Baby Steps

[portwood]

I wonder if the Armagnac makers aren't just topping up their barrels to limit oxidation or evaporation.

[danz]

I've read somewhere that this procedure is common in the production of Armagnac. They add water but over relatively long periods of time (years). Of course Armagnac producers tend to be very small compared to the big bourbon houses so adding water to a few hundred barrels isn't the same scale as hundreds of thousands of barrels for bourbon.

Since the water is added over longer periods of time it seems plausible that the flavour would be more integrated than adding just prior to bottling.

Springbank also does this to a degree. They vat a number of barrels then proof down to their "normal" 46% and put it back into "inactive" casks until another order comes in for that particular expression.

Essentially this is the same thing Buffalo Trace did with Sazerac 18 - proofed it down and put back into stainless steel tanks for subsequent releases.

[oke&coke]

Im surprised no one has been using barrels of water to bring down their proof.

[squire]

I've noticed these guys who are peddling underage whisky will often change the subject to discussing water.

[Restaurant man]

Im surprised no one has been using barrels of water to bring down their proof.

[oke&coke]

Barrel aged water? I think they call that Cleveland whiskey

[portwood]

What I mean is, store the water in barrels so that it picks up some of the barrel flavors so as not to dilute the flavor as much. If you are adding water anyway, why not.

[squire]

Turning water into whisky, it's a miracle.

[sutton]

I didn't get from the original blogger's quote that they were adding water slowly to the barrel to bring it to bottling proof, but that actually makes more sense than just adding it slowly to a tanked vatting of barrels in a stainless steel tank (which was the issue in the other link of "sneaking up on the proof").

We've discussed on the boards about the benefits of lower barrel entry proofs of old, and that whiskey seemed to achieve balance at younger ages in the past (water perhaps being more effective at extracting certain barrel goodies better than higher alcohol solutions). So maybe there is something to this if done over protracted periods of time.

[MauiSon]

Well, here's a hypothesis - what if by adding the water all at once, very diluted regions develop and cause flavor elements only soluble in alcohol to precipitate out and those precipitates don't easily return to solution when the mixing is completed? It's possible. Think about the precipitates that cloud ECBP when water is added or the whiskey is chilled. Perhaps slowly adding water allows the whiskey to become supersaturated with the flavor elements that would otherwise fall out of solution at lower proof.

As well, all the FRSBs for which I've sought additional information have been bottled about a week or more after dumping - not on the same day, so it appears they let 'em sit a while, too.

(sutton, goof corrected)

Edited January 28, 2014 by MauiSon

[sutton]

I'm not sure I follow that logic - I think you meant to say that if it was only in solution in the high alcohol content and then precipitated out when diluted? Isuppose that could be possible. I don't think it makes sense that something soluble in water becomes less soluble when more water is added - of course it has been years since I've studied chemistry ...

I can see how adding water to the barrel before bottling for a period of time would be interesting, if only to increase the surface area in contact with liquid that might only be exposed to empty headspace after years of evaporation.

[mbroo5880i]

It would be interesting if a few of our distiller friends could weigh in. It would seem very unlikely that the folks at Willett would have discovered something that others have missed. If there is any improvement in flavor, incremental or not, there must be a reason others are not doing it.

[sutton]

I think operationally, it would be pretty difficult to pull off on a large scale - but if it does have a beneficial effect, I can see this being a neat differentiator for craft or special low-volume releases. I guess the Scotch distillers would be less enthusiastic if there was a way to pull even more good stuff out of the barrels before sending them across the water!

[squire]

Ha! So that's the secret, just add water, instant whisky.

[booma]

You guys are having some fun with this one. So I thought I would join in.

With bourbon needing only to be less than 160 proof off the still, I'm guessing many distilleries water down the juice to an "acceptable" proof going into the barrel. So first step down. So at say 130 proof it goes into new charred barrels. At a higher proof could react differently with the oak than lower proofs. The char should filter the the new juice and give it some time to settle and air. Next dump the barrel, even blend, and bring down the proof to an old time proof, say 105, giving us step 2. The juice now goes into toasted barrels for finishing and gaining the benefits of the lower proof reacting with the oak. Then bottled at barrel proof. Or add in a third step and bring it down to say 90 proof. Just throwing around ideas.

My question is does it still meet the rules of bourbon?

[WhiskyRI]

All kidding aside, if you are going to release bourbon at less than barrel proof and therefore be diluting it with water to bring it down to bottling proof why wouldn't adding the water to the barrel improve the flavor? It allows the water to pick up oak/char/bourbon flavor, additionally it increases the fluid level in the barrel thereby allowing more of the barrel surface area to come back into contact with the bourbon (due to shrinkage from evaporation).

Will it make a huge difference? Hard to say. My question is what is the temperature of the water they are adding? Is it ambient temperature? Colder? Hotter? Is it like adding a couple of gallons of boiling water to a cask to extract out the last bit of whisky locked in the wood? I'm not saying it's a vast improvement or difference but maybe it would be noticeable.

[Quantum]

Ha! So that's the secret, just add water, instant whisky.

I never really liked instant coffee, but in a pinch it is better than nothing.

[squire]

booma, in order to meed the legal requirements of Bourbon barrel entry proof cannot exceed 125 and it must be aged in new charred, not toasted, oak barrels.

[squire]

WhiskyRI, the premise that gave rise to the thread was dilution of whisky after it had been dumped from the barrel.

[booma]

squire, thanks for helping me understand to laws of what makes bourbon, Bourbon. I love drinking the stuff and am enjoying understanding what makes a bourbon. I appreciate you answering my questions and I hope to contribute in some small way to SB. Most of the bourbons discussed on SB are either not available locally for me or way out of my price range. I was in a bar the other day and saw a discussed bourbon on the shelf, so I asked about it and it had been the same bottle on the shelf for about 3 years. they wanted $20 for a shot. it sells in the USA for under $20 a bottle.

I like these discussions of how they age bourbon and about the blend of bourbon.

cheers

[squire]

Cheers indeed, it's a fascinating subject.

[SmoothAmbler]

Im surprised no one has been using barrels of water to bring down their proof.

The cognac/brandy guys do this. It has to have some alcohol for safety, but they are effectively using aged water to blend down. I do know some folks doing this.

[oke&coke]

Well that is good to know. I would assume though that barrels of water take a lot of space and the cost of doing it on a large scale stop most places from doing it.

[AaronWF]

What about, instead of adding the water to the whiskey, add the whiskey to water? Has anyone mentioned this? In one of his video reviews, Ralfy suggested a difference in the outcome when you start with the water in your glass and add whisky to it versus dropping the water in over the whisky. In fact, he commented that when serious whisky clubs make a cask selection that will be diluted for bottling, they insist on the method of adding the whisky to the water and not putting the water in over the whisky.

Ralfy was talking about malt, of course. In my observations, water generally seems to release more oils in malt than in bourbon, so perhaps this idea is more pertinent to malt. Has anyone else heard about this? I tried it myself after seeing Ralfy do it and noticed a difference, but I have not repeated the experiment since.

[squire]

That started out as a joke in the private clubs of London. The waggish approach was to say adding water to whisky diminished the dram but to add whisky to water improved the water. Anyway it caught on and has now become ritual.

Rather silly when you think about it, another one was to call for half and half whisky & water with lots of water.