Great topic, Jesse. We home distillers think we are aging whiskey with oak staves, chips and/or spirals, but we are really infusing the spirit with wood that is slowly dissolving in spirit. When wood acts as the barrier between the spirit and outside air interesting things start to happen. Wood is porous as you state and barometric pressure and temperature affect oxygen transmission. As evaporation occurs inside the barrel, there is more headspace and therefore more oxygenation at the air/liquid boundary. Most distillers do not top up their barrels and the angel’s share can be substantial. If you want to judge what oxygen does to a spirit, pour a dram, taste and smell, then let it sit for 15 minutes. Smell and taste again. You will notice the difference. For me, it’s barrels, or old barrels with staves inside. Cheers!
You hit it right on the spot. Physics! A barrel will respirate and allow chemical and physical interaction with the atmosphere chemistry ( read about the chemical composition of the air) and pressure (physical pressure gradient) effects on the cellular structure of cellulose. What I have tried is to mimic this interaction using 1/2 gallon canning jars. But!!! I cut a hole in the lid so the stave can interact with both the liquid and air. To seal around the oak stave at the lid I use wax. There will be no contact other than with the small area of the stave and the metal lid. For the most part, air tight. This method allows the air and weather changes to influence through the stave to the liquid. Do I know for certain there is a difference, NO. I have tried this on liquid made 11-12 months ago. I also change my recipes every time. I can tell a difference with similar style liquids but once I reach 24 months, my usual maturing age, I will be more able to compare. Just my experiments.
I replaced one of the dowels on my small barrel rack with a barbeque rotisserie so that my barrel slowly rotates. It dramatically speeds up the aging process and really infuses the spirit with the compounds in the barrel.
I'm a wood worker who also has distilled a couple batches. Everything you said about the barrel is correct. The wood is very responsive to changes in temperature, pressure, humidity. How the pores open and close basically changes the surface area of wood available to interact with the spirits. So changes in flavor can change by season. Staves don't have the interaction with the air so their pore size will remain constant in the jar. I think it gives a more subtle but consistent across the aging or flavoring process. The couple of batches I've flavored with staves I've mixed both chared and unchared wood. Charing gives the wood its own distinct flavor but also opens up the wood pores to interact with the wood that's below the char. In barrels the pores open and close with the changes in pressure and humidity. Where staves don't. So with staves I've been experimenting with chared and unchared wood to even out the flavor and give the spirits different wood to interact with. I've been using white oak and adding in some apple wood chips to try to pull out some different flavors. I'm still new to the process but I've been liking the results.
Great timing on this video as this is the year I start my journey into oaking and aging. I really enjoyed hearing about your "hunches". I think that's where all the fun is in this hobby.
I age my whiskeys in 3 or 5 gallon barrels now exclusively. Once I started using barrels over staves in jars or carboys I noticed a huge difference over similar time ranges and conditions. I typically make a couple different bourbon mashes (different mash bills) and I'll age each in their own barrel. Then I reuse those barrels for my Irish and scotch recipes. I will actually throw the barrels in the oven from time to time on 200. Works wonders. Anyway I vote barrels for the win.
@Bill Mooney I have a smoker, but I've never thought of taking the time to get that sucker up to temp to use it for forced aging. But it would probably yield a similar/better result. I only leave them in the oven for like 30 mins on 200. Then I shut the oven off leaving the barrel inside until the oven is back to low temperature. I only do this once and typically within the first week of barreling the spirit. After that I allow time to take over. So I really don't have a set time I age. I hate to be crass but I recommend "till it's done" . They usually don't recommend going over 7months with new charred oak barrels (3-5 gal) older than that it can have a tendency to taste like a popsicle stick. However I take wider cuts from all my whiskeys. Bourbon, rye, scotch, and Irish. Now these cuts may be heads heavy or tails heavy depending on the style. With that being said, I age longer sometimes. It takes more time to let the esters settle out. But I find it makes a much more complex product. I start taking samples after 3 months and sample every 2 months till I get to where I'm happy with the result. Hope this answers your question. Sorry for the novel
@@keenanfrady so wait, you only age them for 7 months? i am a total newb, so if you just want to point me in the right direction that is cool, but i expected them to take years? is there a further aging process you use?
@@vidard9863 it takes years in full (53) gallon barrels. I use 3 gallon or 5 gallon barrels. If you buy "new charred" barrels over oaking is a real concern. In a small barrel the spirit is in contact with more surface area, it can be a confusing principle I know. There are other factors to think about though. Like " micro oxidation ", which happens to a greater degree in full size barrels. Making a truly complex product. Micro oxidation still happens in small barrels but not as much. Meaning to get that greater degree of complexity it takes years in a full barrel but you don't have years to work with in small barrels because you run a serious risk of over oaking you're product after 8 or 9 months in my experience. However it also depends on the climate you live in. That's why I recommend taking samples along the way.
@@keenanfrady that makes sense, the surface area to volume would be larger in the smaller barrels, and while the micro oxidation would therefore have more oxygen, as it is related to surface area to volume, it wouldn't have time to process the chemicals and it would run the risk of over oxidation... thus too woody much sooner without the proper complexity... do your batches smooth out/gain complexity after you bottle them? at some point i will have to experiment with some form of wooden lid/hybrid wood/glass keg... it seems i will never run out of things to do...
I have been using staves in 3 and 5 gallons carboys. But, I use a cork rather than a cap or lid. I also move them around in the shop, pop the cork occasionally, and have a pretty fair temperature change from month to month... The stuff does still tend to lean toward Scotch more so than bourbon, but there is a sweetness and vanilla there. I also do not char all sides of the staves. I toast them on three sides. Thanks for this video, it is cool to see a real side by side of the various methods.
I think the barrel is hard for most people, because the volumes we produce. When I think about barrel aging it’s very complex. There’s a reason why bourbon tastes like it does. It’s because of the temperature conditions and changes at the barrel houses where it’s produced. I think barrel aging may be the most difficult part of Home distilling actually. I’ve been using oak spirals. They’re available in different toasts and you can cut them to different lengths.
I've been trying on wooden lids on Mason jars. I have turned myself a lid, that I treat like a barrel, and so far, it seems to be working well... I can also see the liquor change colour through the glass
With respect, my experience with my bourbon barrels does not support your assertion that climate changes in the barrel house makes bourbon taste like bourbon. My barrels are in a constant 74degF environment and after four years they are exactly bourbon, no qualifications. The right kind of wood (weathered new American white oak), the right toast and char, and the right amount of wood, plus the long slow oxygenation and transpiration through the wood over many years, are sufficient to make bourbon. My experience suggests that the “push and pull” mechanism is either complete horseshit or close to it. If it has an effect, it is very very small.
@@badmotivatorbarrels2273 what does an “exact bourbon” taste like to you? I’ve tasted hundreds and everyone has a unique taste. To your idea that the barrel house has no effect, jack Daniel’s has already proved you wrong. They barrel the lower 4 rows of their houses as an inferior product under their green label, the middle and upper is their black label, and their signatures are pulled from the upper layers.
you know...the better-barrel idea is also something I had... but what I made myself is a wooden lid for Mason jars. I just fitted the lid as close as possible, and plugged the leaks with bee's wax. that means I can use a bigger or smaller jar no problem, it means I can do small batches, it also means I can use small wood I find to make the lids! I am currently using a wild cherry wood, medium roast with char, on a tea wash.
I have aged my whiskey in wood chips in mason jars covered in paper bag and put in green house to take on the natural heat! This has been a great way to get great tasting hooch in under 3 months
New to the craft myself, im still trying to do things on a budget, so focusing more on my spending on the distillation equipment and grains over the aging costs right now. With that said I've been lucky enough to live in an area heavy with white American oak so I was able over a year ago, to go cut down my own tree for fire wood and had it seasoning since then. Once I started making my own whiskey that wood came in handy and I was able to use staves from the tree I cut down and seasoned myself to age my product. In only a few months time each has turned out to already have softened and imparted their flavors well into the spirit. As of now I'm going to stick with the staves in glass jars and carboys because I am really liking the flavors. Guess my next step would be to learn how to be a Cooper and make my own barrels. Guess that will come in time.
@@theworldisastage1984 the benefit of a budget is that you learn skills to cover your inability to spend. I don't recommend anyone to ever jump into a hobby with too much money. Better to stay small until you have the skill to actually use the equipment when you go big.
@@theworldisastage1984 I do agree with you on this. At some point you either go big or decide it isn't for you. But in my experience, a newb probably should start small and make their mistakes while they're still cheap.
I use a stainless steel airstone and pump air into my jars every month or so, seems to make a big difference in mellowing out the flavour and smoothing out the wood notes. I aged a corn whiskey with medium toast uncharred oak chips for winemakers and it has the typical sweet bourbon profile so maybe the high char and heavy toast is the problem there.
I may be jumping the gun; throwing out the opinions before watching the video conclusions (see if we match up :)) Oak aging is a matter of surface contact to volume ratio. So, as the container itself gets smaller, there's far more surface contact than there is volume. This can lead to "over oaking" or maturing faster. So those 2 - 10 liter barrels that are all the rage these days are mostly decorative novelty items. After a month or two it's over-oaked. As the volume of the container goes up, the surface contact goes down. So a larger container can take years without much issue. The 5 gallon/23 liter barrels a lot of craft distillers use tend to be great for about 6-9 months of aging/maturation although I've seen a few places age for 1 year with them. The next step up though is triple the size 15 gallons/68 liters is what Whiskey Del Bac uses in Tucson, AZ (I buy the used ones for mead aging) Those are usually aging for about 1-2 years. With some things lasting a little over 2 years. My mead, keeping in mind it's being aged indoors without major fluctuations in temps, has gone about 8 months now and is almost ready to come out. Oh, forgot to mention; the alternatives are chips, cubes, spirals, and staves. In order, I prefer Staves, Spirals, Cubes, and avoid chips. The chips work, they'll do what they say they do, but it comes off flat, like wood flavor was added as opposed to soaking in wood. Cubes are what I have available most often so I use them and they provide a good woody/oaky flavor with some depth. Spirals increase the surface area of wood and can provide a nice stave-like oaky flavors and aromas. The staves are a bit tricky for me because you're sticking both the untouched outside of a barrel and the toasted/charred inside at the same time. All of the alternatives can help maximize the flavors imparted by the wood while maintaining the proper wood to volume ratios for smaller batches in the 1-23 liter range. Smaller than 23 liters is where I'll say I would skip the expense, hassle, maintenance, etc of a barrel. Around 23 liters/5 gallon size is where it starts to make sense to go over to a barrel. However, even at this small size it can be finicky. Test often as it'll go from no oak to over oaked in a very quick timespan. At the 15 galon/68 liter mark it starts resembling the bigger commercial products we're trying to mimic. You can set it for longer, less of a chance of over oaking unless you forget about it for multiple years. And comes off rounder. BTW: The subject has so much nuance from the different wood species to what your goals may be will determine dosing; not to mention a little good ol' fashioned trial and error. 1-2oz per gallon is about the dosing I usually start with and see where it is. After about 2-3 months, the cubes will stop contributing; everything they have will have been expended. If it needs more, I'll throw some fresh cubes in at that point. Just remember, if you do over oak, there's nothing you can really do to tone it back down. But dont dump the batch; save it for blending with future batches. An over oaked product mixed with an un-oaked product can lead to some nice balance.
@Still it Have you thought about potentially using a vacuum chamber to force the interaction of the spirit with the staves. Same principal as stabilizing wood with resin. Just a thought.
Wonder if you could rig up a toasted wooden "head" for the jar in addition to the staves? Then you'll be getting the angel's share passing through the wood.
A couple of years ago, I struggled to find oak chips. Now, our local home brew shop has gone under, and the bin inn has a good, but basic selection that just doesn't quite cut it. If you're looking to get from most of the online stores, they want to sell the spiral thingies that seem like I'm paying quite a lot for the parts of the wood that are sitting on the machine shop floor. So, I make rum. I only make the same recipe, and I make enough over summer that I don't need to brew over winter when it's cold. I bought myself a used wine barrel (white wine, french oak) over the summer just gone (I'm also in NZ!). The idea is that I fill the barrel, (I won't quite make it this summer), and then, each summer I bottle some at the beginning of the season and top it up with fresh rum, kind of using it like a solara cask. Like I say, this is the first year, but the rum is already drinking quite well. Also, the cost of filling a 40 gal barrel will be fairly... significant. If you're looking to make lots of different spirits, and play with wood and aging and peat and .... Then this is probably not the option for you.
I think you are on the right track with the "pressure/temperature/angel's share" affecting the barrel more, as those changes force the product into and back out of the wood of the barrel, while the staves have a much lower exchange volumes. Also, don't forget to factor in the humidity into the alcohol/water ratios the angels claim.
Looking at the title I kind of figured the video would have been more pros vs cons of barrels or staves. But it wasn't that so much; not to say it was a bad thing. And I think Jessie's right about the environment having more effect on a barrel aged spirit than one done in glass. With wood being a porous material, temperature, humidity, pressure are all going to affect it more than glass. And with more surface area susceptible to the environment, you're going to see a greater change in the spirit.
Nice. This was a good video for a more advanced distiller/mead maker/wine maker like me. So far I have only made clear spirits, aside from apple brandies, in which I flavor them with both fresh and baked apples with the skin left on the apples, which the ethanol saps the color out and turns a vibrant red. I also spice my Apple Pie Brandy. I leave the flavorings to steep for 3-4 days and then strain it out with cheesecloth. I use a tad of brown sugar to offset the astringency of the spices, and use apple juice to 'water it down' from the ~75-80% abv which it comes out of the still down to a more reasonable 50%abv. I have already purchased broken up pieces of Jack Daniel's charred barrels to oak age future corn whiskies and rums. The cost of barrels is fairly high. But worth the price as I would be leaving it to age for a year or more. I'm nearing the end of my mead stash, so it's time to get some new brews fermenting, both meads and rums and vodkas... Honestly, home distillation is great as it enables you to create liquors exactly to your personal taste.. Although I DO know of some AMAZING locally made gin and vodka which are well worth buying from my province's LCBO. I have some juniper berries frozen in my freezer which I picked last summer from my own trees with plans to make a gin using them.. It is nice to use my own grown ingredients in my creations. Both culinary and alcohol. I am by no means a heavy drinker. I honestly enjoy the process of making it FAR more than I enjoy being drunk.. The biological and chemical processes are far more interesting and fun to watch than getting hammered..
I've been binge watching a lot of your videos, and it has given me the push I needed to start experimenting with distillation. I've gotten a lot of good information from your channel and will be putting it to good use. I've ordered an air still to get my feet wet and see if it is something I will want to stick with. I currently make beer, wine, and mead, so I already have the fermentation side covered, but was always cautious about distilling.
In physics it's often useful to take a scenario to an extreme to understand what is going on. So imagine putting a full barrel into a fire, the outside will heat up quickly, that heat will push out any held liquid into the barrel and then begin heating the inside of the barrel. If you put the jar into a fire the liquid near the glass will heat up some then diffuse into cooler liquid inside the jar, it will be some time before the stave temperature is changed and that expelling of wood juice. The big difference in thinking about this for me is the thing being heated is solid in one example and liquid in another and the physics of how a solid heats is quite a bit different than a gas or a liquid because of fluid dynamics. You can also think of it in terms of thermal mass, the outside of a barrel heats up to room temperature more quickly than the liquid in side. There's always a gradient so long as the outside temperature is changing. If you were to look at the temperature of the stave in relation to the liquid around it and also consider the outside temperature I think you would find a very small gradient between the stave and its surroundings even when you have a large gradient to the outside. In other words I don't think the stave sees as much variation as the barrel does in temperature because the liquid it is in is buffering that temperature change. If that made any sense what so ever. The thing that is really going to bake your noodle later on is when you realize we are trying to discover and improve the science behind a process that was just picked because barrels are more durable and available than clay pots and done entirely through centuries of trial and error.
It has been mentioned a couple times already but as temp increases and decrease the density of the spirit will change. In a barrel this could mean a slight in crease in absorption by barrel or contact area for a massive swing. In a glass jar if the seal is tight you might get a bump in internal pressure. This could encourage an exchange of what has been soaked into the stave with the surrounding liquid.
Could you replace a jar lid with a wooden lid that has a wooden rod poking down into the spirit? That would allow it to breath more and work with temperature & pressure. Interesting experiment maybe?
I’ve definitely thought about that! I want to turn a lid that seals well to a jar and use a cube of oak for more surface area (I like to keep a certain ratio of surface area to volume). I figure you’d get some breathing with temp and weather as well as angel’s share and oxidation.
I use mason jars and replace the metal kids with balsa wood. The balsa wood can be cut with scissors. There is definitely an angel's share exchange going on. I had a batch that was way over-oaked and one day I looked and the levels had gone down significantly. I tried it and it's much smoother. Also, the wine guys have a lot to say about tannins and polymerization - worth while reading.
i wonder if the temperature fluctuation over longer periods of time is quite the same as in single day fluctuations or 3 days (where i was originally from in northern california, it could be very hot, then the marine air would flood the zone for 3 days), having huge swings of temp (and barometric pressure). another factor to consider is the ABV during aging.... i understand that many commercial producers age at 62.5% ABV, but for me the jury is out on that as "the ideal"....i currently have an experiment in process with 6 levels of ABV, from 50 to 65, intervals of 2.5% and skipping 62.5, but i am doing it with heavily toasted oak bars in sealed glass jars, and have not noticed a huge difference in the 57.5, and 60.0 and 65.0. i live in an area in which barrels are pretty much out of the question and also, the effect of barrel compared to glass jar/staves would be much less because my tropical weather temperature fluctuates very little, consequently, my variances are using different woods, i'm up to 15 different ones now, and i am making rum from black strap molasses. i age in the jars for 6 months, but with cinnamon heart wood, one month is sufficient
I have noticed the same bite at the end of the flavor profile with staves. I use glycerin and Mexican vanilla to help round the finish. Feels like a cheat but seems to work. Thanks for the video and confirming my own observations!
I have to question the ability for the whiskey to truly soak into a stave if it's contained in a glass jar vs being in a barrel, as the oxygen isn't able to move around as freely as it could with a (more breathable) barrel. Obviously wood pore size and charring would affect the penatrability of the staves as well. If the jar with staves was stored in the exact same place as a barrel (so identical temperature shifts etc are taking place) I would imagine that the wood impact from the staves would still be less than a barrel (even if the glass jar was large enough to contain the whole barrel -ie, exact same amount of wood intrracting with the liquid). I completely agree with you Jessie, it's most likely the atmospheric pressure / temperature shifts that allow the whiskey to interact more with the wood- the barrel's permeability is what allows it to age the liquid more effectively. Keep up the great work man. Love the show.
Well I'm a total Nube to Distilling. Never distilled anything. But with that said I'm a total lover of Jameson Irish Whiskey so I've been curious to see just how close I could get to a homemade version of Jameson Irish Whiskey. So I guess what I'm wondering is what I should use as far a barely or oats or whatever yeast I should use to get that flavor as well as the barrel(Oak, Apple or Cherry wood). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!! I did have one thought as to the wood process and that is to use large wood shavings and maybe roasting the shavings and use those shavings to Steap in the whiskey like a Tea?
If you are going to compare barrels to staves in glass then you should use the same spirit and be sure that the area of exposed wood, the type of wood, the toast level, and the char in both cases is the same. And, of course, the amount of spirits should be the same in both cases.
I drive 250 to 350 miles for work each day. I have been putting full Mason jars with staves on my dashboard. It gets warmed by the sun and cools down at night. It is similar to sea aging. I like the results.
Do a video on how to pick and treat wood staves for aging wiskey and rum. How to find good wood (giggity.) How to char the staves at different levels. And which char levels are used by common commercial products.
I use oak chips add them to jars 3/4 full and will bounce from freezer to outside 24hrs each. Those 48 hours will have the color I'm looking for then rest on a shelf until it smooths out a bit.
If you are interested in more such niche physical aspects of distilling, I can highly recommend the book "Whiskey Science - A condensed destilate" by Gregory H. Miller. It goes into super nerdy detail on all aspects of whiskey. You will need college level chemistry knowledge to be able to understand it fully, but you can always also just skip the overly technical chapters.
End grain in wood?? At this stage of my journey in the craft, I am leaning towards preferring barrels over staves. Yes, I know barrels need to be recharred every now and then, but I find that task a fun part of the craft. There does seem to be a difference I can perceive between barrels and staves, but I accept it's a personal preference. One thought I have though, which might explain the difference I perceive, is "end grain" in the wood. I think staves, seem to me to produce some sharp tannons or notes in my end product. I started wondering why, and my conclusion is that the inside of a barrel has little to no "end grain" exposed to the distillant, whereas staves have a large amount of end grain exposed, especially "Oak spirals". I find I don't have to do much with the end product out of a barrel, but sometimes I need to cold filter the end product I make using staves. So, after some thought, I am shying away from using short staves, chips or spirals. I now have some long kiln dried Oak staves (no knots). I am going to try heavily charring the grain ends of these staves, to try and seal the end grain at both ends. I'm also going to try dipping the end grain in bee's wax to seal both ends. I am not confident that will work, but its worth a try. Bee's wax in theory shouldn't affect the flavour, but I guess I'll find out. Another thought is other woods, Cherry, Apple, Maple etc. I like to sit my distillant in a glass carboy for a few weeks before it goes into my barrels. Thats gives me the opportunity to add a few Cherry staves for a short time. I do that mainly because I like the colour Cherry gives the distillant. Obviously, it affects the flavour a little bit as well. Anyways, just my 10c worth. Y'all stay safe and well. 😁👍
Ok I don't have much of a taste for woody tasting just got my first barrel looking for insight myself but atm I made 1 gallon sugar wash and 6 gallon of my fave grain mash 4lbs corn 2 lbs barley 4lbs white granulated sugar 2lb brown sugar mixed them and came out great better sweetness from the get go but that extra gallon sugar wash made separately made a huge difference thinking of making straight grain mash and sugar wash 100% separately so the difference fermentation process can reach max peak
A friend of mine built a garden bed with good soil and compost puts his alcohol with wood chips in glass jars then fully buries them upright and leaves them there from anywhere of 6 months to 1 year and have a unique taste..
What would happen if you used an excessive amount of staves that have been leached of tannins? What I mean is, if you force age the staves themselves that you want to use in distilled water, or age them normally for a long time (though you would need to be ultra sure the water and staves were sterile) before swapping the water out (hopefully full of the tannins and overly spicy notes) for the whiskey. This may allow you to use a much larger amount of the staves for same volume of alcohol. The pre water leach of the staves may remove much of the sweetness as well. It may still be interesting to test a small batch and load as many distilled water pre-leached staves as will fit in a small jar with the accompanying volume of whiskey just to see the outcome.
The sweetness that oak contributes to the spirit is pretty much absent in raw wood. It is a byproduct of the toasting and charring. Cellulose and hemicellulose are polysaccharides, that is, polymers of sugar molecules. Wood is mostly sugar, but it’s locked up in molecules too large to be soluble or taste sweet. During toasting and charring, they undergo pyrolysis, which means they break into smaller pieces, some of which are simple sugars. Your idea to quickly remove tannins from oak may have merit. If you experiment carefully and record good data, you may be able to help others out who are in the same predicament. Weathering oak is thought to have more beneficial effects than just tannin removal though… i could go on but you might enjoy doing that research yourself. I sure did.
I would use a sealed glass jar, the science behind why the glass jar didn't interact with the wood during temperature change is due to the seal in the barrel forcing the liquid in and out of the barrel as it changes temperature inside the barrel. by using a sealed container like the glass jar, when sealed, it will not allow any air to escape when the pressure inside the jar changes. this forces the liquids in and also out of the wood. it creates a vaccum as it cools down inside the sealed containers and creates pressure inside the sealed container while one that allows even minimal airflow will reduce this process and make it more likely to have a slower time extracting flavors. Barrels are sealed, but they don't have anything preventing the barrels contents from overexpanding along with the air in the container that slowly passes through the grain of the wood. I think of barrels as a long long aging process of potentially making and storing tons of things you may create but don't want right away. if you're using glass from what I've seen it will take 10-20 days. also sugars added before or after distillation cane sugar being the prefrence as it is natural can add the sweetness that you are looking for. I hope this helps. lol thank you if you made it this far
Have you ever considered doing a whiskey with more exotic wood staves like mahogany or African Blackwood? I think they would have a very interesting flavor profile. Would love to see a scotch done in African Blackwood to throw to the material that bagpipes are made of.
I use staves but only because I don’t seem to be able to source barrels as a hobby distiller. I must do a bit of research to see where I can get a barrel here in New Zealand to make a fair comparison.
Would barrels producing spirits by the coast opposed to up in the mountains, even if they were identical spirits going in and for the same time they would end up deferent?
The fact that wood is another ingredient in the spirit making, makes it really hard to know exactly what the result is going to be...and I kind of hate/love the fact that you have to wait so long in order to know what it is does to your new make. This Is an amazing topic that I would love to go more into detail about, especially other wood options, I'm sure white oak can be replaced (two 25lts barrels are in the making process for me, made from "Raulí" and "Lenga", two native trees from Chile used in the wine industry...let's see!).
Corkscrew oak staves! Are evaporation and oxidization things that are considered good for the aging process of whiskey? From the wine world, you have giant stainless tanks that prevent the loss and oxidization of the wine which are used primarily by the big name, grocery store brands. While higher quality wineries/wines still use the barrel method. You mentioned bite in the aging process, is that due to oxidization mellowing out the liquor?
I’m interested by the effect of surface area. My thinking is with smaller casks, there’s a larger surface area to volume ratio so there’ll be more flavor extraction in a shorter time. I think this’ll yield a lot of barrel flavor but a spirit that could still taste and feel very young. My rule of thumb is based off of regular barrels. I saw an estimate (can’t remember what the number was) but I ran a calc. and reached a ratio of 61 sq. in. of wood per gallon of spirit. This works out to a cube of wood with 3.2 in. sides. Now of course you can ‘squish’ that cube to a rectangular prism (if you’re limited by your piece of wood or the mouth of your container) and preserve the surface area. After that, I believe the wood should remain about 3/4” minimum thickness so each face has a 1/4” red zone (I got this number from a Buffalo Trace tour). I usually stop at 1” thickness. This gives 2 red zones on each side plus a little safety in between.
This is my approach also. I have 3 x 10L stainless steel kegs, each with a slightly different all grain recipe, made in a 'series' of 4 mash/ferment/distillations per keg (so 12 total runs, of 3 different recipes). They have the same quantity of wood - about 80 sq cm per liter (I am metric but i think that is about 46 sq. in per gallon). The wood is slightly different (toasted/charred, same but also pre-soaked with 50/50 heads/sherry, and commercial staves). I'm venting them every week or so to let a bit of oxygen in, but really waiting out time on them. They are 1, 3 and 4 months old and I understand 6 months to be about the earliest to get a real sense of what they will be. I noticed a lot of tannins early, like 'oh no, have I made a woodpile', but that is fading out and already gone in the oldest. The colour is in by about 2 months. A lot of the sharpness and new make smell drops away quickly also, and the oldest is already sweetening up. But they are all so new I can't really know. Kind of annoying, I'm just making vodka now until they are older and I can get a proper sense of which AG characteristics I want to push.
Even though I live in a remote backwater, I can get oak chunks at my local grocery store. I split them into dominoes with a hatchet and custom toast them in the oven. They cost me pennies apiece. A barrel like yours would be very expensive, I'd be stuck with one char level, and I'd get that "new barrel" taste only once.
Concerning the physics of temperature change and pushing in and out of the wood: Since you intentionally have an imperfect seal on the jars, you are correct that the pressure change is negligible and therefore there is no real reason for it to push in and out of the wood. What would be interesting is if you sealed them completely, as then the change in temperature would create a change in pressure inside the jar, which could force the spirit in/out of the wood. To still get the microoxication effects you could alternate between fully sealed and slightly open every few weeks/months, or just open the jars periodically to let fresh oxygen in. Disclaimer, I'm not a distiller and this is pure speculation based on my physics intuition from uni, so it definitely requires further testing, maybe a split batch?
Not sure if I’ve missed them but do u do tasting vids of what u make months later? If not u should do shorts, get a jacket, nice big leather chair and a cigar and review the final results. Perhaps even make a batch with what changes u thought initially and compare to the original.
So there is a Cleveland Ohio Distiller that is using vacuum jars and chips or staves to oak there spirit and the making spirits in weeks that taste like 3 to 5 yr spirits. Something i'm gonna try and learn soon.
Can anyone answer if there is major difference between using table sugar and corn sugar in a sugar wash? Taste, mouth feel, smell etc. Which do you prefer?
Question: If different toasting and charring levels create different taste profiles in the aged alcohol, is there a reason one cannot use different toast/char levels within one particular barrel to get more notes that the chars provide? Seems like a good idea on the - pun unintended - surface.
So after a couple months of watching Jesse and George, I jumped into having a go at making some whiskey myself using a 35L Brewzilla (similar to Grainfather and T500) after 3 weeks of not being sure if my ferments finished out properly (due to a variety of problems including not being 100% sure of my ph, breaking my hydrometer before being able to do my first reading and thinking i killed my yeast with too much heat, I did 3 stripping runs (that included alot of bumps along the way) with 70 litres of wash using a copper potstill packed with scrubbies and SPP, i got just over 9 litres with abv readings of 64%, 68% & 70% per run, I then did a spirit run (which went like clockwork and made my day) I got just over 5 Litres of spirit with the foreshots reading 92%, after collecting heads until a vapour temp of 85C in 150ml jars I collected approximately 1.5 litres of hearts (% is 72% :->) between 85C and 90C, then i collected tails in 150ml jars until 95C, then i collected the rest in a litre jar. The last jar looks cloudy so i don't think i want to use that one so far everything kind of smells and tastes the same to me. I'm wondering if my proof is so high that ive made something i can mix altogether but being my first time i don't want to stuff it up. Any tips?
Where are the hearts? Do you mean you collected 1.7 litres of "hearts".... And if you separated the heads, hearts and tails, why would you combine them all again? Sorry if I am misreading your post. But NO, don't mix it all together. Age the hearts, and save the heads and tails for your next stripping run if you want.
@@omadolen4774 My recommendations remain the same I think. Use your nose and taste and pick out the best hearts to age :-) Save the heads and tails for future stripping runs. Sorry if I still misunderstood :-)
I'm also interested to know if you've ever tried a different form of wood - chips. I've been using wood chips that have a significantly higher surface area relative to the wood staves.
Josiah Wedgewood in interesting. One of the founders of the industrial revolution. He did lots of experiments where one or two ingredients were varied tested and recorded. You could do the same. So what parameters? Well you could keep the alcohol the same for all. Eliminate that as a variable. Then its the wood, the char, and the length of time. Surface area to volume is another. Record it, analyse it, taste it. Then at the end you can also blend. ie. Being more systematic.
The pressure change would most likely have more of an effect in the barrel because there is more surface area than the stave and the stave is full saturated, while the barrel is not.
It would be an interesting experiment to try occasionally opening the lid of a jar and waving a little fresh air into it as it ages just to see if oxidation is really the component in the softening of the whisky or not.
This is already part of the recommended process when using staves in a jar. This doesn't replicate the spirit going in and out of the wood in the barrel.
Discovered your channel recently and love the videos Jesse! Just after stilling some whiskey and ready to start oaking it. Question: is there downside of reusing oak staves multiple times? Like staves that have been in whiskey for multiple years. I’m wondering if most the flavours & sugars get used up at some point? I was thinking of shaving off the surface of the staves with a plane to expose new surface, what are your thoughts on that?
I can't speak to distilling... but I make vanilla. I just use vodka or bourbon. The neat thing is... I have right now a 1L batch that is just sitting with the beans... I shake it from time to time. The second bottle under 200mls is a plastic vodka bottle. I daily and sometimes twice daily shake the bejesus out of it... then squeeze the air out and cap it and shake again.... later that day I release the vacuum. It will be done in 4 months instead of over a year. I can deal with that. I am not sure how or if this process could convert to aging in glass. It totally could be done in a mason jar with the vacuum sealer jar attachment. LOL I am pretty sure you guys don't need to shake it... vanilla likes the encouragement.
Strange thought. Taking a pressure pot and slipping your jarred and staved liquor into it. And seeing how say a day changes it. Only reason I thought of it. Was your mention of the change in your barrels. Due to barometric and weather changes.
Thought about it a little more. I don't think it would have to be a radically huge amount of pressure. To see how it affects the staved and jarred spirit. Granted probably have to be done with the lids off. And it may in some way add oxegen to it. So there is that to think about too. That's why I thought a out it not being a crazy high pressure.
For me i use stainless kegs with staves. The cost of an oak barrel in my neck of the woods would send most people bankrupt. I would love to use barrels.
Micro-oxidation? I am always very careful about that. The change of climate? Definitely dead on. As the wood is outside, changes of climate (especially temperature) has an immediate effect on the wood. For the glass jar - the whole liquid has to warm up first. Most importantly - which (I guess) wasn’t really touched on: wood surface to spirit ratio. Even though the staves are submerged a small barrel should have far more surface. That’s why small barrels are aging also exponentially faster than large ones.
Tried unchard oak and I used whiskey chips and the chips tasted better then the oak. The oak tasted like oak saw dust and the whiskey barrel chips were sweeter , but maybe they did not age long enough though
Very lekker video man..... I think the wooding receives way way too little attention from people. The combinations are endless. Have 3 l of a sorghum grain single grain sitting on second use American oak chips (first use was in a barley single grain) which took some time to colour to where it is now. and just after nearly 3 months there is already so much chcarcter I've never had before, a sweetness like never before, but will just build after a year and a half. The barrel wood definitely acts as a barrier filter being between the air and the liquid. When it's just in the bottle it acts similar but it;'s completely surrounded by liquid. so different interactions. I try open my bottles and swirl the distillate to try get that air in.
Tried for years to get the flavor of my favorites commercial products by using chips, staves, spirals in glass... not that they weren't good but could never get what I was looking for until I pulled the trigger and bought barrels. There's no going back for me.
I used a 5l french limosine oak barrel on some rum, after 3 weeks it tasted way to0 oaky, but was sweet with some vanilla, but very little colour. Leaving for a year subdued the oak to palatable, and that ended the story.
So how do we feel about the spirals? I get great color from them and I shake up the jars a lot to allow oxygen to flow but I'm scared to leave them to long due to over oaking anyone have any insight?
Home distilling is OK but you should give beard growing advice. It's magnificent
Jokes aside, love the channel bro, keep it up
Jesse hopes to audition for ZZ Top
Great topic, Jesse. We home distillers think we are aging whiskey with oak staves, chips and/or spirals, but we are really infusing the spirit with wood that is slowly dissolving in spirit. When wood acts as the barrier between the spirit and outside air interesting things start to happen. Wood is porous as you state and barometric pressure and temperature affect oxygen transmission. As evaporation occurs inside the barrel, there is more headspace and therefore more oxygenation at the air/liquid boundary. Most distillers do not top up their barrels and the angel’s share can be substantial. If you want to judge what oxygen does to a spirit, pour a dram, taste and smell, then let it sit for 15 minutes. Smell and taste again. You will notice the difference. For me, it’s barrels, or old barrels with staves inside. Cheers!
You hit it right on the spot. Physics! A barrel will respirate and allow chemical and physical interaction with the atmosphere chemistry ( read about the chemical composition of the air) and pressure (physical pressure gradient) effects on the cellular structure of cellulose.
What I have tried is to mimic this interaction using 1/2 gallon canning jars. But!!! I cut a hole in the lid so the stave can interact with both the liquid and air. To seal around the oak stave at the lid I use wax. There will be no contact other than with the small area of the stave and the metal lid. For the most part, air tight. This method allows the air and weather changes to influence through the stave to the liquid. Do I know for certain there is a difference, NO. I have tried this on liquid made 11-12 months ago. I also change my recipes every time. I can tell a difference with similar style liquids but once I reach 24 months, my usual maturing age, I will be more able to compare. Just my experiments.
I replaced one of the dowels on my small barrel rack with a barbeque rotisserie so that my barrel slowly rotates. It dramatically speeds up the aging process and really infuses the spirit with the compounds in the barrel.
similar idea to the aged at sea whiskeys. Constant movement to agitate it a little bit.
The bad motivatorbarrels are awesome. He is a great guy, with the same passion to spirits like us. Greetings from Bavaria. 🥃
I'm a wood worker who also has distilled a couple batches. Everything you said about the barrel is correct. The wood is very responsive to changes in temperature, pressure, humidity. How the pores open and close basically changes the surface area of wood available to interact with the spirits. So changes in flavor can change by season.
Staves don't have the interaction with the air so their pore size will remain constant in the jar. I think it gives a more subtle but consistent across the aging or flavoring process.
The couple of batches I've flavored with staves I've mixed both chared and unchared wood. Charing gives the wood its own distinct flavor but also opens up the wood pores to interact with the wood that's below the char. In barrels the pores open and close with the changes in pressure and humidity. Where staves don't. So with staves I've been experimenting with chared and unchared wood to even out the flavor and give the spirits different wood to interact with.
I've been using white oak and adding in some apple wood chips to try to pull out some different flavors. I'm still new to the process but I've been liking the results.
Great timing on this video as this is the year I start my journey into oaking and aging. I really enjoyed hearing about your "hunches". I think that's where all the fun is in this hobby.
Another great video Jesse! I love my Bad Motivator barrel I purchased one a few weeks ago
13 weeks is the same as 3 months.
Love the content.
I age my whiskeys in 3 or 5 gallon barrels now exclusively. Once I started using barrels over staves in jars or carboys I noticed a huge difference over similar time ranges and conditions. I typically make a couple different bourbon mashes (different mash bills) and I'll age each in their own barrel. Then I reuse those barrels for my Irish and scotch recipes. I will actually throw the barrels in the oven from time to time on 200. Works wonders. Anyway I vote barrels for the win.
@Bill Mooney I have a smoker, but I've never thought of taking the time to get that sucker up to temp to use it for forced aging. But it would probably yield a similar/better result. I only leave them in the oven for like 30 mins on 200. Then I shut the oven off leaving the barrel inside until the oven is back to low temperature. I only do this once and typically within the first week of barreling the spirit. After that I allow time to take over. So I really don't have a set time I age. I hate to be crass but I recommend "till it's done" . They usually don't recommend going over 7months with new charred oak barrels (3-5 gal) older than that it can have a tendency to taste like a popsicle stick. However I take wider cuts from all my whiskeys. Bourbon, rye, scotch, and Irish. Now these cuts may be heads heavy or tails heavy depending on the style. With that being said, I age longer sometimes. It takes more time to let the esters settle out. But I find it makes a much more complex product. I start taking samples after 3 months and sample every 2 months till I get to where I'm happy with the result. Hope this answers your question. Sorry for the novel
@Bill Mooney yes the spirit is in the barrel. I use the oven to force the spirit in it. Deep grain penetration .
@@keenanfrady so wait, you only age them for 7 months? i am a total newb, so if you just want to point me in the right direction that is cool, but i expected them to take years? is there a further aging process you use?
@@vidard9863 it takes years in full (53) gallon barrels. I use 3 gallon or 5 gallon barrels. If you buy "new charred" barrels over oaking is a real concern. In a small barrel the spirit is in contact with more surface area, it can be a confusing principle I know. There are other factors to think about though. Like " micro oxidation ", which happens to a greater degree in full size barrels. Making a truly complex product. Micro oxidation still happens in small barrels but not as much. Meaning to get that greater degree of complexity it takes years in a full barrel but you don't have years to work with in small barrels because you run a serious risk of over oaking you're product after 8 or 9 months in my experience. However it also depends on the climate you live in. That's why I recommend taking samples along the way.
@@keenanfrady that makes sense, the surface area to volume would be larger in the smaller barrels, and while the micro oxidation would therefore have more oxygen, as it is related to surface area to volume, it wouldn't have time to process the chemicals and it would run the risk of over oxidation... thus too woody much sooner without the proper complexity... do your batches smooth out/gain complexity after you bottle them?
at some point i will have to experiment with some form of wooden lid/hybrid wood/glass keg... it seems i will never run out of things to do...
Honesty is respectful , great video ,,, again
I have been using staves in 3 and 5 gallons carboys. But, I use a cork rather than a cap or lid. I also move them around in the shop, pop the cork occasionally, and have a pretty fair temperature change from month to month...
The stuff does still tend to lean toward Scotch more so than bourbon, but there is a sweetness and vanilla there. I also do not char all sides of the staves. I toast them on three sides.
Thanks for this video, it is cool to see a real side by side of the various methods.
Love your discussion and even more love vision of your channel. It’s that vision that makes me want to watch every video! Thank you.
I think the barrel is hard for most people, because the volumes we produce. When I think about barrel aging it’s very complex. There’s a reason why bourbon tastes like it does. It’s because of the temperature conditions and changes at the barrel houses where it’s produced. I think barrel aging may be the most difficult part of Home distilling actually. I’ve been using oak spirals. They’re available in different toasts and you can cut them to different lengths.
I've been trying on wooden lids on Mason jars.
I have turned myself a lid, that I treat like a barrel, and so far, it seems to be working well... I can also see the liquor change colour through the glass
@@theworldisastage1984 bingo
@@theworldisastage1984 i didnt go 50 galon but 50 litre and its awesome
With respect, my experience with my bourbon barrels does not support your assertion that climate changes in the barrel house makes bourbon taste like bourbon. My barrels are in a constant 74degF environment and after four years they are exactly bourbon, no qualifications. The right kind of wood (weathered new American white oak), the right toast and char, and the right amount of wood, plus the long slow oxygenation and transpiration through the wood over many years, are sufficient to make bourbon. My experience suggests that the “push and pull” mechanism is either complete horseshit or close to it. If it has an effect, it is very very small.
@@badmotivatorbarrels2273 what does an “exact bourbon” taste like to you? I’ve tasted hundreds and everyone has a unique taste. To your idea that the barrel house has no effect, jack Daniel’s has already proved you wrong. They barrel the lower 4 rows of their houses as an inferior product under their green label, the middle and upper is their black label, and their signatures are pulled from the upper layers.
you know...the better-barrel idea is also something I had... but what I made myself is a wooden lid for Mason jars.
I just fitted the lid as close as possible, and plugged the leaks with bee's wax.
that means I can use a bigger or smaller jar no problem, it means I can do small batches, it also means I can use small wood I find to make the lids!
I am currently using a wild cherry wood, medium roast with char, on a tea wash.
I have aged my whiskey in wood chips in mason jars covered in paper bag and put in green house to take on the natural heat! This has been a great way to get great tasting hooch in under 3 months
New to the craft myself, im still trying to do things on a budget, so focusing more on my spending on the distillation equipment and grains over the aging costs right now.
With that said I've been lucky enough to live in an area heavy with white American oak so I was able over a year ago, to go cut down my own tree for fire wood and had it seasoning since then. Once I started making my own whiskey that wood came in handy and I was able to use staves from the tree I cut down and seasoned myself to age my product. In only a few months time each has turned out to already have softened and imparted their flavors well into the spirit.
As of now I'm going to stick with the staves in glass jars and carboys because I am really liking the flavors. Guess my next step would be to learn how to be a Cooper and make my own barrels. Guess that will come in time.
@@theworldisastage1984 the benefit of a budget is that you learn skills to cover your inability to spend. I don't recommend anyone to ever jump into a hobby with too much money. Better to stay small until you have the skill to actually use the equipment when you go big.
@@theworldisastage1984 I do agree with you on this. At some point you either go big or decide it isn't for you. But in my experience, a newb probably should start small and make their mistakes while they're still cheap.
I use a stainless steel airstone and pump air into my jars every month or so, seems to make a big difference in mellowing out the flavour and smoothing out the wood notes. I aged a corn whiskey with medium toast uncharred oak chips for winemakers and it has the typical sweet bourbon profile so maybe the high char and heavy toast is the problem there.
I may be jumping the gun; throwing out the opinions before watching the video conclusions (see if we match up :))
Oak aging is a matter of surface contact to volume ratio. So, as the container itself gets smaller, there's far more surface contact than there is volume. This can lead to "over oaking" or maturing faster. So those 2 - 10 liter barrels that are all the rage these days are mostly decorative novelty items. After a month or two it's over-oaked.
As the volume of the container goes up, the surface contact goes down. So a larger container can take years without much issue. The 5 gallon/23 liter barrels a lot of craft distillers use tend to be great for about 6-9 months of aging/maturation although I've seen a few places age for 1 year with them. The next step up though is triple the size 15 gallons/68 liters is what Whiskey Del Bac uses in Tucson, AZ (I buy the used ones for mead aging) Those are usually aging for about 1-2 years. With some things lasting a little over 2 years. My mead, keeping in mind it's being aged indoors without major fluctuations in temps, has gone about 8 months now and is almost ready to come out.
Oh, forgot to mention; the alternatives are chips, cubes, spirals, and staves. In order, I prefer Staves, Spirals, Cubes, and avoid chips. The chips work, they'll do what they say they do, but it comes off flat, like wood flavor was added as opposed to soaking in wood. Cubes are what I have available most often so I use them and they provide a good woody/oaky flavor with some depth. Spirals increase the surface area of wood and can provide a nice stave-like oaky flavors and aromas. The staves are a bit tricky for me because you're sticking both the untouched outside of a barrel and the toasted/charred inside at the same time. All of the alternatives can help maximize the flavors imparted by the wood while maintaining the proper wood to volume ratios for smaller batches in the 1-23 liter range.
Smaller than 23 liters is where I'll say I would skip the expense, hassle, maintenance, etc of a barrel. Around 23 liters/5 gallon size is where it starts to make sense to go over to a barrel. However, even at this small size it can be finicky. Test often as it'll go from no oak to over oaked in a very quick timespan. At the 15 galon/68 liter mark it starts resembling the bigger commercial products we're trying to mimic. You can set it for longer, less of a chance of over oaking unless you forget about it for multiple years. And comes off rounder.
BTW: The subject has so much nuance from the different wood species to what your goals may be will determine dosing; not to mention a little good ol' fashioned trial and error. 1-2oz per gallon is about the dosing I usually start with and see where it is. After about 2-3 months, the cubes will stop contributing; everything they have will have been expended. If it needs more, I'll throw some fresh cubes in at that point. Just remember, if you do over oak, there's nothing you can really do to tone it back down. But dont dump the batch; save it for blending with future batches. An over oaked product mixed with an un-oaked product can lead to some nice balance.
@Still it Have you thought about potentially using a vacuum chamber to force the interaction of the spirit with the staves. Same principal as stabilizing wood with resin. Just a thought.
Wonder if you could rig up a toasted wooden "head" for the jar in addition to the staves? Then you'll be getting the angel's share passing through the wood.
A couple of years ago, I struggled to find oak chips. Now, our local home brew shop has gone under, and the bin inn has a good, but basic selection that just doesn't quite cut it. If you're looking to get from most of the online stores, they want to sell the spiral thingies that seem like I'm paying quite a lot for the parts of the wood that are sitting on the machine shop floor.
So, I make rum. I only make the same recipe, and I make enough over summer that I don't need to brew over winter when it's cold.
I bought myself a used wine barrel (white wine, french oak) over the summer just gone (I'm also in NZ!).
The idea is that I fill the barrel, (I won't quite make it this summer), and then, each summer I bottle some at the beginning of the season and top it up with fresh rum, kind of using it like a solara cask.
Like I say, this is the first year, but the rum is already drinking quite well.
Also, the cost of filling a 40 gal barrel will be fairly... significant.
If you're looking to make lots of different spirits, and play with wood and aging and peat and .... Then this is probably not the option for you.
Being totally new to all of this, it's fascinating to me. You've given me lots of tips and ideas. ✌🏼
I think you are on the right track with the "pressure/temperature/angel's share" affecting the barrel more, as those changes force the product into and back out of the wood of the barrel, while the staves have a much lower exchange volumes.
Also, don't forget to factor in the humidity into the alcohol/water ratios the angels claim.
A fantastic conversation. I currently only drink whisky, but love to hear more and more of the process to make it!
Looking at the title I kind of figured the video would have been more pros vs cons of barrels or staves. But it wasn't that so much; not to say it was a bad thing. And I think Jessie's right about the environment having more effect on a barrel aged spirit than one done in glass. With wood being a porous material, temperature, humidity, pressure are all going to affect it more than glass. And with more surface area susceptible to the environment, you're going to see a greater change in the spirit.
Nice. This was a good video for a more advanced distiller/mead maker/wine maker like me. So far I have only made clear spirits, aside from apple brandies, in which I flavor them with both fresh and baked apples with the skin left on the apples, which the ethanol saps the color out and turns a vibrant red. I also spice my Apple Pie Brandy. I leave the flavorings to steep for 3-4 days and then strain it out with cheesecloth. I use a tad of brown sugar to offset the astringency of the spices, and use apple juice to 'water it down' from the ~75-80% abv which it comes out of the still down to a more reasonable 50%abv. I have already purchased broken up pieces of Jack Daniel's charred barrels to oak age future corn whiskies and rums. The cost of barrels is fairly high. But worth the price as I would be leaving it to age for a year or more. I'm nearing the end of my mead stash, so it's time to get some new brews fermenting, both meads and rums and vodkas... Honestly, home distillation is great as it enables you to create liquors exactly to your personal taste.. Although I DO know of some AMAZING locally made gin and vodka which are well worth buying from my province's LCBO. I have some juniper berries frozen in my freezer which I picked last summer from my own trees with plans to make a gin using them.. It is nice to use my own grown ingredients in my creations. Both culinary and alcohol. I am by no means a heavy drinker. I honestly enjoy the process of making it FAR more than I enjoy being drunk.. The biological and chemical processes are far more interesting and fun to watch than getting hammered..
Another great video! New to the hobby but can’t wait to start playing around with wood and barrels!
I've been binge watching a lot of your videos, and it has given me the push I needed to start experimenting with distillation. I've gotten a lot of good information from your channel and will be putting it to good use. I've ordered an air still to get my feet wet and see if it is something I will want to stick with. I currently make beer, wine, and mead, so I already have the fermentation side covered, but was always cautious about distilling.
In physics it's often useful to take a scenario to an extreme to understand what is going on. So imagine putting a full barrel into a fire, the outside will heat up quickly, that heat will push out any held liquid into the barrel and then begin heating the inside of the barrel. If you put the jar into a fire the liquid near the glass will heat up some then diffuse into cooler liquid inside the jar, it will be some time before the stave temperature is changed and that expelling of wood juice. The big difference in thinking about this for me is the thing being heated is solid in one example and liquid in another and the physics of how a solid heats is quite a bit different than a gas or a liquid because of fluid dynamics.
You can also think of it in terms of thermal mass, the outside of a barrel heats up to room temperature more quickly than the liquid in side. There's always a gradient so long as the outside temperature is changing. If you were to look at the temperature of the stave in relation to the liquid around it and also consider the outside temperature I think you would find a very small gradient between the stave and its surroundings even when you have a large gradient to the outside. In other words I don't think the stave sees as much variation as the barrel does in temperature because the liquid it is in is buffering that temperature change. If that made any sense what so ever.
The thing that is really going to bake your noodle later on is when you realize we are trying to discover and improve the science behind a process that was just picked because barrels are more durable and available than clay pots and done entirely through centuries of trial and error.
It has been mentioned a couple times already but as temp increases and decrease the density of the spirit will change.
In a barrel this could mean a slight in crease in absorption by barrel or contact area for a massive swing.
In a glass jar if the seal is tight you might get a bump in internal pressure.
This could encourage an exchange of what has been soaked into the stave with the surrounding liquid.
Could you replace a jar lid with a wooden lid that has a wooden rod poking down into the spirit? That would allow it to breath more and work with temperature & pressure. Interesting experiment maybe?
I’ve definitely thought about that! I want to turn a lid that seals well to a jar and use a cube of oak for more surface area (I like to keep a certain ratio of surface area to volume). I figure you’d get some breathing with temp and weather as well as angel’s share and oxidation.
I've done this with a stave in it instead of a dowl. It works better then a glass lid but still not as good as a barrel
I use mason jars and replace the metal kids with balsa wood. The balsa wood can be cut with scissors. There is definitely an angel's share exchange going on. I had a batch that was way over-oaked and one day I looked and the levels had gone down significantly. I tried it and it's much smoother. Also, the wine guys have a lot to say about tannins and polymerization - worth while reading.
i wonder if the temperature fluctuation over longer periods of time is quite the same as in single day fluctuations or 3 days (where i was originally from in northern california, it could be very hot, then the marine air would flood the zone for 3 days), having huge swings of temp (and barometric pressure). another factor to consider is the ABV during aging.... i understand that many commercial producers age at 62.5% ABV, but for me the jury is out on that as "the ideal"....i currently have an experiment in process with 6 levels of ABV, from 50 to 65, intervals of 2.5% and skipping 62.5, but i am doing it with heavily toasted oak bars in sealed glass jars, and have not noticed a huge difference in the 57.5, and 60.0 and 65.0. i live in an area in which barrels are pretty much out of the question and also, the effect of barrel compared to glass jar/staves would be much less because my tropical weather temperature fluctuates very little, consequently, my variances are using different woods, i'm up to 15 different ones now, and i am making rum from black strap molasses. i age in the jars for 6 months, but with cinnamon heart wood, one month is sufficient
I have noticed the same bite at the end of the flavor profile with staves. I use glycerin and Mexican vanilla to help round the finish. Feels like a cheat but seems to work. Thanks for the video and confirming my own observations!
That's actually brilliant! Thanks for sharing that
@@existentialgoberts4345 I also have a jar of shorter staves soaking in vanilla. I throw a few in the jar with the toasted, charred, and raw staves..
I wonder if you could make a jar lid that clamps on made of wood, kind of like your stainless barrel, to get something more like a barrel from a jar
I age in mason jars with oak cubes, but I use balsa wood tops to get that slow air exchange.
I have to question the ability for the whiskey to truly soak into a stave if it's contained in a glass jar vs being in a barrel, as the oxygen isn't able to move around as freely as it could with a (more breathable) barrel. Obviously wood pore size and charring would affect the penatrability of the staves as well. If the jar with staves was stored in the exact same place as a barrel (so identical temperature shifts etc are taking place) I would imagine that the wood impact from the staves would still be less than a barrel (even if the glass jar was large enough to contain the whole barrel -ie, exact same amount of wood intrracting with the liquid). I completely agree with you Jessie, it's most likely the atmospheric pressure / temperature shifts that allow the whiskey to interact more with the wood- the barrel's permeability is what allows it to age the liquid more effectively. Keep up the great work man. Love the show.
Well I'm a total Nube to Distilling. Never distilled anything. But with that said I'm a total lover of Jameson Irish Whiskey so I've been curious to see just how close I could get to a homemade version of Jameson Irish Whiskey. So I guess what I'm wondering is what I should use as far a barely or oats or whatever yeast I should use to get that flavor as well as the barrel(Oak, Apple or Cherry wood). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!!! I did have one thought as to the wood process and that is to use large wood shavings and maybe roasting the shavings and use those shavings to Steap in the whiskey like a Tea?
Damn good timing I have been thinking about upgrading to a barrel as well
I've found with smaller barrels I just use them to finish the spirit and do most of the oaking is glass. I just get a bit more control
If you are going to compare barrels to staves in glass then you should use the same spirit and be sure that the area of exposed wood, the type of wood, the toast level, and the char in both cases is the same. And, of course, the amount of spirits should be the same in both cases.
I drive 250 to 350 miles for work each day. I have been putting full Mason jars with staves on my dashboard. It gets warmed by the sun and cools down at night. It is similar to sea aging. I like the results.
How do you not get DUIs?
@@tristanc2271 I don't drink it in the truck, I age it there!
Do a video on how to pick and treat wood staves for aging wiskey and rum. How to find good wood (giggity.) How to char the staves at different levels. And which char levels are used by common commercial products.
I use oak chips add them to jars 3/4 full and will bounce from freezer to outside 24hrs each. Those 48 hours will have the color I'm looking for then rest on a shelf until it smooths out a bit.
Also, the overall quality of the wood (it's seasoning etc) cannot be overstated.
If you are interested in more such niche physical aspects of distilling, I can highly recommend the book "Whiskey Science - A condensed destilate" by Gregory H. Miller. It goes into super nerdy detail on all aspects of whiskey. You will need college level chemistry knowledge to be able to understand it fully, but you can always also just skip the overly technical chapters.
End grain in wood??
At this stage of my journey in the craft, I am leaning towards preferring barrels over staves. Yes, I know barrels need to be recharred every now and then, but I find that task a fun part of the craft.
There does seem to be a difference I can perceive between barrels and staves, but I accept it's a personal preference.
One thought I have though, which might explain the difference I perceive, is "end grain" in the wood. I think staves, seem to me to produce some sharp tannons or notes in my end product. I started wondering why, and my conclusion is that the inside of a barrel has little to no "end grain" exposed to the distillant, whereas staves have a large amount of end grain exposed, especially "Oak spirals". I find I don't have to do much with the end product out of a barrel, but sometimes I need to cold filter the end product I make using staves.
So, after some thought, I am shying away from using short staves, chips or spirals. I now have some long kiln dried Oak staves (no knots). I am going to try heavily charring the grain ends of these staves, to try and seal the end grain at both ends. I'm also going to try dipping the end grain in bee's wax to seal both ends. I am not confident that will work, but its worth a try. Bee's wax in theory shouldn't affect the flavour, but I guess I'll find out.
Another thought is other woods, Cherry, Apple, Maple etc. I like to sit my distillant in a glass carboy for a few weeks before it goes into my barrels. Thats gives me the opportunity to add a few Cherry staves for a short time. I do that mainly because I like the colour Cherry gives the distillant. Obviously, it affects the flavour a little bit as well.
Anyways, just my 10c worth. Y'all stay safe and well. 😁👍
Ok I don't have much of a taste for woody tasting just got my first barrel looking for insight myself but atm I made 1 gallon sugar wash and 6 gallon of my fave grain mash 4lbs corn 2 lbs barley 4lbs white granulated sugar 2lb brown sugar mixed them and came out great better sweetness from the get go but that extra gallon sugar wash made separately made a huge difference thinking of making straight grain mash and sugar wash 100% separately so the difference fermentation process can reach max peak
A friend of mine built a garden bed with good soil and compost puts his alcohol with wood chips in glass jars then fully buries them upright and leaves them there from anywhere of 6 months to 1 year and have a unique taste..
What would happen if you used an excessive amount of staves that have been leached of tannins? What I mean is, if you force age the staves themselves that you want to use in distilled water, or age them normally for a long time (though you would need to be ultra sure the water and staves were sterile) before swapping the water out (hopefully full of the tannins and overly spicy notes) for the whiskey. This may allow you to use a much larger amount of the staves for same volume of alcohol. The pre water leach of the staves may remove much of the sweetness as well. It may still be interesting to test a small batch and load as many distilled water pre-leached staves as will fit in a small jar with the accompanying volume of whiskey just to see the outcome.
The sweetness that oak contributes to the spirit is pretty much absent in raw wood. It is a byproduct of the toasting and charring. Cellulose and hemicellulose are polysaccharides, that is, polymers of sugar molecules. Wood is mostly sugar, but it’s locked up in molecules too large to be soluble or taste sweet. During toasting and charring, they undergo pyrolysis, which means they break into smaller pieces, some of which are simple sugars.
Your idea to quickly remove tannins from oak may have merit. If you experiment carefully and record good data, you may be able to help others out who are in the same predicament. Weathering oak is thought to have more beneficial effects than just tannin removal though… i could go on but you might enjoy doing that research yourself. I sure did.
I would use a sealed glass jar, the science behind why the glass jar didn't interact with the wood during temperature change is due to the seal in the barrel forcing the liquid in and out of the barrel as it changes temperature inside the barrel. by using a sealed container like the glass jar, when sealed, it will not allow any air to escape when the pressure inside the jar changes. this forces the liquids in and also out of the wood. it creates a vaccum as it cools down inside the sealed containers and creates pressure inside the sealed container while one that allows even minimal airflow will reduce this process and make it more likely to have a slower time extracting flavors. Barrels are sealed, but they don't have anything preventing the barrels contents from overexpanding along with the air in the container that slowly passes through the grain of the wood. I think of barrels as a long long aging process of potentially making and storing tons of things you may create but don't want right away. if you're using glass from what I've seen it will take 10-20 days. also sugars added before or after distillation cane sugar being the prefrence as it is natural can add the sweetness that you are looking for. I hope this helps. lol thank you if you made it this far
Have you ever considered doing a whiskey with more exotic wood staves like mahogany or African Blackwood? I think they would have a very interesting flavor profile. Would love to see a scotch done in African Blackwood to throw to the material that bagpipes are made of.
thanks for your answer to me about uvc. another question, can i use a giant aluminum pot to boil my inititial ingrediants?
I use staves but only because I don’t seem to be able to source barrels as a hobby distiller. I must do a bit of research to see where I can get a barrel here in New Zealand to make a fair comparison.
You also have a greater surface area exchange with a barrel vs staves. This will allow faster exchange of oils, sugars and tannins.
Pretty sure that you can add more staves to increase surface area. If you add enough it'd be more than a barrel.
Would barrels producing spirits by the coast opposed to up in the mountains, even if they were identical spirits going in and for the same time they would end up deferent?
awesome vid mate...great topic.
The fact that wood is another ingredient in the spirit making, makes it really hard to know exactly what the result is going to be...and I kind of hate/love the fact that you have to wait so long in order to know what it is does to your new make. This Is an amazing topic that I would love to go more into detail about, especially other wood options, I'm sure white oak can be replaced (two 25lts barrels are in the making process for me, made from "Raulí" and "Lenga", two native trees from Chile used in the wine industry...let's see!).
Corkscrew oak staves! Are evaporation and oxidization things that are considered good for the aging process of whiskey? From the wine world, you have giant stainless tanks that prevent the loss and oxidization of the wine which are used primarily by the big name, grocery store brands. While higher quality wineries/wines still use the barrel method. You mentioned bite in the aging process, is that due to oxidization mellowing out the liquor?
I’m interested by the effect of surface area. My thinking is with smaller casks, there’s a larger surface area to volume ratio so there’ll be more flavor extraction in a shorter time. I think this’ll yield a lot of barrel flavor but a spirit that could still taste and feel very young. My rule of thumb is based off of regular barrels. I saw an estimate (can’t remember what the number was) but I ran a calc. and reached a ratio of 61 sq. in. of wood per gallon of spirit. This works out to a cube of wood with 3.2 in. sides. Now of course you can ‘squish’ that cube to a rectangular prism (if you’re limited by your piece of wood or the mouth of your container) and preserve the surface area. After that, I believe the wood should remain about 3/4” minimum thickness so each face has a 1/4” red zone (I got this number from a Buffalo Trace tour). I usually stop at 1” thickness. This gives 2 red zones on each side plus a little safety in between.
This is my approach also. I have 3 x 10L stainless steel kegs, each with a slightly different all grain recipe, made in a 'series' of 4 mash/ferment/distillations per keg (so 12 total runs, of 3 different recipes). They have the same quantity of wood - about 80 sq cm per liter (I am metric but i think that is about 46 sq. in per gallon). The wood is slightly different (toasted/charred, same but also pre-soaked with 50/50 heads/sherry, and commercial staves). I'm venting them every week or so to let a bit of oxygen in, but really waiting out time on them. They are 1, 3 and 4 months old and I understand 6 months to be about the earliest to get a real sense of what they will be.
I noticed a lot of tannins early, like 'oh no, have I made a woodpile', but that is fading out and already gone in the oldest. The colour is in by about 2 months. A lot of the sharpness and new make smell drops away quickly also, and the oldest is already sweetening up. But they are all so new I can't really know.
Kind of annoying, I'm just making vodka now until they are older and I can get a proper sense of which AG characteristics I want to push.
I've had pretty good success using oak Cubes for Oaking a Mead Distillate. Have you tried them?
Even though I live in a remote backwater, I can get oak chunks at my local grocery store. I split them into dominoes with a hatchet and custom toast them in the oven. They cost me pennies apiece. A barrel like yours would be very expensive, I'd be stuck with one char level, and I'd get that "new barrel" taste only once.
Concerning the physics of temperature change and pushing in and out of the wood: Since you intentionally have an imperfect seal on the jars, you are correct that the pressure change is negligible and therefore there is no real reason for it to push in and out of the wood. What would be interesting is if you sealed them completely, as then the change in temperature would create a change in pressure inside the jar, which could force the spirit in/out of the wood. To still get the microoxication effects you could alternate between fully sealed and slightly open every few weeks/months, or just open the jars periodically to let fresh oxygen in.
Disclaimer, I'm not a distiller and this is pure speculation based on my physics intuition from uni, so it definitely requires further testing, maybe a split batch?
Not sure if I’ve missed them but do u do tasting vids of what u make months later? If not u should do shorts, get a jacket, nice big leather chair and a cigar and review the final results. Perhaps even make a batch with what changes u thought initially and compare to the original.
Can you use fruit mixers, like for Margaritas, as a base for making a bourbon?
Great video Jesse! What are your thoughts between using staves vs wood chips ?
When do those shirts go on sale. Love it!
So there is a Cleveland Ohio Distiller that is using vacuum jars and chips or staves to oak there spirit and the making spirits in weeks that taste like 3 to 5 yr spirits. Something i'm gonna try and learn soon.
Can anyone answer if there is major difference between using table sugar and corn sugar in a sugar wash? Taste, mouth feel, smell etc. Which do you prefer?
Ever thought about filtering your bottle strength spirit to get rid of the young/green bite it has?
Question: If different toasting and charring levels create different taste profiles in the aged alcohol, is there a reason one cannot use different toast/char levels within one particular barrel to get more notes that the chars provide? Seems like a good idea on the - pun unintended - surface.
So after a couple months of watching Jesse and George, I jumped into having a go at making some whiskey myself using a 35L Brewzilla (similar to Grainfather and T500) after 3 weeks of not being sure if my ferments finished out properly (due to a variety of problems including not being 100% sure of my ph, breaking my hydrometer before being able to do my first reading and thinking i killed my yeast with too much heat, I did 3 stripping runs (that included alot of bumps along the way) with 70 litres of wash using a copper potstill packed with scrubbies and SPP, i got just over 9 litres with abv readings of 64%, 68% & 70% per run, I then did a spirit run (which went like clockwork and made my day) I got just over 5 Litres of spirit with the foreshots reading 92%, after collecting heads until a vapour temp of 85C in 150ml jars I collected approximately 1.5 litres of hearts (% is 72% :->) between 85C and 90C, then i collected tails in 150ml jars until 95C, then i collected the rest in a litre jar. The last jar looks cloudy so i don't think i want to use that one so far everything kind of smells and tastes the same to me. I'm wondering if my proof is so high that ive made something i can mix altogether but being my first time i don't want to stuff it up. Any tips?
Where are the hearts? Do you mean you collected 1.7 litres of "hearts".... And if you separated the heads, hearts and tails, why would you combine them all again? Sorry if I am misreading your post. But NO, don't mix it all together. Age the hearts, and save the heads and tails for your next stripping run if you want.
@@BW-pr8qr Made a few mistakes in the OP, fixed now
@@omadolen4774 My recommendations remain the same I think. Use your nose and taste and pick out the best hearts to age :-) Save the heads and tails for future stripping runs. Sorry if I still misunderstood :-)
Thanks Jesse!
You know those pressure pots they use for resin casting? Wonder what would happen if you put a barrel in one of those and cycled it a few times.
I'm also interested to know if you've ever tried a different form of wood - chips. I've been using wood chips that have a significantly higher surface area relative to the wood staves.
Josiah Wedgewood in interesting. One of the founders of the industrial revolution.
He did lots of experiments where one or two ingredients were varied tested and recorded.
You could do the same. So what parameters? Well you could keep the alcohol the same for all. Eliminate that as a variable.
Then its the wood, the char, and the length of time. Surface area to volume is another.
Record it, analyse it, taste it.
Then at the end you can also blend.
ie. Being more systematic.
The pressure change would most likely have more of an effect in the barrel because there is more surface area than the stave and the stave is full saturated, while the barrel is not.
It would be an interesting experiment to try occasionally opening the lid of a jar and waving a little fresh air into it as it ages just to see if oxidation is really the component in the softening of the whisky or not.
This is already part of the recommended process when using staves in a jar. This doesn't replicate the spirit going in and out of the wood in the barrel.
Need the pressure change to push liquid in and out of wood.
That will also allow alcohol vapours to escape so can result in small abv decreases but can really help in mellowing out sharp flavours.
I'd love to blend whiskies that were aged with a variety of stave samples.
hey, sorry, another question. have you ever done a "stone soup" brew? mix fruit and grain and whatever?
Always noice new things to think about 👍👊
what happens if you distill a starbucks iced coffee with a whiskey might be interesting to find out
Discovered your channel recently and love the videos Jesse! Just after stilling some whiskey and ready to start oaking it. Question: is there downside of reusing oak staves multiple times? Like staves that have been in whiskey for multiple years. I’m wondering if most the flavours & sugars get used up at some point? I was thinking of shaving off the surface of the staves with a plane to expose new surface, what are your thoughts on that?
I can't speak to distilling... but I make vanilla. I just use vodka or bourbon. The neat thing is... I have right now a 1L batch that is just sitting with the beans... I shake it from time to time. The second bottle under 200mls is a plastic vodka bottle. I daily and sometimes twice daily shake the bejesus out of it... then squeeze the air out and cap it and shake again.... later that day I release the vacuum. It will be done in 4 months instead of over a year. I can deal with that. I am not sure how or if this process could convert to aging in glass. It totally could be done in a mason jar with the vacuum sealer jar attachment. LOL I am pretty sure you guys don't need to shake it... vanilla likes the encouragement.
So an interesting question (for me) is how ‘bad’ a home distillate can be to get rescued by a barrel?
How much angel share is lost from glass jars?
Strange thought. Taking a pressure pot and slipping your jarred and staved liquor into it. And seeing how say a day changes it. Only reason I thought of it. Was your mention of the change in your barrels. Due to barometric and weather changes.
Thought about it a little more. I don't think it would have to be a radically huge amount of pressure. To see how it affects the staved and jarred spirit. Granted probably have to be done with the lids off. And it may in some way add oxegen to it. So there is that to think about too. That's why I thought a out it not being a crazy high pressure.
What would one say the average life span is for a barrel before it must be replaced?
Big science talk on an arts and crafts channel! I want more geekery and big words! Bring it on!
how about a barrel and stave age of the same distillate? minimise the chance of variance
For me i use stainless kegs with staves. The cost of an oak barrel in my neck of the woods would send most people bankrupt. I would love to use barrels.
Micro-oxidation? I am always very careful about that. The change of climate? Definitely dead on. As the wood is outside, changes of climate (especially temperature) has an immediate effect on the wood. For the glass jar - the whole liquid has to warm up first.
Most importantly - which (I guess) wasn’t really touched on: wood surface to spirit ratio. Even though the staves are submerged a small barrel should have far more surface. That’s why small barrels are aging also exponentially faster than large ones.
Tried unchard oak and I used whiskey chips and the chips tasted better then the oak. The oak tasted like oak saw dust and the whiskey barrel chips were sweeter , but maybe they did not age long enough though
Very lekker video man..... I think the wooding receives way way too little attention from people. The combinations are endless. Have 3 l of a sorghum grain single grain sitting on second use American oak chips (first use was in a barley single grain) which took some time to colour to where it is now. and just after nearly 3 months there is already so much chcarcter I've never had before, a sweetness like never before, but will just build after a year and a half. The barrel wood definitely acts as a barrier filter being between the air and the liquid. When it's just in the bottle it acts similar but it;'s completely surrounded by liquid. so different interactions. I try open my bottles and swirl the distillate to try get that air in.
Cheers!
Tried for years to get the flavor of my favorites commercial products by using chips, staves, spirals in glass... not that they weren't good but could never get what I was looking for until I pulled the trigger and bought barrels. There's no going back for me.
I used a 5l french limosine oak barrel on some rum, after 3 weeks it tasted way to0 oaky, but was sweet with some vanilla, but very little colour. Leaving for a year subdued the oak to palatable, and that ended the story.
It would be interesting to put like a stave of maple wood or just a uncommon barrel wood into a barrel to help give a little different flavor.
Jesse did a video on aging on different woods a year or two ago.
@@RS-686 Ik, what I'm talking about is doing a combination of a different wood with a barrel.
So how do we feel about the spirals? I get great color from them and I shake up the jars a lot to allow oxygen to flow but I'm scared to leave them to long due to over oaking anyone have any insight?
Have you ever used electrolysis to agent