Who rotates barrels?

[boone]

HEY...

There ain't no testing of barrels ta see if they leak...ya fill it up...if it leaks then ya gotta fix it...

Hmmmmmmm...that magic syrup is made by nature, through time...It's something that happens "naturally" in the barrel...not something that we add...It tries to seep out...some of it does but eventually it will seal the small leaks...

Some barrels leak and no one knows...It would be a very time consuming job trying to inspect over 600,000++ barrels of bouron stored in warehouses, scattered about the county...We have the Schenley warehouses...The Deatsville warehouses, the Bernheim Warehouses...and the ones one located at Heaven Hill...
1% of the barrels that they pull to be bottled (each year) are empty...Leaked completely dry...It could be a small, slow drip at random...over 15 years and that barrel is history ....

Bettye Jo

[bluesbassdad]

Bettye Jo,

Well, I'll be danged...

The things you never learn until you ask!

Yep, now that I think about it, it's easy to imagine that the bourbon seeping out carries with it enough char material to form the syrup that you mentioned. (I bet that syrup would taste good -- sort of like bourbon extract. )

It seems a shame about those barrels that leak dry, but then they probably are responsible for that wonderful aroma in the warehouses that y'all tell me about.

Yours truly,
Dave Morefield

[ratcheer]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr />
It seems a shame about those barrels that leak dry....

[/QUOTE]

Dave, remember that most of the price you pay for a bottle of bourbon is tax and profit (for the distiller, middlemen, and retailer). The actual cost of making the whiskey is probably almost negligible.

Tim

[CL]

Come on, girl. Burn it up.

[pepcycle]

I couldn't resist pulling a piece off a barrel on a tour and it tasted like bourbon flavored sap. More resiny than bourbony.

[kgiammarco]

Too bad they can't put the bourbon into monster stainless steel vats and just throw the charred oak into there and then pressurize and depressurize it repeatedly... I would imagine it would come out similar to aging in a barrel... but then bourbon would probably lose too much of it's allure to many people and distillery tours wouldn't be nearly as much fun...

-chris

[ratcheer]

I read an article a few days ago about sake making in Japan. That is pretty much the way they do things, there. But of course, there is a resurgence of interest (along with premium prices) for sake made by traditional methods.

Tim

[cowdery]

That's an old moonshiner trick, though not the pressurization part.