How to age your own whiskey

hey everybody welcome back uh in today's video we're going to talk about the five ways you can age your whiskeys so let's get into it so before we jump in with these techniques I want to talk a little bit about uh terms so there are actually three different terms when we're talking about aging spirits and it can get a little confusing because um some folks within home distilling want you to be very specific about it and some people don't mind if you're just very general about it and so I'm going to talk about these just a little bit just so that you're aware of the differences in the terminology so when someone says um they're aging uh their Spirit or let's just use whiskey as example I have an aged whiskey now if you want to get specific what that means is it has sat in a barrel for an extended period of time and the whiskey is a different product now than it was when it went in it's smoother because of the time it has another color it has uh new flavors imbued in within the whiskey and so that's aging and that can also be uh termed Barrel aging so another term is oaking a lot of people will use the term oaking when they're referring to using sticks Oak sticks or spirals or chips or staves and they're not putting it in a barrel and so the reason is because you are adding flavor and you are adding color but you are not adding time so the ability to smooth out that whiskey is is diminished because of the time um also another term is rapid aging and to be real honest with you I'm not exactly sure what people mean by that because there are a lot of other techniques that involve funky stuff and uh nuclear reactors and I don't know what I'm I'm making that up but like other techniques microwaving it and uh using ultrasonic sound waves and freezing temperatures and a lot of different things that I don't know anything about any of that stuff had never tried any of it uh but I think that's what uh they're talking about when they say rapid aging I for the purposes of this video I'm just going to say Aging for the rest of this video I fall under the discussion that you can say aged whiskey to me and I am okay with it if you say that you use sticks or chips or spirals uh or a barrel it's it's okay with me I know what you mean and it's I keep things simple as you guys know so all that being said let's get into these five techniques first off the premium technique is the Oak Barrel so uh nothing quite matches up as far as smoothness and flavor when you're talking about aging a whiskey um so there are differences when it comes to the size of the barrel the time frames that you leave it in the smaller the barrel gets the quicker it ages and that has to do with surface area in relation to the volume of liquid um there are things to consider when you're talking about the barrel aging process you have to prep the barrel there's a certain uh process for getting a barrel ready when you store the barrel you can't store it empty you need to store it with water in it and different ways to condition the barrel things like that and I'm going to do a whole separate video about Oak Barrel maintenance there's a lot of places to buy Oak barrels online especially in the U.S I'm not familiar with the rest of the world but a lot of choices out there in fact I've got a couple of reviews that I'm going to be doing this being one of them and another from another company and then we also have decided to start offering barrels on our website still in the clear so if you want to check that out go check that out um now my next choice if I'm not going to Barrel age what I would like to do is use Oak sticks and the advantage to having Oak sticks is that's it it's as close as you get to a barrel without being in a barrel um they're they're thick and bulky and um it's seasoned Oak you can toast it and Char it in whatever way that you want um and that's my second choice we we offer these on still in the clear.com also and I'll put links down in the show notes for all that I'm also going to be doing a video coming up um with uh how to toast your Oak if you want it toasted and how to char it if you want it charred and there is a difference and there's specific heat ranges and time frames to get certain flavor profiles and I'm going to do a video on that also uh my my third choice would be Oak steak basically an oak Stave is just a part of a barrel so the barrels are made um with these vertical pieces of oak and those are the staves and so you can get a Stave that once was um you know an oak barrel that held a bourbon and so you're that Oak is going to be infused with the flavor of that bourbon that was aged in that Barrel so that's an advantage if you're looking for something like that to pass on some flavor into your spirit uh a lot of guys will take an old wine barrel and then they'll age their whiskey in a wine barrel to get that those other kind of complexities of flavors when they're experimenting with what they want to make so uh that would be my third choice is the Oaks Dave my fourth choice would be the oak chip and uh I've got a bag of Jack Daniels whiskey barrel smoking chips right here and you can get these uh you know like on Amazon um and different places typically wherevers they're selling uh barbecue supplies so because that's what Mo that's what most people use them for is smoking meat things like that and these chips uh work much faster uh than the barrel sticks or staves because of this again it's the surface area you will color and you will flavor your spirit very quick with chips you can also toast and Char the chips again I'll refer to that video that's going to be released real shortly on how to toast and char oak but you can do that to chips also and it speeds up the process quite a bit and then lastly and just because it's last doesn't mean it's in any good it's just my last Choice among all these other choices is the oak spiral and the oak spiral is another very quick process to color and age your whiskey or your spirit because of surface area again the spiral has all these all this extra surface air area you can also get these infused with flavors like caramel and I can't remember what all I've what all I've seen these flavored with but they you can get them infused with different flavors and very so here you're talking about uh a time frame of days to weeks okay same with this days to weeks something like this or the staves you're talking about weeks to months and then uh when you're talking about barrels months to years so as you can see the um even though the barrels are preferred it may not be what you can do maybe you don't have months and years maybe you uh maybe you want to get something done a little bit quicker and there's nothing wrong with that I highly suggest that you uh try all of these out and and see what you can create with all of them especially toasting and charring try some of that on your own if not like I said at least the sticks we sell we sell them seasoned like this and then you can get the same amount in a number of three Char and then we're soon going to be selling uh light medium and heavy toasted Oak sticks also so if you want to pick them up from us of course we appreciate the business but that's your rundown don't forget how to toast and how to char your Oak is coming up in fact if it's already out by the time you're watching this video I'm going to put it here or here one or the other so that's it we will see you on the next one

Channel: Still'n The Clear

Views: 13,163

Keywords: Home distilling, moonshine, fermentation, fermenting, home made moonshine, how to make moonshine, distilling equipment, aging whiskey at home, aging whiskey with wood chips, aging whiskey in small barrels, aging whiskey with oak chips, aging whiskey in mini barrels

Id: Hn8Ve-AtCrg

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2022