Aging bourbon is seconds?

[Thig]

Interesting concept on aging bourbon in seconds, but I doubt it works.

http://punchdrink.com/articles/whiskey-gets-older-faster/

[MyOldKyDram]

Oh lawd someone is looking to out-Cleveland Cleveland!

[callmeox]

The folks at Cleveland Whiskey and their fans all say that the end product tastes good as well. Whiskey drinkers who don't fall into the johnny come lately category come to a different conclusion.

I'm interested in how they can make distilled spirits with the evaporator and no mention of a license.

[squire]

Sounds like the bar on the Starship Enterprise that can "make" any whisky you want in any color.

[MyOldKyDram]

Someone buy a barrel of LDI and a Sonicare toothbrush and let's make this happen!

[flaminiom]

The owner of Polyscience was on Alton Brown's podcast a while back. He talked about this gadget to infuse wood flavor into cocktails. He was specifically talking about barrel aged cocktails though and not aging whiskey. I can't imagine this being good for anything other than "finishing" aged whiskey.

Edited May 6, 2014 by flaminiom

[squire]

Good for sales . . . .

[Hawg73]

So shooting sound waves into spirit with chopped up furniture mixed in. There is no way that can taste good. right?

[squire]

It's all in the wrist flicking the switch.

[Harry in WashDC]

You guys. We been doing that for years with vodka, liquid smoke, and flat Coke. A little vanilla helps.

[squire]

Or a drop of iodine if you're making Scotch.

[sailor22]

Or a drop of iodine if you're making Scotch.

And a used band aid.

[MyOldKyDram]

If I want to recreate dusty bourbon should I use period furniture? Say an Eames chair?

[squire]

Sure, why not, also dress up in your Dan Draper skinny tie.

[TunnelTiger]

Skinny ties are out?

[Quantum]

My concern is that you are altering the amount of contact the whiskey has with each part of the wood that normally makes up a barrel. All of the whiskey comes into contact with all of the charred layer of a barrel, but has less contact the deeper you go. Using mechanical force to push the whiskey in and out of the wood seems like it would increase the contact with the uncharred layers of wood.

[squire]

Sure it will, and flush out undesirable tannins as well.

[risenc]

A writer emailed me today to ask for my thoughts on "lightning aging." So I guess that's an acceptable, cool thing, now. Sigh.

I see a glaring contradiction here: on the one hand, people love whiskey, and want to get into making whiskey, in part because of its image as a handmade, painstakingly crafted product. On the other hand, they want to get it to market as fast and cheaply as possible, and are willing to invent snake-oil "technologies" like this to do it. I understand the motivations behind each separately, but I don't see how you can embrace the latter while still holding true to the former. But I do see how it works: you invent new terms, like "lightning aging," to make it sound like what you're doing is still part of the handmade, craft tradition.

And while I know there will always be snake-oil salesmen in any fast-growing industry, I'm worried that stories like this one, and the spread of seemingly legit terms like "lightning aging," means that a good segment of the market might well shift to accept such garbage, believing it's gourmet. Present company excluded, of course, but with the market adding millions of new whiskey drinkers every year, lightning agers can safely ignore us.

You see the same thing in barely aged spirits, all this six-month-old "whiskey" popping up everywhere. What most folks on this site would consider "underaged" or "unfinished," a lot of hot-to-trot craft distillers and their propagandists are calling "fresh," "young," or whatever -- in essence trying to revise the standard whiskey palate to accept six-month whiskey as something other than what it is.

And maybe I'm just sensitive to it, here in Brooklyn, where know-it-all 23-year-olds will tell you that they find straight whiskey too woody and overly oaked for them. But then again, for better or worse, these are also folks who have an inordinate impact on national trends.

I fear for this country.

[squire]

Fortunes were made off bathtub gin and the lesson has not been lost.

[Quantum]

Any kind of gin makes furniture chip infused root beer flavored malt liquor sound like a tasty treat.

[squire]

Sounds tempting but I couldn't bring myself to adulterate good root beer.

[jmj_203]

Sounds tempting but I couldn't bring myself to adulterate good root beer.

The anti science atmosphere I get here, but as an engineer the potential shouldnt be so joked about here. A few years of product development and testing and these guys could have a device that is included in every rickhouse. Laugh all you want but I know being new to bourbon I'm already to the point of not liking bottles without 8 plus years stated. A device in each barrel to increase the process of in and out of the char layer could bring us aged bourbon as we are used to taste and aroma wise in a few years, maybe months. I guess a young guy doesnt get the hatred toward new possible science in bourbon.

Edited May 8, 2014 by jmj_203

[sutton]

jmj,

I wouldn't say "anti-science" as much as a high degree of skepticism given that those on this board have seen different attempts at making it "just as good as" ... everything from small barrels to Cleveland whiskey has been touted as the next short cut, and all have been lacking in some way (or in every way).

Certainly experimentation is welcomed (look at BT) - anything that advances the understanding of what is in the bottle is welcomed. But some experiments don't make it past the mid-palate ... :grin:

[DaveOfAtl]

In a recent twitter exchange about this article, David Wondrich put it well. Extraction is not the same as aging. Slow, controlled oxidation in the barrel transforms & eliminates many of the new-spirit volatile organic acids. These time cheating technologies increase wood interaction but do not an aged product make.

[squire]

I guess a young guy doesnt get the hatred toward new possible science in bourbon.

Oh, I wouldn't put it that strongly jmj. Hatred is an emotion and I don't get emotional over this stuff.

Taking raw spirit and treating it with wood chips in apparatus such as pressure cookers, adding coloring, liquid smoke, that sort of thing, is nothing new. The rectifiers were doing precisely that more than 100 years ago. In fact it was this and other such adulterating practices that gave rise to the Bottled in Bond Act of 1897.

Make no mistake, what these guys are doing is not science. They're in it for the money and these new (actually quite old) procedures are just a marketing hook to disguise the fact they are pushing young, raw stuff at prices comparable to the real thing.