ultrasonic aging of "neatral"

[pounsfos]

my work just brought a 10L (roughly 2.5 gal) ultrasonic cleaner for cleaning corrosion of motherboards.
its 200w @40khz (cant find link at moment)

ive been reading up on the usage of ultrasonic cleaners in the usage of "artificial aging" of spirits, and improvements of base infusion alcohol (neautral)

as usual Odin has some great reading materiel (can never thank you enough for your contributions to this site Odin)

Any tips or anything anyone want me to try on their behalf.

I need to build some stock up, but happy to report on experiments etc..., might be a few months

[kiwi Bruce]

Re: what does airing out your run do

Postby Odin » Thu May 17, 2012 6:26 pm
I air out my drinks before tasting & making cuts.

When I made cuts, I find that airing with the stone you mentioned does help aging. I do that for like a few hours. It speeds up what I call "stabilization" of the drink. Somehow some rest gives a drink time to reach an equilibrium. Or so I explain to myself.

After cutting it takes at least two days before I want to take a sip or two to see if its okay. Then, I keep it bottled up with some head space for 5 weeks. The two days & the 5 weeks period both have an impact. The product gets better.

Airing with a fish tank stone speeds up the process a bit. So it is not necesairy. Unless you are in a hurry.

Recently, I have been doing some experiments with ultrasonic aging. And that does make a difference.

The normal "after two days" result, I can now get after an ultrasonic treatment of 5 minutes.

Further ultrasonic treatmens (like another 3 times 5 minutes) get me to what I normally have after the five weeks rest. This means I can get the same quality likker in a day (I give the drink some rest between ultrasonic treatments), that would otherwise take at least five weeks.

I tried to continue from there. Like giving my drinks 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 treatments, but nothing changed. I got the drink as well as I could get it after what would otherwise take five weeks of rest. I am talking rest here, not "five weeks of on wood" or sumtin'

Took another angle at it, since I have an ultrasonic cleaner that also allows me to warm up my likker.

Made it like 35 degrees C and gave the drink another few treatments.

What I got was astonishing. Better than I would get with airing or time or time & airing together. A new level.

I treated my vodka like this and it worked (old style vodka with some taste & mouth feel left), I did it to my Eau-de-Vie (like a vodka/whiskey in between) with good results. First tests on my geneva (just tonight) are very, very promissing. My whiskey though did not get that much better. But maybe that is because my whiskey was not that great to start from.

Slowly trailing of topic here.

Odin.

It's a hard post to find, But the info is gold. I have a small jewelers U.S. I use on single malts with excellent results.

[pounsfos]

Hi KiwiBruce

Thanks for finding that link for me, I'm on the hunt for more info.
I should have about 12 litres of good stuff by then end of my spirit run, will try this hopefully in the weekend.

[pounsfos]

reporting back with results

put 5.9 litres at 30% through the ultrasonic cleaner, temp was 40c ran for 5 mins, then 5 min cool downs x 3
kept 100mls out as control group

after 3 rounds of aging my "taste testing" crew (3xflatmates) sampled product in a blind test,

all 3 straight away picked the ultrasonically aged one, it was alot smoother, smell was about the same as control (almost no smell)

control was a good neautral but this ultrasonic aging took the cake, I have some coming through tomorrow hopefully (busy at work, so can only distill a couple of hours at a time)

I will see what adding different infusions will result in (a vanilla bean, some honey and maybe some berries, will see what I can find) and will report back on if it speeds up infusion times...

SO FAR A BIG SUCCESS

[Danespirit]

Thanks for sharing your results Pounsfos..i was playing with the thought of doing similar.
Now i see it really works for neutral too...
I really must buy some of those US emitters for my build..

[Bushman]

I have also put JD chips in my US cleaner to kickstart the process. If you are really into infused drinks I would highly recommend the book HOMEMADE Liqueurs and INFUSED SPIRITS by Andrew Schloss.

[pounsfos]

thanks for the book recommendation bushman

im trying to infuse some vanilla beans through the ultrasonic cleaner, see how it goes over your regular style of infusing..

will report back later with results.

[InglisHill]

What's with the quick ageing?

You boys don't got enough in the cabinet?

[aceswired]

Sometimes you just want an early taste of your latest recipe.

[Bushman]

Sometimes you just want an early taste of your latest recipe.

+1, also by using JD chips for quick flavor I have found that my aging time in the barrel is also shorter which gives me one extra use on each barrel.

[kiwi Bruce]

What's with the quick ageing?

A Heated debate going on about that here
Re: Nuclear Whiskey / Nuclear Rum and Spirits Rapid Ageing
Kiwi Bruce