Dark Grains – Glenlossie Traditional Cache

Dark Grains – Glenlossie

Glenlossie Dark Grains Plant was opened on the 10th of September 1993 for the purpose of processing the by-products from the distilleries in the area. The distilleries deliver two by-products called draff and pot ale. Draff is the residue from the mashing of the malt and the pot ale is the left over from the wash stills after distillation.

Pot ale is unloaded from road tankers and placed into three large storage tanks to allow a buffer to keep the process running. The pot ale is then filtered and introduced to the evaporators were it is boiled down from the eight percent solids to a target of fifty three percent solid. It has now been processed into a syrup form that can be added to the draff to make the pellets or even when the stocks of syrup are high sold to buyers.

The draff is taken in by the dark grains plant and initially run through two screw presses to extract some of the moisture from it. Next the pressed draff is mixed with the pot ale syrup and added to the large ring dryer which runs from the bottom to the top of the building. The final dried product that comes out is then feed into two Van Aarsen pellet mills that form it into 6mm pellets. The pellets are then conveyed to the large pellet shed for storage before they are placed into lorries to be delivered either to a farm or to be loaded on to a boat for foreign markets.

The site runs all the time and only shuts down for a quick spell of maintenance once a week and then for longer over the Christmas period and for usually three weeks in summer to allow larger projects to be undertaken.

This cache is situated on the side of a single-track road and should be a quick find. If you have never drove past a dark grains plant before though you will soon realise that they have a distinctive smell to them and usually the prevailing wind is blowing towards the cache site.

Happy Caching