Today there is shortage of malt on the market. Distilleries all over the world are struggling to gather enough materials for whisky making, and they are also trying to cut down the fermentation time. As a result, many distilleries are pouring money and manpower into researching the answer to this question: How can we make good whisky in the shortest time possible?

A leader in this research is the the Mars distillery, which was first established in 1985, closed down in 1992 and then reopened in 2011. It had to find creative ways to make whisky fast, and the only way to do this, of course, is to shorten the fermentation process. Many different kinds of yeast have been tried for this purpose. Distillers have even studied the fermentation process of beer making to try and glean ideas. The result of all this research is that distilleries have managed to cut down the time for fermentation considerably. The research is still ongoing, however, as the question of how to make top quality whisky in a short amount of time is the Holy Grail of whisky making.