"Improving" commercial whisky with oak sticks

[Lord Berners]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone has any advice regarding the "improvement" of commercial whiskies with charred/toasted oak sticks, similar to oaking homemade distillate.

I'm mostly interested in what people think about in how long one should leave the toasted sticks in the whisky?

At the moment I've had a stick of French oak (toasted at 200 degrees centigrade for 2 hours, and then 225 degrees for 1/2 and hour) submerged in a bottle of The Glenlivet 12 Year Old. It's been there for just over 24 hours and already I have detected a drastic change. Very vanilla-like, and a delightful burnt sugar-like quality on the palette.

Interestingly, at about the six hour point, the spirit took on a terrible burnt wood taste that was very unpleasant. Thankfully, after about 12 hours, that has almost totally disappeared/mellowed.

Any thoughts/advice on this procedure? (As opposed to oaking new made spirit)

Cheers!

[pfshine]

You could give it a hot water bath to boil off some of the higher alcohols.

[bonehead]

there is a whisky reviewer that has videos about that with various brands and the theory about it. there it a link on this site somewhere but i can't remember his name at this time. he ties a string on the stick so he can remove it and sits in what looks like a cold cellar. maybe someone else can remember his name.

[Lord Berners]

Are you referring to Ralfy?

http://www.ralfy.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Yes, I've seen his videos about this and he suggests keeping the sticks in for only about 20 mins or so. This seems far to short a time to me, especially as I've noticed great improvements over a period (so far) of about 24 hours.

[DAD300]

I would think most commercial whiskeys are already oaked enough to over-oaked. The short time on fresh wood is probably just adding the easy sugars off the stick.

The hot bath would be in the vane of the nuclear method. I see that as an improvement.

[pfshine]

Yeah i like the hot bath more than the microwave due to size restrictions and to tell the truth it still kinda freaks me out.

[Lord Berners]

By commercial whiskies, I'm not talking about tampering with high-end stuff. More like super charging low end, young, malts and blends.

I've read a bit into nuclear ageing but I'm a bit in the dark about the specifics of the hot bath method. Any tips?

Cheers

[DAD300]

Lord...most of us think we make better than top shelf, so I don't know if there are many here experimenting with bottom shelf.

If I had some cheap liquor, I'd add it to a run and bleed the alcohol from it just to save the alcohol.

[Lord Berners]

That's fair enough.

This is all just a quick an easy experiment, that's all. Just curious about adding a bit of complexity to, say, some Glenlivet 12 or Johnny Walker black. I'm not trying to be an alchemist and turn a bottle of Bell's into Springbank. Ha ha!

Cheers

[Prairiepiss]

My take on it. If the commercial guys can't get it right aging it 12 years. How is adding some more to it for a very short time. Gona do anything productive? other then over oak it? So that the heads and tails they left in are less noticeable.

[srs787]

Right on PP. You are justing wasting good aging oak doing that.

[heartcut]

I "lost" a half full bottle of Black Velvet, which is bottom of the barrel, in a bunch of boxes in the attic (Gulf Coast Texas, hot) for about 10 years. It was really good after the attic duty. Bought a half pint of BV for comparison and there was none, didn't taste like the same stuff.

[shadylane]

"Improving" commercial whisky with oak sticks"
All the store bought whisky, has already been tinkered with too much.

[Jimbo]

My take on this is why not try to make something you have that youre not delighted with into something that more suits your taste. I was lucky enough to sample some 10+ year old bourbons a couple weeks ago. WOW, were they oaky, oxidized, but delicious. If you happen to like oaky, then you could increase the oak of anything by dropping some sticks in.

Our own Corene1 here told me about soaking some sticks in Sherry and using them to give a 'double barrel' aged treatment to some home hooch. Brilliant. Im doing that now. Just as we tweak our own to find somethign we like, why not play with somethign else, assuming you dont have time or stocks of your own to keep you entertained and delighted.