After Leaving Laphroaig, Barry MacAffer Charts A New Course in South Korea

It was a meandering road that led Barry MacAffer to Laphroaig. A born-and-bred Islay boy, he was well familiar with the distilleries that dotted the island, but never considered working at one; in school, his teachers would tell him and his classmates to do their homework, lest they risk getting stuck on Islay, at a distillery, forever. “They were a wee bit right—I didn’t do my homework, and I did end up getting a distillery job, but they were wrong about being stuck here,” he muses.

MacAffer landed at Laphroaig in January 2011, after first pursuing careers in the British Merchant Navy, commercial fishing, and dentistry. “I had this idea to move back to Islay [from Glasgow] and build my own dental lab once I was a qualified technician, and that’s when I took a job as an agency worker at Laphroaig,” he explains. “I reckon I was at the distillery for a month before I forgot about the dental lab completely, having found an industry that I loved.” From humble roots as a contract worker in the warehouse, MacAffer rose through the ranks, becoming a malt barn operator, assistant manager, and ultimately, general manager, a title he took on in November 2021.

During his 13-plus years at Laphroaig, there were times when MacAffer could see his future plainly laid out in front of him, with the distillery always at the fore. “When I became the general manager, I thought to myself, ‘This is amazing, this is me for a long time’—at one point, I could imagine myself at Laphroaig for 25 years down the road,” he says. “But eventually, I had this itch for travel and creativity, and I knew I didn’t want to be on Islay my whole life.” That’s when the universe dealt him another card—a chance meeting with executives from BrewGuru, a South Korean company known for beer and ready-to-drink Highballs that was looking to branch out into whisky, and needed someone experienced at the helm. The rest, as they say, is history: MacAffer, having met the BrewGuru execs in November 2023, had a job offer in hand by February, and left Laphroaig this past June in pursuit of Korean single malts.

When it comes to Korean spirits, the one you’ve probably heard about (and perhaps tasted) is soju, a clear liquor distilled from grains or starches that drinks smooth and tastes slightly sweeter than most vodka. That said, there is a small—but growing—market for Korean-made whisky, the vast majority of which currently stays in South Korea. While our tasting panel has yet to try one, we did note the release of Ki One Unicorn back in 2022; that brand is among the few if only, Korean whiskies to make it to the U.S. as of now. As BrewGuru’s director of distillation, MacAffer hopes to take Korean single malt to a much wider audience and give it some local color in the process. “We want to make a Korean whisky—we’re not going to come to Scotland and pinch all the products needed,” he explains. “We want to get our hands on Korean malted barley, we want to try and use Korean oak if possible; ultimately, we want to create a truly Korean single malt that we can share with the world.”

Korea’s whisky guidelines—which are put in place by the country's Food Standards Agency, and not a whisky-specific body—are much different than those that govern single malt scotch, and there are some roadblocks to what MacAffer would like to do; he won’t, for instance, be able to bring floor malting to BrewGuru. That said, he’s keen on potentially building an industry for Korean oak barrels (there’s not currently one in place), as well as exploring Korean peat, which, he notes, does exist but isn’t currently used. MacAffer is excited by the opportunities he expects the country’s climate will afford, calling it the opposite of what he’s used to. “[The climate] was one of the biggest draws for me to create whisky in Korea,” he says. “I’ll take lessons from different industries and whisky regions, especially the Japanese, Taiwanese, and even bourbon climates. It’ll be a steep and fast learning curve that I can't wait to explore.” In general, South Korea’s climate is characterized by bone-chillingly cold, dry winters and blisteringly hot, humid summers, with short, slight in-between seasons—certainly a departure from the milder climes of his home country, where whisky can age undisturbed for long periods of time.

Though only half-built now, BrewGuru’s planned single malt distillery—named Lighthill Brewery & Distillery—is set to be the biggest in South Korea once finished (the current timeline has it slated for completion by next spring). Once the distillery gets going, the first whiskies may very well follow soon thereafter; there are no aging requirements in place in South Korea, and Ki One, for instance, released its own whisky just one year after it opened. MacAffer notes that this isn’t the only distillery the company has planned, as BrewGuru has ambitious plans for future sites already being discussed. In the meantime, MacAffer daydreams about a not-too-distant future, where he’ll be sitting in a bar on Islay, eyeing his own Korean single malt on the shelf.