The Science of Wood Maturation

[Balcones Winston]

Scott Spolverino is an acquaintance of mine. Thought you guys might enjoy his new blog post

http://www.inwithbacchus.com/2011/12/science-of-wood-maturation.html

[squire]

Well that's pretty clear, wood containers age whisky and ceramic ones don't.

[whiskeyagonzo]

Woops. I thought that was going to be about something else entirely. ;-)

[squire]

Let's not let this thread get out of hand.

[Zeke]

Howdy!

It's not exactly new, but it is new to me, and extremely informative. Thanks.

[B.B. Babington]

Interesting article. The maturation "mysteries" aluded to in the article are not that mysterious. One case in point, why long age in barrel is better than simply more exposure to lots of additional wood surface area. People try putting ladders and staves into barrels or using small barrels to try to mimic the effects of long age. But all that gives is wood, not the complexity that comes from condensation reactions, some of which can be catalyzed by phenolics (tannins, etc) and hydroxy surfaces of sugars/cellulose. Congeners and etc are alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, carboxylic acids. These can do various condensation reactions to make more interesting esters. Esters are what give the fruity floral notes. And along the way the harsher components (like aldehydes and carboxylic acids) are transformed into sweet goodness. Viola, another treasure is born.

[squire]

Yeah, magic, that's the word I was looking for.

[cowdery]

Although we came at it from two completely different directions, I recently wrote on the science of whiskey maturation too, "Of Quercus Alba and Eumycotians."

[B.B. Babington]

and then there's this nifty tidbit:

Small Barrels Make Lousy Whiskey

[cowdery]

I also wrote about small barrels, in something of an update to the piece above, in the most recent issue of Whisky Advocate, but it's not available online. The gist of it, from talking to several of the more successful micro-distillers, is that while small barrels do not and cannot "give you the flavor of a four year old whiskey in a few months," as was often claimed in the bad old days, they have their place in the creation of original whiskey flavor profiles.