Beer and single malt have a lot in common. Both use barley as their main ingredient, and both rely on malting to transform the un-fermentable starchy interior of barley into sweet sugars irresistible to alcohol-producing yeast. And while you wouldn’t want to drink a pint of it, most whiskeys start out looking something like beer: a grain mash fermented with yeast.

That’s where the similarities diverge, however. Brewers boil their wort, add hops, and pay very close attention to the fermentation process, from the yeast strain they select to begin fermentation all the way through to the final gravity.…