. So it is a very it is a very true production even now with the amounts we do today to how we started out. It’s basically the same. And that makes me very proud to see this in the distillery now that we can actually manage to do that. And of course you've seen probably seen photos of the still room with the 24 stills that we had to go with because we wanted to… we didn't want to go to larger stills because we thought that that would change the DNA of Stauning whisky too much.

GORDON

It was 24 stills. I wasn't sure, the pictures I saw on the Internet. I couldn't count them all at once. Wow you’ve got a lot of copper in here guys, 24!

HANS

A lot of copper, a lot of surface, and then with worm tubs connected to each one of them. So a lot of surface area.

GORDON

Direct firing, do you think that adds to the generators, it’s furfural compounds we get from direct firing isn’t it?

HANS

From direct firing? Yes, ah definitely. Another Stauning special or trademark is our unclear wort. So we don't do like a good clean filtering after mashing, so we have a lot of solids in the wort and what goes into… after fermentation goes into the wash. So that, in combination with the direct flame and fire underneath the stills, just creates a good deal of caramelisation in the stills. So that definitely brings special characters to Stauning whiskies.

GORDON

It's interesting that, it's not the polar opposite, but it's quite different from what we try to achieve here. We're looking for a very, very clean, very, very clear worts. In fact, we fitted a couple of hydro cyclones in the worts line a few years ago just to try and remove any solids that may have passed through the filters. They've been a great success.

HANS

Yeah, and I think if we started out, if we had a century old history like you have, then we would probably have done the same way. But the equipment we have had through our, through the years have always been something we built ourselves or got really cheap. And when we were laying out the new distillery, we had to make a decision. Do we want modern equipment that can filter really well? Or... because we could actually, we could have got that we had the funds to do it now in the new distillery, but we thought, no, we are going to stick to unclear worts because we have always had it. And if we all of a sudden change that in the new distillery, that wouldn't be true to how we, what we used to do in the farm and in the butchery. So we stuck to unclear worts even though we could have cleaned them completely. It's a house style.

GORDON

It’s just a scaling up isn't it?

HANS

Yeah, scaling up but not leaving what we came from.

GORDON

Did you guys learn your malting the same way as you learned mashing and your distillation?

HANS

Yeah, we did.

GORDON

It's a very specialist industry.

HANS

It definitely is. Yeah. But it all comes back to the philosophy again and the wish of doing everything ourselves. Having an all in-house production was always key to us. So we had to do the malting as well. Also it gives us an easier access, or easier way to experiment with smoking with different types of peat. And also we have started smoking with Danish heather. We are in the West coast of Denmark. It is covered in fields and in heartland. So we have this good access to peat and to heather.

GORDON

And what does the heather bring to that. Does it bring sweetness, a woodiness to the malt? 

HANS

It brings, I would say, a herbal note and woodiness, and this, you know, this bonfire smoke. So I read the description about your smoked whiskies. It sounds very similar to the way we… our smoked whiskies turn out. They’re very pleasant, they're very mellow in the smoke and they are not medicinal at all like, like West Coast Scottish whiskies, like Islay whiskies.

GORDON

So what's the future for Stauning? What's the next big thing for you guys?

HANS

The future for Stauning now is to keep exploring different styles in our whiskies. We are just constantly…we are still a young distillery, 17, 18 years old. So of course, we know we still have a long way to go. We can still improve on our product even though we already, after such a short, short time, I think we are doing great malts and great rye whiskies. But there's always tweaks and different casks you can explore. What kind of casks suits our smoked whiskies better and so on. So we are constantly improving our product. I think it's becoming better year after year, especially with casks. I think we're really good at… our new make is amazing and so it's basically treating the new make in the best possible way by maturing it in better and better casks.

GORDON

Where do you guys source your wood from Hans?

HANS

When it's for our rye whiskies we lean on American white oak for the maturation of those because we have tried European oak as well but we like what the American oak, the flavours it gives to the rye whisky so they always start out in virgin American oak. And for the malt whiskies, single malts, it's mostly…they start out in bourbon casks. We have done that for many years, but we are slowly moving them into ex rye casks, our own ex rye casks. So refill rye. Because it just makes a lot of sense to use those casks again. And all of our whiskies basically are first fill. So, that's because we don't have the age on the whiskies as you do in Scotland most of the time. So we focus on first fill casks to mature the whiskies and bring a lot of flavour really fast. And for the single malt it's often most of the time, when we do a finish it would be on different fortified wines, wine casks. And also rum casks, we have had a lot of success with.

GORDON

That’s a broad selection of wood there.

HANS

We have a lot of different casks in the distillery now. We are still looking for the right expressions for the different styles. And also every year we release experiments on unusual casks.

GORDON

And you guys still go to work with a smile on your faces I take it yeah?

HANS

Definitely. Yeah. It's… I'm not about to go back and be a teacher again I can say that much. It's really, really enjoyable to basically work with your hobby, which I'm doing now full time. It's so good.