StillSmart

Hi\'

I\'m new to this game of distilling and new to this Forum so apologies if I ask daft questions.

I\'ve recently purchased an air still together with all other requirements including flavourings.

My first choice tipple is whiskey, both scotch and irish. I\'m debating if it would be worth spending £50 on a 10 litre oak barrel to try ageing some whiskey over a few months. Has anyone got an opinion or experience on this.

Hi, welcome! Don\'t worry, we\'re beginner friendly around here!
The barrel idea is certainly a good one, and it will work as well as what you put in it. Obviously, if you want to make yourself a Talisker or Oban or whatever then you\'re going to struggle without following their methods. The way I see it, you have a couple of options :
1) Use flavourings to try to \'fake\' the taste [tip, put a little of the real stuff in with each one and it works much better to fool the palate]
2) Make a neutral spirit or a simple whiskey and age it with wood chips or a barrel
3) Try to duplicate a \'proper\' whiskey at home
Now I\'m not saying number 3 is impossible, but it\'s probably a very frustrating way to start as I\'m sure there is a lot of trial and error. What I would do is concentrate at first on making good clean neutral spirit, with as little taste as possible. Once you know how to keep the taste OUT, you can decide when to leave some in which is part of making whiskey, etc. I may be stating the obvious, but this means learning to make cuts. With your neutral, you can test out the flavourings - but bear in mind that these are supposed to taste like they\'ve already been aged, so the barrel might not be kind to them (or it might be great, I just don\'t know)
Next, get hold of some different types of chips (from a homebrew shop, chipped barrels, or like me you can use Jack Daniels BBQ chips) and stick a handful into a few glass jars and age some neutral spirit for a month or two. That way you learn about the aging process on a smaller scale and you can get decent results for mixing this way.
It\'s only then that I would look at a decent whiskey recipe, of which there are a fair few over on the Home Distiller forums. Finally, once you have a good recipe tested then you can stockpile some up and stick it in a barrel, but don\'t forget you\'re probably going to want to leave it to age a good long while so if you\'ve got any of the process wrong you\'ll wait a year or three and be very disappointed.
I hope this doesn\'t sound pessimistic - you will be able to make some great drinks, but I know from experience that there are a lot of pitfalls along the way and there is no substitute for learning on the job with this. The first batch of vodka I made was brilliant, I got over confident and the next two were poor and it took me a long time to work out why. I made some spirit that tasted a bit rough so I wondered if aging it on oak chips would help - six months later, it\'s still bloody awful, but at least now I know.
On the other hand, we all love a tale of daring so if you do bite the bullet then keep us posted on how it works out for you!

Jimmy.

Thanks for the comments/info.

I found an oak 5 litre barrel online that has a nice external finish. If my experiments don\'t work I will still have a usefull ornament, all be it an expensive one.

I was toying with filling it with cheap sherry for a few weeks before putting spirit in it.

Everything I\'m doing at the moment is with \"Still Spirits\" products. Both Classic and Top Shelf essences and their Turbo yeast, carbon etc.

As a matter of interestI had an extremely good deal from \"Wine Works\" together with a lot of help and advise.

The best flavour so far has been the Tennessee Bourbon, I\'m well impressed with it.

One further thing about this hobby, I can be a little more generous when we get visitors.

Ha, just you wait - your visitors will soon tire of being forced to try all your latest experiments! Mine did, ungrateful swines.

As far as I\'ve managed to find out, the problem with smaller barrels, is that they\'re not the same as the ones used to store/age spirit in the whiskey distilleries/factories.
Generally, they\'re not toasted anywhere near enough so you don\'t get the depth of flavour. Invariably you can\'t get an exact provenance on the wood i.e. American, French or Hungarian oak.
Then if you can lay your hands on a half decent barrel, if it\'s been used for spirit already, then to get the required level of toasting (to get the right amount of vanilins and tannins etc) you\'d have to get it re-toasted.
The other issue is size - yes the smaller ones tend to work out at a higher level of contact of spirit (and the levels of micro oxidation that occurs with wooden barrels) so, in theory, you should be able to get a similar flavour a lot quicker - but that depends on the recipe that you\'ve used in the first place etc. oh and the \"industry standard\" size is 225 litres - that\'s a hell of a lot of distilling to fill one barrel.
Personally, for scotch type spirits, for a blended whiskey, the still spirits one in the green coloured packaging (makes 3 bottles) is apparently, pretty good (don\'t know, I don\'t like blended whiskey). For a malt scotch, it\'s either prestige or ambrosia brand (I believe that they\'re made by Gert Strand in Sweden and are/is available in sachets rather than the usual small bottles) is pretty good - even I enjoyed that. they also have a reasonable irish whiskey flavouring - my sisters bloke (from County Clare) said it was very good - I enjoyed that as well, except when it\'s first mixed you can tell the difference from a scotch clone but it seems bland - give it about a week and it\'s amazing.
Back to the barrels, if you look around you can find Jack Daniels barrels (the industry standard sized ones) the only minor snag being that to get them at anything like a decent price, you have to get them by the container full.
I have found a place (actually a timber yard) that imports barrels from France. They\'ve been used for burgundy or bordeaux, the once. They want £90 a pop but you\'d still have to distmantle the top to be able to toaste one inside and to get rid of the red wine stains. The ones I saw were in brilliant condition.
Dunno if any of that helps any...?

The problem I had is that I\'m an idiot and I saw a mini Scotch whiskey barrel on eBay so I bought it without actually looking properly at it. When it arrived, it was a novelty barrel that just acts as a holder for a bottle of scotch, it\'s not watertight or anything. It\'s even made of pine so I can\'t chop the sodding thing up and use it for aging chips. This is why you should always pay attention when looking at eBay!

With regards to barrels I found this website http://www.oak-barrel.com/barrels_and_o ... arrels.htm

Wow! a lot of good info seems to be coming my way, thanks eveybody.

Ageing in oak is obviously not as straight forward as I first thought and it looks like I still need to learn a bit more about blending flavours. I,ve used Still Spirits Classics up untill now but have just bought some of their Top Shelf Irish Whiskey and Tequila to try. When I was surfing for a good friendly forum I found a couple of sites (before I found this one) that did\'nt speak to highly of Prestige brand so I\'ve avoided that brand, was I wrong?

One of my other hobbies is woodturning at which I produce a lot of oak chips, are they any use?

And Jimmy I bet that barrel was a Grants that takes a litre bottle with a plastic tap. I could flog you another if you want to start collecting.

Opus, you win your bet! I don\'t know what to do with the one I\'ve got, especially as all my stuff is in swingtop bottles so the tap won\'t even work on them. Sigh.
You should be able to use your chips for aging, ideally they should be white oak and seasoned - there\'s a lot of info about this elsewhere, including a very good document about the properties of wood for aging :
http://distillers.tastylime.net/library ... 20Listings
Aging isn\'t that hard at all, but fine tuning it is as complicated as you want to make it!

One of my other hobbies is wood turning at which I produce a lot of oak chips, are they any use?

As Jimmy says, white oak, and even then, I understand that it depends on where it comes from i.e. in descending order, Hungarian, then French, then American (and it should be Northern, slower growing, not the faster grown Southern - apparently it\'s about the "looseness" of the grain and some other stuff I can\'t remember).
If you look inside a whiskey barrel (try a decent garden centre) that\'s been cut in half, you\'ll see that the depth of the "toasting", is more like complete charring. My garden planters have been charred to a depth of about 5 mm.
If you tried to turn wood turnings into something similar you\'d end up with ash.
I\'d say that you\'d just have to try different level\'s of colour by putting some on a baking tray and putting them in the oven, then you can see what the effect is like with different level\'s of toasting etc. Which you prefer and gives you the desired effect!

The link posted by Mikey:
http://www.oak-barrel.com/barrels_and_o ... arrels.htm
is where I purchased my larger (20ltr.) barrel from. It was by far the cheapest I found anywhere. However, on filling it and subsequently trying to pour a sample tot I found the spigot tap provided to be totally inadequate as the cork strip seal (acting as a washer) simply disintegrated, They did replace this with another spigot tap which was also useless. Finally, at no charge, they sent me a brass tap. After some trial and error I managed to fit it successfully.
I would suggest, should anybody consider buying one, you first of all contact them by phone or email asking whether the problem with the taps has been sorted out yet.
By far the best quality barrel was one I purchased on line from a firm which if I recall was called \'Leyland Home Brew.
This barrel, quite small, some 3 ltrs. was made in the U.S. by
http://www.1000oaksbarrel.com/
It is made from American White Oak and the cooperage quality and finish is excellent. However, due to shipping costs and import duties, extremely expensive.
Ancient.