The Art and Science of Whiskey Aging: A Journey Through the Ages

Aging is not as simple as it used to be, at least not when it comes to whiskey. Gone are the days of just tossing a batch of whiskey into a barrel and hoping for the best. Today's whiskey makers employ a complex process that involves multiple steps, different types of wood, and even various finishing techniques.

One of the most well-known whiskey aging techniques is the "double wood" method, made famous by Balvenie's DoubleWood. This involves starting with a high-proof spirit distilled from malted barley and then maturing it in two separate casks: a traditional oak cask for an extended period of time, followed by a second cask that imparts a rich, sherried flavor to the whiskey. The final step is to transfer the whiskey to another barrel, which can be made from any type of wood, resulting in a unique and complex flavor profile.

However, not all whiskeys are created equal. Some, like those produced by Japanese company Suntory, employ more modern techniques that incorporate stainless steel and copper lids into their distillation process. The Accolade Distillery is one such example, where the company has opted for triple distillation, which involves a third still called an "intermediate still" at the end of the process. This unusual step adds depth and complexity to the whiskey.

But what about raw wood? Some whiskeys are aged in unpeated American Oak that has never been used to make barrels before. The Virgin Oak from Accolade Distillery is one such example, which offers a unique flavor profile with a harshness that gives it a bit more kick than traditional lowlands whiskeys.

One of the most fascinating whiskey aging techniques is the use of different types of sherry casks. Sherry casks are made from American Oak that has been toasted to varying degrees, giving them a rich, fruity flavor that can impart to the whiskey. Accolade Distillery uses both oloroso and Pedro Ximenez sherries in their finishing process, which involves aging the whiskey for several years in each type of cask before bottling.

The use of sherry casks is just one example of the many techniques used by whiskey makers today. Finishing, or the final step in the aging process, can involve anything from a short year in a bourbon barrel to a long period of time in a cask made from rare and exotic woods. The possibilities are endless, and the art of whiskey making has never been more exciting.

Akintoshin Distillery: A Hidden Gem

Located in the Lowlands of Scotland, Akintoshin Distillery is one of the smallest and most remote distilleries in the country. Despite its small size, the distillery produces some truly exceptional whiskeys that are worth seeking out. One such example is their Virgin Oak whiskey, which is aged in unpeated American Oak that has never been used to make barrels before.

The use of raw wood gives the whiskey a unique flavor profile with a harshness that sets it apart from traditional lowlands whiskeys. Despite being triple distilled and cut with water before aging, the Virgin Oak still retains a bit of punch that makes it an exotic and interesting drink. At around $70 per bottle, this whiskey is not for everyone, but those who enjoy trying new and unusual things will find it to be a true gem.

Finishing: The Final Step

So what happens after the whiskey has been aged in its various casks? How do you combine all of these different elements into a single bottle of whiskey that is ready to drink? Finishing is the final step in the aging process, and it involves any number of techniques depending on the distiller.

Some whiskeys are finished for just a short period of time, such as the Balvenie DoubleWood's finishing year. Others may be aged for several years in different types of casks or even transferred between multiple barrels before being bottled. The possibilities are endless, and the art of whiskey making has never been more exciting.

One of the most interesting aspects of finishing is the use of various cask styles. Sherry casks, for example, can impart a rich, fruity flavor to the whiskey, while bourbon barrels can add a sweet, vanilla-like taste. The possibilities are endless, and it's up to the distiller to decide which techniques will work best for their specific whiskey.

In conclusion, the art and science of whiskey aging is a complex and fascinating process that involves multiple steps, different types of wood, and various finishing techniques. From traditional oak casks to raw American Oak and sherry casks, each step adds depth and complexity to the whiskey. And with the rise of craft distilleries and innovative aging techniques, the possibilities are endless for those who enjoy trying new and unusual whiskeys.

The use of different types of wood in whiskey aging is a fascinating topic that has been explored by many distillers. The type of wood used can impart unique flavors to the whiskey, ranging from fruity and sweet notes from sherry casks to smoky and peaty flavors from Islay-style casks. However, not all whiskeys are created equal.

Accolade Distillery's Virgin Oak whiskey is one such example, which offers a harshness that gives it a bit more kick than traditional lowlands whiskeys. At around $70 per bottle, this whiskey is not for everyone, but those who enjoy trying new and unusual things will find it to be a true gem.

The use of different cask styles is another aspect of whiskey aging that can greatly impact the flavor profile of the final product. Sherry casks, for example, can impart a rich, fruity flavor to the whiskey, while bourbon barrels can add a sweet, vanilla-like taste. The possibilities are endless, and it's up to the distiller to decide which techniques will work best for their specific whiskey.

As we look to the future of whiskey making, it's clear that the art and science of aging is only just beginning to be explored. From innovative finishing techniques to the use of different types of wood, there are endless possibilities waiting to be discovered. And with the rise of craft distilleries and experimental aging techniques, it's never been more exciting to try new and unusual whiskeys.

Whether you're a seasoned whiskey connoisseur or just starting to explore the world of spirits, there's always something new to discover when it comes to the art and science of whiskey aging. So why not take a chance on an unusual whiskey, like Accolade Distillery's Virgin Oak? You never know what flavors you might uncover.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is TWiT now um you're new to all of this so I've been doing a series for the past few weeks on how Scottish whiskey is made oh and along the way as I explained so the next steps I mentioned a whiskey That's Unique in that particular of that sketch so we've talked about growing barley malting it drying it grinding it turning it into a wash putting it through the mash tons fermentation last week it was distillation and I talked about the different kinds of Stills that Scottish with distilleries use this week's conversation is about maturation and aging or typically putting into to barrels so we left off at a point where you've now created new make spirit so you've gone typically through a double distillation in some cases there's a triple distillation and so you're coming in and around you've got a clear Spirits about 70 to 74 ABV and now it needs to be aged for it to qualify to be Scottish whiskey it has to spend a minimum of three years in Oak casks and you'll typically see on a bottle of whiskey you'll see a year on it or in a number of years it has been that it was aged that number say it's like we're talking about Macallan 12. that means that the youngest thing in that bottle is 12 year old whiskey you'll never see a three-year-old whiskey even though nominally it is allowed to be uh they usually age longer than that three old whiskey doesn't taste all that good it's still pretty clear spirit so they tend to age longer than that in these different kinds of barrels um and interesting that it's Oak barrels now we've been using Oak to make barrels literally for centuries because Oak tends to swell when it gets liquid and so it seals itself fairly well uh in the case of whiskey they typically use only a couple of kinds of barrels and I'm using their their Latin names Aquarius Alba is what we normally call American White Oak there are variations on it but it's the most common kind and in Scottish whiskey we get those barrels extensively because of bourbon so in in Bourbon land you have to use American White Oak that is toasted on actually charred on the inside and you can only use it once so there's a lot of American Oak barrels made for bourbon and then they can't be used again for bourbon but the Scots will happily buy them and use them American barrels are small they're about 190 liters that's 50 US gallons for those who need the measurements of the oppressors although um the Scots will totally remake them into Hogs heads now on a Hog's head is a 55 imperial gallon barrel because having more than one gallon makes the system better they're 250 liter barrels the way they'll do is they'll take five American bourbon barrels and they'll rebuild them into four Hogs heads or hoggies oh boy so this is the process this is Cooperage this is the process of remaking uh remaking the barrel uh into 250 liter kind of the smallest kind of barrel you want to use another very popular Barrel to make Scottish whiskey is Aquarius rho bar are the European or Spanish Oak Barrel typically found in the form of Sherry casks there's lots of different kinds of Sherry most of the comes from Spain their normal Barrel is a 500 liter or 110 perial gallon uh Barrel these are much bigger barrels because in Sherry making they don't want a lot of wood flavor in the drink so they use a much bigger Barrel so there's less surface area contacting the liquid they slightly toast the barrel now why in the world would whiskey distilleries use Sherry casks well because in the old days that's how you ship Sherry so when they would ship Sherry up to Scotland it would come in barrels and it made no sense to ship the barrels back that's expensive so you might as well use them and they started aging Scottish whiskey and Sherry Cass and the first records that I could find on this was from 1814 that they were Aging in Cherry cast now by 1986 Spain required that all exported Sherry be exported in bottles not in casks anymore which eliminated that flow of barrels but by then the market for Sherry Cascade whiskey was so large that the Scottish whiskey makers were very concerned about this and there actually grew up a business in Spain to make Sherry casks to order for aging Scottish whiskey now this is an expensive process because you're basically having to make up a 500 liter barrel and then do a first aging of sherry in it which is typically they call it a mustaching it's not very good most of that then after they've done the three years to get it to that state they'll ship the barrel over to Scotland what they get out of it they typically then turn into Spanish Brandy um uh occasionally you'll find French Oak barrels or query sesaflora these are typically for wine and cognac casks that are sometimes used as finishing castings for Scottish whiskey we'll talk about that a little bit later um just a quick rundown on how a barrel works so these are strips of Oak they tend to be wider in the middle narrower at the end so that they can give a curve to the barrel they're held together with steel or iron Hoops traditionally this is six Hoops uh the French do eight Hoops because France and then they have Oak panels on the chin called the head ends that are fitted together with grooves at the widest part of the barrel known as the bilge is a bunghole uh traditionally this bunghole is capped with wood but it's the filling point it's also the thiefing point as barrels age and you're checking their progress you will pop the bung and see from the barrel and they check the ABV and and Google give it a taste and so forth I have had opportunity to do tours where we have thiefed a few barrels it's a ton of fun and you're tasting whiskey in its earlier stages which is really cool uh most while the barrels are wood because we want the flavors from the wood the Buns these days are mostly made of silicon because they are easily removable and they don't get they don't allow bacteria to grow on them particularly well which brings us to this great question of why the heck do we like wood like it's weird why do humans like the taste of wood we've always burned wood to make fire we cooked food over it and that smoke seemed to benefit it's also antibacterial you know trees solve the battle with bacteria long before mammals even existed on this planet they're some of the longest lived creatures and they have a structure that's designed to fight bacteria for the most part especially in the case of Oak you've got three primary components cellulose hemicellulose and lignans along with a few volatile compounds acetic fatty acids various kinds of females and tannins when we toast the wood we're actually starting to convert some of those long change Heart Change hydrocarbons in the cellulose into sugars okay so uh that Char does a few things one is that it actually lifts some of the bad notes out of whiskey like we often are battling sulfur from the The Barley that can make quite sour that tends to stick to the charcoal um the and we are dealing with these these volatile compounds that we get from charring the wood a bit and then introducing solvents to it what solvents well that's the alcohol so when you go when you're going to pour this clear make into the barrel uh you're going to have a ratio of alkaline water right when I talk about hey this new make is 73 ethanol well what's the other 27 mostly water and a few other things now 73 is actually too high to put into a barrel because some of the compounds that are in the wood are lipophilic they like alcohol and they'll bind to it some of them are hydrophilic they like water and they'll bind to that and that ratio is important if you the the alcohol the the lipophilic compounds tend to be spicier in woodier where the hydrophilic compounds tend to be sweeter and smoother so we find vanillins like to bond to water where the spicier compounds like a guacal and eugenol which is that smell of cloves they tend to bind to alcohol also you're typically most of the time in Scottish whiskey dealing with a used Barrel they've been used before they and now in the case of bourbon only used once Sherry casser often used for quite a long time before they will actually sell them although now their sort of purpose made in whiskey making a first used Barrel what they call a first fill so it's been used once it's been typically used by Bourbon and bourbon has a lower in-breast alcohol level typically coming at about 62 and a half percent and so with that ratio it's pulled certain compounds from the wood already what Scottish Scots makers will do is they'll put a slightly higher alcohol level into the barrel so they'll they may their distillate may come out at 72 percent they'll then cut that with distilled water to get it down to 63.5 so one percent higher than the bourbon that was in it before to lift different flavors ah got it and so there's this game you're playing with the mix of water and alcohol as to what flavors you're trying to extract from the wood and then a new Fair Barrel they'll actually go lower than that because often these compounds can get very bitter so the first time they use a Bourbon Barrel now it's already had bourbon in it but they're going to use it for the first time for for whiskey they might go as low as 60 percent and then they'll use and then they'll take a second feral Barrel so when it's been used once before and that might have 63 and as they use the barrel over and over again typically four or five times they'll raise the alcohol level each time to pull more flavor from the barrel now you're putting these things you're putting that liquor into the barrel for eight to 12 years and you don't really know how long it's going to be and there's a lot of forces that are acting on it right you don't really know what's going to come of that so often and we'll talk about this next week when we talk about what we dig out of the barrel even though it's all a given mulching you might put a portion of that given malting in first fill barrels and another portion in second and third fill barrels and you'll dilute them differently to get the different flavors from them most barrels are filled almost entirely depending on the distilleries part of the forces that are going to act on this we'll talk a bit about angel share is the oxidation part you need some room for air to be inside the barrel and some distillers will fill it less to increase the amount of available air that will be exchanged over time but generally speaking if you put more in the barrel you're going to get more results because we're going to lose some over time if you start your barrel full it ages slower effectively barrels are stored in a variety of ways the traditional storage methodology for whiskey barrels is called a dunnage warehouse and dunnage actually is a tax term so back before they taxed by the bottle when they were taxing by the distillate you were actually putting your Barrel into a Bonded Warehouse where it would Age so that it would be accounted for tax when it was put into the warehouse you would pay the tax when you sold it so it's like a Roth IRA versus uh 401K that kind of thing and believe me we're talking about hundreds of years of Taxation related to alcohol wow and in earlier shows we've talked about things like Spirit Stills where they literally they can't touch the spirit they have to control it by remote control because the tax man controls access to the spirits oh my so as we get through you know again these are very traditional mechanisms dunnage used to be the way that they would do the final taxation on it and a traditional dunnage warehouse and most Distillery still operate on these it's a very traditional style are Stonewall Falls with a wooden with a wooden structure roof with tile on top of the roof and dirt floors the they have relatively low ceilings the barrels are laying on their side so they're horizontal which increases the open amount of access to Wood they're stacked two or three High because the dirt they had to have dirt floors they can't use a Machinery so the barrels are basically loaded by hand up to three high and remember that uh uh a gallon of whiskey weighs about eight pounds so when you're talking about a hundred gallon 500 liter Barrel like get some friends there's gonna be some lifting involved there now um more contemporary uh warehouses and this these aren't pretty common too are what they call the rack houses now an Iraq house in America for bourbon is very different from her which is the way most bourbon is made very different from Iraq house in Scotland these rack houses in Scotland are concrete floors the barrels are still stored horizontally same as a Dunwich warehouse but they're on racks that can go as many as 12 barrels high so quite tall structures um they can obviously have machine handling because they have to get quite that high and the barrels are organized in a way where air is allowed to flow around them that's an important part of the aging process so there's they're they're stacked in position and then aged for an extended period of times the most contemporary versions of of storing systems that more palletized Warehouse para and when they use pallets for barrels they're standing them upright so rather than on their side they're upright they're stacked one layer on a pallet then those pallets are stacked one on top of each other and they can again be quite high so not as much wood touching in that instance then if they're still you might as much yeah the Liquor's not touching the the wood as much because you're you're sitting upright you don't have as much air availability so there's a slowing of the aging process uh and depending on which distiller you talk to that is heresy and everyone should be burned at the stake all Barrel should be stored horizontally there's a lot of passion yeah in making whiskey and and the barrel storage is a huge part of it anything other than dunnage would be sacrilege you know depends on who you talk to but we got to talk about the angel's share because now we get into the dangerous part of this business so it's a wooden barrel it breathes over time as the seasons come and go as it gets warmer a certain amount of the alcohol is going to evaporate from the barrel and depending on where that Barrel lies in the various storage systems it's going to lose more or less is this thing called the honey uh spots we should show you the places where it makes the best whiskey not every location same if you're higher in the rack it's going to be warmer up there in the summertime so you're going to have higher rates of loss but you lose up to one up as many as much as three percent of alcohol per year whoa and remember that the rule for whiskey is if that Barrel Falls below 40 percent you can't sell it as whiskey so you went into the barrel at 63 or 64 and you're losing a certain amount each year now if it gets too warm it can actually start to lose water and the alcohol percentage will increase although this has more to do with humidity than anything else so one of the reasons for the dunnage warehouses with their stone walls and dirt floors is it maintains a higher humidity and a high humidity environment will tend to evaporate alcohol where in a place like Kentucky where it's quite a bit warmer and quite a bit drier the bourbon folks battle losing water and their alcohol level getting too high and if you get too high in Bourbon you're not allowed to call it bourbon either so often you'll see in some uh distilleries in America especially they'll cool their Barrel rooms to try and manage that that heat problem watering it down is not the same then if you if you had that sort of higher alcohol content then just add some water to it before you send it off is that a no no it's pretty much against the rules to do anything to the barrels plus it's not scalable you think about the racks and racks of barrels so they're pretty much leaving them alone for an extended period of time but they will check on them and they'll check their ABV so that's that whole thiefing process where okay the occasionally the brown one will go in they'll pop a bun they'll take a thief which is basically a glass tube you hold your thumb over the end of it or you leave your thumb off you dip it into the barrel you put your thumb on you lift it back out you get a little strip of the way or the raw whiskey whatever's been happening in that Barrel you put it in a couple of glasses you take a sniff you test for ABV what's the current alcohol level you can see the rate of decline I'd also point out that alcohol evaporated in the air is an explosive yeah yeah so you'll generally see in traditional especially traditional Donnie's warehouses like the ends are open they allow that that gas to dissipate and the alcohol actually sticks to things and turns them black um and this gets extreme in certain environments there's uh recently some news stories in the in Bourbon country in Kentucky where I mean forests are getting destroyed by the the mold that grows related to that that alcohol exposure but you know you can recognize old Dunwich warehouses because you'll see a lot around the roof line and so forth is blackening from the alcohol contamination as it evaporates uh and so weather matters a lot it's part of the game to this of course if alcohol is going to leave the barrel something needs to come in it's not like there's negative pressure in the barrel so you're also breathing you're bringing air into the barrel and most of that air is going to come from other barrels because they're all doing that but there is this there is a sense of the terror of what comes from the environment and a great example of this is talisker on the Isle of Skye in the westernmost westernmost part of Scotland amongst the islands that there's a little hint of salt in the whiskey from the salt in the air that gets drawn in through this Angel air process over time uh and of course that in that out that evaporation process the amount of liquid in the barrels going down year over year you're trying to stay above that 40 point but it's one of the reasons that older whiskeys are so expensive not every barrel makes it that long not every barrel ABV stay high enough to find a whiskey that's 50 years old where the youngest thing in the bottle is 50 years old is to speak to an extraordinary Barrel that just lost so little alcohol for such a long time uh it'll be much more concentrated uh barrels do leak they do get cracks that cooling and heating of the seasons can be problematic a very hot summer a very cold winter can damage them uh sometimes they can be fixed just with a bit of hammering pushing those bands of Steel down to tighten the wood uh is enough to stop it from leaking there's Barrel wax to seal it up I've seen copper plates hammered onto pieces of a barrel to seal it um it's interesting just to see the active bacterial process that they do with all of that so we're talking about aging uh and again if you talk about traditional single malt whiskeys you typically see them in the 10 to 12 year range and that means they've been sat in a barrel for that long no aging happens in bottles it all happens in the casks so the real question you have to ask is well when's the whiskey ready you know what does ready even mean so the barrelmen are sampling different bot casks at different locations on a routine basis they're watching the ABV they don't want to fall too low and they're also studying flavor profiles and we're going to get into next week into the finishing part of that which gets into the really miraculous part which is how do you make a whiskey tastes like a whiskey year over year over year why does Macallan 12 always taste like Macallan 12. there's an art form to that it's extraordinary but aging is not as simple as it used to be it used to be put it in a cast for a certain amount of time then you taste it if it tasted pretty good go sell it but that's not what happens today you're doing bottling there's many many casts involved it's much more complex than that and since the 1980s starting with a particular distiller from valvina a guy named Dave Stewart they started doing finishing castings so if you look at a fairly famous whiskey in this category is balvini's doublewood what David actually figured out that was clever is you can start in Sherry cast and run it for 10 12 years and then at the end take it out of that barrel and put it in a different Barrel like a Sherry cast for just about a year you don't want to age a long time or or in podcasts for a long time Sherry Cassidy do long Aging in but poor cast they typically no more than a year but you're also seeing finishing casts of all kinds Now red wine rum cognac I've even found one where they did a final year in Tequila I don't know that it's just you made anywhere of jeans six to 24 months they do these finishing caps before they send off but it's always this question of you know when is it ever ready and um that brings me to my whiskey for this particular show which we're going to go to the lowlands to a Distillery called akintoshin uh great name akintosh and it's barely in the low lens it's all the low ends is the lower part of of Scotland uh attached to England uh it's a smaller area than the highlands which is the largest area uh this particular Distillery is all the way west barely in the lowlands in fact it gets its water from the highlands it's Northwest of Glasgow on the area called clydebank uh clydebank was an important port during World War II and in fact The alcantation Distillery was heavily bombed during World War II and today one of their large cooling ponds is actually an old Crater from the war wow they reconditioned the distilleries owned by suntory which is a Japanese company that's rolled up a bunch of these different distilleries and we'll talk about that one of these days they're mashed tons of stainless with copper Lids they use wooden washbacks and they do triple distillation which is very unusual so they have their regular wash and spirit is still a Stills and then there's a third still called an intermediate still which is weird because it's at the end but let's not get that nickel here and so their typical new mate comes out at 81 alcohol which is very high compared to most whiskeys now my personal favorite of all the accentation is the one if I see one I will grab it is through three wood and it's about 50 U.S for a bottle and it's called three wood because they do their first 10 years in Bourbon casks and then we'll put the distillate into a year of oloroso Sherry and then a year of Pedro Yemen as Sherry and and bottle that but the one I wanted to talk about is not on the list anymore but you can find it if you look about it which is a very unusual whiskey is their virgin Oak about 70 a bottle if you can find one the whiskey exchange has it but it's one of the very few Scottish whiskeys that goes into raw wood oh so they buy American Oak that has never been used have it made into barrels and they finish their virgin Oak in that uh it's got a unique flavor there's a harshness to Young Wood uh that gives it a little more kick for what is relatively uh a short aged whiskey but it's triple distilled so that high distillation then they cut it with water before they put it in the barrel it gets a lot more spice for what is normally lowlands tend to be very smooth and this one's got a bit more punch but it's an exotic whiskey and again it's the kind of whiskey I would buy for someone who's really into whiskey and this is one they'll never try again they've only done two editions of this the first edition is unfindable uh the second edition there's still a few around for about seventy dollars wow okay that's that was this is fun I love learning new things so this was a lot of fun to hear about this process for sure yeah so next week's show we'll uh we'll talk about finishing so the whole process of getting from all of those casks when are they ready how do you combine them how do you bottle them and what are the last steps to making a bottle of whiskey before you can sell it beautiful foreignthis is TWiT now um you're new to all of this so I've been doing a series for the past few weeks on how Scottish whiskey is made oh and along the way as I explained so the next steps I mentioned a whiskey That's Unique in that particular of that sketch so we've talked about growing barley malting it drying it grinding it turning it into a wash putting it through the mash tons fermentation last week it was distillation and I talked about the different kinds of Stills that Scottish with distilleries use this week's conversation is about maturation and aging or typically putting into to barrels so we left off at a point where you've now created new make spirit so you've gone typically through a double distillation in some cases there's a triple distillation and so you're coming in and around you've got a clear Spirits about 70 to 74 ABV and now it needs to be aged for it to qualify to be Scottish whiskey it has to spend a minimum of three years in Oak casks and you'll typically see on a bottle of whiskey you'll see a year on it or in a number of years it has been that it was aged that number say it's like we're talking about Macallan 12. that means that the youngest thing in that bottle is 12 year old whiskey you'll never see a three-year-old whiskey even though nominally it is allowed to be uh they usually age longer than that three old whiskey doesn't taste all that good it's still pretty clear spirit so they tend to age longer than that in these different kinds of barrels um and interesting that it's Oak barrels now we've been using Oak to make barrels literally for centuries because Oak tends to swell when it gets liquid and so it seals itself fairly well uh in the case of whiskey they typically use only a couple of kinds of barrels and I'm using their their Latin names Aquarius Alba is what we normally call American White Oak there are variations on it but it's the most common kind and in Scottish whiskey we get those barrels extensively because of bourbon so in in Bourbon land you have to use American White Oak that is toasted on actually charred on the inside and you can only use it once so there's a lot of American Oak barrels made for bourbon and then they can't be used again for bourbon but the Scots will happily buy them and use them American barrels are small they're about 190 liters that's 50 US gallons for those who need the measurements of the oppressors although um the Scots will totally remake them into Hogs heads now on a Hog's head is a 55 imperial gallon barrel because having more than one gallon makes the system better they're 250 liter barrels the way they'll do is they'll take five American bourbon barrels and they'll rebuild them into four Hogs heads or hoggies oh boy so this is the process this is Cooperage this is the process of remaking uh remaking the barrel uh into 250 liter kind of the smallest kind of barrel you want to use another very popular Barrel to make Scottish whiskey is Aquarius rho bar are the European or Spanish Oak Barrel typically found in the form of Sherry casks there's lots of different kinds of Sherry most of the comes from Spain their normal Barrel is a 500 liter or 110 perial gallon uh Barrel these are much bigger barrels because in Sherry making they don't want a lot of wood flavor in the drink so they use a much bigger Barrel so there's less surface area contacting the liquid they slightly toast the barrel now why in the world would whiskey distilleries use Sherry casks well because in the old days that's how you ship Sherry so when they would ship Sherry up to Scotland it would come in barrels and it made no sense to ship the barrels back that's expensive so you might as well use them and they started aging Scottish whiskey and Sherry Cass and the first records that I could find on this was from 1814 that they were Aging in Cherry cast now by 1986 Spain required that all exported Sherry be exported in bottles not in casks anymore which eliminated that flow of barrels but by then the market for Sherry Cascade whiskey was so large that the Scottish whiskey makers were very concerned about this and there actually grew up a business in Spain to make Sherry casks to order for aging Scottish whiskey now this is an expensive process because you're basically having to make up a 500 liter barrel and then do a first aging of sherry in it which is typically they call it a mustaching it's not very good most of that then after they've done the three years to get it to that state they'll ship the barrel over to Scotland what they get out of it they typically then turn into Spanish Brandy um uh occasionally you'll find French Oak barrels or query sesaflora these are typically for wine and cognac casks that are sometimes used as finishing castings for Scottish whiskey we'll talk about that a little bit later um just a quick rundown on how a barrel works so these are strips of Oak they tend to be wider in the middle narrower at the end so that they can give a curve to the barrel they're held together with steel or iron Hoops traditionally this is six Hoops uh the French do eight Hoops because France and then they have Oak panels on the chin called the head ends that are fitted together with grooves at the widest part of the barrel known as the bilge is a bunghole uh traditionally this bunghole is capped with wood but it's the filling point it's also the thiefing point as barrels age and you're checking their progress you will pop the bung and see from the barrel and they check the ABV and and Google give it a taste and so forth I have had opportunity to do tours where we have thiefed a few barrels it's a ton of fun and you're tasting whiskey in its earlier stages which is really cool uh most while the barrels are wood because we want the flavors from the wood the Buns these days are mostly made of silicon because they are easily removable and they don't get they don't allow bacteria to grow on them particularly well which brings us to this great question of why the heck do we like wood like it's weird why do humans like the taste of wood we've always burned wood to make fire we cooked food over it and that smoke seemed to benefit it's also antibacterial you know trees solve the battle with bacteria long before mammals even existed on this planet they're some of the longest lived creatures and they have a structure that's designed to fight bacteria for the most part especially in the case of Oak you've got three primary components cellulose hemicellulose and lignans along with a few volatile compounds acetic fatty acids various kinds of females and tannins when we toast the wood we're actually starting to convert some of those long change Heart Change hydrocarbons in the cellulose into sugars okay so uh that Char does a few things one is that it actually lifts some of the bad notes out of whiskey like we often are battling sulfur from the The Barley that can make quite sour that tends to stick to the charcoal um the and we are dealing with these these volatile compounds that we get from charring the wood a bit and then introducing solvents to it what solvents well that's the alcohol so when you go when you're going to pour this clear make into the barrel uh you're going to have a ratio of alkaline water right when I talk about hey this new make is 73 ethanol well what's the other 27 mostly water and a few other things now 73 is actually too high to put into a barrel because some of the compounds that are in the wood are lipophilic they like alcohol and they'll bind to it some of them are hydrophilic they like water and they'll bind to that and that ratio is important if you the the alcohol the the lipophilic compounds tend to be spicier in woodier where the hydrophilic compounds tend to be sweeter and smoother so we find vanillins like to bond to water where the spicier compounds like a guacal and eugenol which is that smell of cloves they tend to bind to alcohol also you're typically most of the time in Scottish whiskey dealing with a used Barrel they've been used before they and now in the case of bourbon only used once Sherry casser often used for quite a long time before they will actually sell them although now their sort of purpose made in whiskey making a first used Barrel what they call a first fill so it's been used once it's been typically used by Bourbon and bourbon has a lower in-breast alcohol level typically coming at about 62 and a half percent and so with that ratio it's pulled certain compounds from the wood already what Scottish Scots makers will do is they'll put a slightly higher alcohol level into the barrel so they'll they may their distillate may come out at 72 percent they'll then cut that with distilled water to get it down to 63.5 so one percent higher than the bourbon that was in it before to lift different flavors ah got it and so there's this game you're playing with the mix of water and alcohol as to what flavors you're trying to extract from the wood and then a new Fair Barrel they'll actually go lower than that because often these compounds can get very bitter so the first time they use a Bourbon Barrel now it's already had bourbon in it but they're going to use it for the first time for for whiskey they might go as low as 60 percent and then they'll use and then they'll take a second feral Barrel so when it's been used once before and that might have 63 and as they use the barrel over and over again typically four or five times they'll raise the alcohol level each time to pull more flavor from the barrel now you're putting these things you're putting that liquor into the barrel for eight to 12 years and you don't really know how long it's going to be and there's a lot of forces that are acting on it right you don't really know what's going to come of that so often and we'll talk about this next week when we talk about what we dig out of the barrel even though it's all a given mulching you might put a portion of that given malting in first fill barrels and another portion in second and third fill barrels and you'll dilute them differently to get the different flavors from them most barrels are filled almost entirely depending on the distilleries part of the forces that are going to act on this we'll talk a bit about angel share is the oxidation part you need some room for air to be inside the barrel and some distillers will fill it less to increase the amount of available air that will be exchanged over time but generally speaking if you put more in the barrel you're going to get more results because we're going to lose some over time if you start your barrel full it ages slower effectively barrels are stored in a variety of ways the traditional storage methodology for whiskey barrels is called a dunnage warehouse and dunnage actually is a tax term so back before they taxed by the bottle when they were taxing by the distillate you were actually putting your Barrel into a Bonded Warehouse where it would Age so that it would be accounted for tax when it was put into the warehouse you would pay the tax when you sold it so it's like a Roth IRA versus uh 401K that kind of thing and believe me we're talking about hundreds of years of Taxation related to alcohol wow and in earlier shows we've talked about things like Spirit Stills where they literally they can't touch the spirit they have to control it by remote control because the tax man controls access to the spirits oh my so as we get through you know again these are very traditional mechanisms dunnage used to be the way that they would do the final taxation on it and a traditional dunnage warehouse and most Distillery still operate on these it's a very traditional style are Stonewall Falls with a wooden with a wooden structure roof with tile on top of the roof and dirt floors the they have relatively low ceilings the barrels are laying on their side so they're horizontal which increases the open amount of access to Wood they're stacked two or three High because the dirt they had to have dirt floors they can't use a Machinery so the barrels are basically loaded by hand up to three high and remember that uh uh a gallon of whiskey weighs about eight pounds so when you're talking about a hundred gallon 500 liter Barrel like get some friends there's gonna be some lifting involved there now um more contemporary uh warehouses and this these aren't pretty common too are what they call the rack houses now an Iraq house in America for bourbon is very different from her which is the way most bourbon is made very different from Iraq house in Scotland these rack houses in Scotland are concrete floors the barrels are still stored horizontally same as a Dunwich warehouse but they're on racks that can go as many as 12 barrels high so quite tall structures um they can obviously have machine handling because they have to get quite that high and the barrels are organized in a way where air is allowed to flow around them that's an important part of the aging process so there's they're they're stacked in position and then aged for an extended period of times the most contemporary versions of of storing systems that more palletized Warehouse para and when they use pallets for barrels they're standing them upright so rather than on their side they're upright they're stacked one layer on a pallet then those pallets are stacked one on top of each other and they can again be quite high so not as much wood touching in that instance then if they're still you might as much yeah the Liquor's not touching the the wood as much because you're you're sitting upright you don't have as much air availability so there's a slowing of the aging process uh and depending on which distiller you talk to that is heresy and everyone should be burned at the stake all Barrel should be stored horizontally there's a lot of passion yeah in making whiskey and and the barrel storage is a huge part of it anything other than dunnage would be sacrilege you know depends on who you talk to but we got to talk about the angel's share because now we get into the dangerous part of this business so it's a wooden barrel it breathes over time as the seasons come and go as it gets warmer a certain amount of the alcohol is going to evaporate from the barrel and depending on where that Barrel lies in the various storage systems it's going to lose more or less is this thing called the honey uh spots we should show you the places where it makes the best whiskey not every location same if you're higher in the rack it's going to be warmer up there in the summertime so you're going to have higher rates of loss but you lose up to one up as many as much as three percent of alcohol per year whoa and remember that the rule for whiskey is if that Barrel Falls below 40 percent you can't sell it as whiskey so you went into the barrel at 63 or 64 and you're losing a certain amount each year now if it gets too warm it can actually start to lose water and the alcohol percentage will increase although this has more to do with humidity than anything else so one of the reasons for the dunnage warehouses with their stone walls and dirt floors is it maintains a higher humidity and a high humidity environment will tend to evaporate alcohol where in a place like Kentucky where it's quite a bit warmer and quite a bit drier the bourbon folks battle losing water and their alcohol level getting too high and if you get too high in Bourbon you're not allowed to call it bourbon either so often you'll see in some uh distilleries in America especially they'll cool their Barrel rooms to try and manage that that heat problem watering it down is not the same then if you if you had that sort of higher alcohol content then just add some water to it before you send it off is that a no no it's pretty much against the rules to do anything to the barrels plus it's not scalable you think about the racks and racks of barrels so they're pretty much leaving them alone for an extended period of time but they will check on them and they'll check their ABV so that's that whole thiefing process where okay the occasionally the brown one will go in they'll pop a bun they'll take a thief which is basically a glass tube you hold your thumb over the end of it or you leave your thumb off you dip it into the barrel you put your thumb on you lift it back out you get a little strip of the way or the raw whiskey whatever's been happening in that Barrel you put it in a couple of glasses you take a sniff you test for ABV what's the current alcohol level you can see the rate of decline I'd also point out that alcohol evaporated in the air is an explosive yeah yeah so you'll generally see in traditional especially traditional Donnie's warehouses like the ends are open they allow that that gas to dissipate and the alcohol actually sticks to things and turns them black um and this gets extreme in certain environments there's uh recently some news stories in the in Bourbon country in Kentucky where I mean forests are getting destroyed by the the mold that grows related to that that alcohol exposure but you know you can recognize old Dunwich warehouses because you'll see a lot around the roof line and so forth is blackening from the alcohol contamination as it evaporates uh and so weather matters a lot it's part of the game to this of course if alcohol is going to leave the barrel something needs to come in it's not like there's negative pressure in the barrel so you're also breathing you're bringing air into the barrel and most of that air is going to come from other barrels because they're all doing that but there is this there is a sense of the terror of what comes from the environment and a great example of this is talisker on the Isle of Skye in the westernmost westernmost part of Scotland amongst the islands that there's a little hint of salt in the whiskey from the salt in the air that gets drawn in through this Angel air process over time uh and of course that in that out that evaporation process the amount of liquid in the barrels going down year over year you're trying to stay above that 40 point but it's one of the reasons that older whiskeys are so expensive not every barrel makes it that long not every barrel ABV stay high enough to find a whiskey that's 50 years old where the youngest thing in the bottle is 50 years old is to speak to an extraordinary Barrel that just lost so little alcohol for such a long time uh it'll be much more concentrated uh barrels do leak they do get cracks that cooling and heating of the seasons can be problematic a very hot summer a very cold winter can damage them uh sometimes they can be fixed just with a bit of hammering pushing those bands of Steel down to tighten the wood uh is enough to stop it from leaking there's Barrel wax to seal it up I've seen copper plates hammered onto pieces of a barrel to seal it um it's interesting just to see the active bacterial process that they do with all of that so we're talking about aging uh and again if you talk about traditional single malt whiskeys you typically see them in the 10 to 12 year range and that means they've been sat in a barrel for that long no aging happens in bottles it all happens in the casks so the real question you have to ask is well when's the whiskey ready you know what does ready even mean so the barrelmen are sampling different bot casks at different locations on a routine basis they're watching the ABV they don't want to fall too low and they're also studying flavor profiles and we're going to get into next week into the finishing part of that which gets into the really miraculous part which is how do you make a whiskey tastes like a whiskey year over year over year why does Macallan 12 always taste like Macallan 12. there's an art form to that it's extraordinary but aging is not as simple as it used to be it used to be put it in a cast for a certain amount of time then you taste it if it tasted pretty good go sell it but that's not what happens today you're doing bottling there's many many casts involved it's much more complex than that and since the 1980s starting with a particular distiller from valvina a guy named Dave Stewart they started doing finishing castings so if you look at a fairly famous whiskey in this category is balvini's doublewood what David actually figured out that was clever is you can start in Sherry cast and run it for 10 12 years and then at the end take it out of that barrel and put it in a different Barrel like a Sherry cast for just about a year you don't want to age a long time or or in podcasts for a long time Sherry Cassidy do long Aging in but poor cast they typically no more than a year but you're also seeing finishing casts of all kinds Now red wine rum cognac I've even found one where they did a final year in Tequila I don't know that it's just you made anywhere of jeans six to 24 months they do these finishing caps before they send off but it's always this question of you know when is it ever ready and um that brings me to my whiskey for this particular show which we're going to go to the lowlands to a Distillery called akintoshin uh great name akintosh and it's barely in the low lens it's all the low ends is the lower part of of Scotland uh attached to England uh it's a smaller area than the highlands which is the largest area uh this particular Distillery is all the way west barely in the lowlands in fact it gets its water from the highlands it's Northwest of Glasgow on the area called clydebank uh clydebank was an important port during World War II and in fact The alcantation Distillery was heavily bombed during World War II and today one of their large cooling ponds is actually an old Crater from the war wow they reconditioned the distilleries owned by suntory which is a Japanese company that's rolled up a bunch of these different distilleries and we'll talk about that one of these days they're mashed tons of stainless with copper Lids they use wooden washbacks and they do triple distillation which is very unusual so they have their regular wash and spirit is still a Stills and then there's a third still called an intermediate still which is weird because it's at the end but let's not get that nickel here and so their typical new mate comes out at 81 alcohol which is very high compared to most whiskeys now my personal favorite of all the accentation is the one if I see one I will grab it is through three wood and it's about 50 U.S for a bottle and it's called three wood because they do their first 10 years in Bourbon casks and then we'll put the distillate into a year of oloroso Sherry and then a year of Pedro Yemen as Sherry and and bottle that but the one I wanted to talk about is not on the list anymore but you can find it if you look about it which is a very unusual whiskey is their virgin Oak about 70 a bottle if you can find one the whiskey exchange has it but it's one of the very few Scottish whiskeys that goes into raw wood oh so they buy American Oak that has never been used have it made into barrels and they finish their virgin Oak in that uh it's got a unique flavor there's a harshness to Young Wood uh that gives it a little more kick for what is relatively uh a short aged whiskey but it's triple distilled so that high distillation then they cut it with water before they put it in the barrel it gets a lot more spice for what is normally lowlands tend to be very smooth and this one's got a bit more punch but it's an exotic whiskey and again it's the kind of whiskey I would buy for someone who's really into whiskey and this is one they'll never try again they've only done two editions of this the first edition is unfindable uh the second edition there's still a few around for about seventy dollars wow okay that's that was this is fun I love learning new things so this was a lot of fun to hear about this process for sure yeah so next week's show we'll uh we'll talk about finishing so the whole process of getting from all of those casks when are they ready how do you combine them how do you bottle them and what are the last steps to making a bottle of whiskey before you can sell it beautiful foreign\n"