At High West, we believe education leads to appreciation so we'd like to shed some light on a rarely discussed type of whiskey... "light whiskey". Not to be confused with lower calories or an Edison light bulb, "light" denotes a grain spirit distilled between 80-95% alcohol by volume (ABV) - it's "lighter" than a straight whiskey (which is distilled to <80% ABV) but "heavier" than neutral grain spirits (what is called NGS and makes vodka) which must be distilled >95%. However, most light whiskeys is distilled to 94.5% ABV so it's almost NGS! Distilling that high removes almost all the congeners, the chemicals other than ethanol that whiskey lovers call "flavor." Light whiskey isn't common in the U.S because we prefer our "heavier" straight whiskeys.

However, light whiskeys has an important role to play in the world of whiskey. It is the "dilutant" in about 95% of the world's blended whiskeys. In the U.K, what they call grain whiskeys is more or less tha same thing as light whiskey. It gets blended with heavier malt whiskey to make blended scotch. In North America, light whiskey gets blended with heavier straight whiskeys to make blended Canadian (about 95% of all Canadian whiskey) as well as most American blended whiskeys that are not blended straight whiskeys.