Barrel Aging Cocktails at Home. Anyone else doing this?

[rndenks]

A number of bars downtown have been aging cocktails - mostly manhattans. I've really enjoyed how integrated the flavors are. It looks like some of you really pick up on the additional oak character, but I do wonder what differences would be noted between a mason jar aged manhattan vs. barrel-aged manhattan. I don't have a barrel so I encourage someone out there to try this and report back. If I get a small barrel, I'll post here with findings.

In the name of science B&B, I will allocate a small portion of my next batch to jar. I will age that as long as I do the stuff in the barrel. I will happily report back with my findings whenever get around to my next batch.

Unless we hear back from others first regarding aging in a jar.

[Beer&Bourbon]

Awesome. I'm looking forward to how this turns out. I'll use these results to determine if I should invest in a barrel or just age in a mason jar. I realize that I already have mason jars so I'm going to start a batch this weekend aged for different lengths of time to determine if that itself makes any difference. I'll report back when this experiment is complete. Cheers!

Roger

[jsbull]

Great stuff in here. Any thoughts on good places to get barrels? Is there a book or website that talks about the ways to do this? recipes? time in barrel and such?

Best regards, Tony

I have only aged some home made corn based lightning, but I used a 2L barrel from http://oakbarrelsltd.com. It is very well made, their service is good and their instructions are easy to follow (including suggested aging times). I did make the mistake of taking the whisky out, waiting a couple of weeks and deciding to put it back in. I didn't re-swell the barrel and lost about 300ml through the barrel before I could get the rest back in the bottle. I filled it with water to swell it again, emptied that out and put the whisky back in there. It worked great again. I have noticed that they are only useful for a couple of runs. They lose that strong oak influence with each batch, as you would probably expect.