Thanks! I'm sure it's tough to motivate yourself faced with that daunting task
Super helpful information you have compiled here, really appreciate it. I have been searching and experimenting to find a "single bullet" solution to oaking/aging, but I think that the big guys set a good example. I've found no matter what I do with a single jar, making a blend with other samples always produces a finer drop, that I can mix to my tastes more exactly. Especially because it seems that the smallest variables can have such a huge impact on flavor, as evidenced by your experiment here. At hobby sizes, consistency is tough! (At least for for me)
oakgriff wrote:I have been searching and experimenting to find a "single bullet" solution to oaking/aging, but I think that the big guys set a good example. I've found no matter what I do with a single jar, making a blend with other samples always produces a finer drop, that I can mix to my tastes more exactly. Especially because it seems that the smallest variables can have such a huge impact on flavor, as evidenced by your experiment here. At hobby sizes, consistency is tough!)
I think you might have just written my conclusion for me.
That is exactly what I'm discovering with this set of jars, that I can pick and choose different ones and make a much more layered blend.
I have one jar, I think it's the 400F Double Toast, that is a huge hit with people. It has a very pronounced brown spice note like nutmeg or cinnamon. Someone said it tasted exactly like Vietnamese cinnamon.
For me that one is too much spice, and one note. But it's a great jar to blend into others that do not have that character.
I have another one, the whiskey from the BadMo barrel, that has a huge butterscotch flavor, almost like drinking a Worther's candy. Another great blender.
The majority of the jars made very nice whiskey, but I'm surprised just how wildly different they are. I wasn't expecting this much variation.
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
I opened everything up just after the 1st of the year.
I've been wanting to get through various comparisons before posting an overall set of impressions, but I will say that this has been very enlightening.
There is a very wide range of flavors and colors. Entirely different tasting whiskeys from the same batch.
Some light springy whiskey, some woody, some like cinnamon, some like creme brulee. Really all over the map.
Some are too light for my taste and some are pushing the limits of toast and char into acrid, so I do believe my range of temps and chars has done a good job of defining the outer limits.
And I am happy to discover that while the Gibbs barrel has produced excellent whiskey, many of the jar aged versions are just as good, and in some cases preferred by some people.
I'll be back to update this soon, but right now it's a lot of drinking and note taking, brutal work!
Don't blame this on me! I haven't had home grown in a couple years!
Great write ups MCH, thanks! On the new barrel vs jar aged. Similar observations here. My 2 oldest bourbons are a new bbl aged one and a jar aged one on cleaned up JD wood re-charred (yes that one isint officially a bourbon due to aging technique), They are wildly different for sure, Windy prefers the jar aged one over the new bbl one. For sure the used wood one seems warmer. The new bbl one is more one dimensional with that new bbl in your face oak varnish character. It may be they trade places in a few more years, but this is where they stand at 4 years now.
No question on blending. The bottle I reach for on my bar the most is one I blended from both bourbons, a good does of triple smoke and another good dose of bourbon bbl stout bbl bourbon. I have a gallon of that blended for quick filling in the middle of a session
Brutal wrote:Don't blame this on me! I haven't had home grown in a couple years!
No blame, but I do wish you were around to help with all this taste testing! Good to see you pop up on the forum, don't be a stranger.
(I hear there is another meet up coming up this fall...)
Jimbo wrote:They are wildly different for sure, Windy prefers the jar aged one over the new bbl one. For sure the used wood one seems warmer. The new bbl one is more one dimensional...
Yep, that is what I'm finding too.
The barrel is very nice, don't get me wrong, but it is what it is, all 5 gallons of it.
By using the jars I can get different tasting versions of the same whiskey to blend, that way I can experiment with combining different flavors to create a single bottle greater than the sum of its parts.
I tried this experiment to try to find out two things: 1) is a barrel aged whiskey superior to our more typical jar aging, and 2) what toast/char combo do I like most.
As far as the barrel, I definitely believe we can do as good or "better" than a barrel with our jar aging. We can certainly manipulate the flavors in the final whiskey more by having more control over the oak prep before it goes into the jar. The barrel is really good, and it was super easy. And a lot of my jars did not turn out as good or as interesting as the barrel. But a few of my jars are actually preferred by myself and others who have tasted them.
As for finding the perfect combo of toasting/char at the end of the aging rainbow, that is a bit more complicated.
I have some pretty outstanding jars, some pretty good jars, and some that are over done, and some that need more work.
My personal preference seems to be middle of the road, 400F toasting with at least some char, maybe 2 sides of the stick.
But there is so much potential in the blending of the different whiskeys. Some are green, some are spicy, some are butterscotch or cinnamon, and some are like whiskey creme brulee.
I'm sure if I get around to it I will find a good direction for blending a very tasty bottle.
Trouble is there are so many variables. 400F in the oven I used might be different than another oven I might use. The oak itself will be different and will react differently to the toasting. The recipe will be different and will have an effect.
The quest will continue, but I do have some ideas for direction now. Something like doing a few jars 375F and no char, a few at 425F all chart and some at 400F 2 side char, then blending it all together at the end of a year. For instance.
Bottom line is, if you don't have a 5 gallon barrel, don't despair, you can definitely make as good or better with the relatively easy jar aging methods posted on this site.
But that, of course, opens up its own rabbit hole to exploration. And for me that is the continuing draw of this hobby, so many ideas, so many techniques to try, and the long feedback loop.
This could take many years to get right!
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
great writeup MCH!
i'm curious if there was an obvious distinction between the jar method and barrel method other than flavours. i'm thinking things like angel's share and smoothing, etc. i've read about the benefits of spirits "breathing" in a barrel occasionally but in practise did you find anything?
durty_dunderpants wrote:great writeup MCH!
i'm curious if there was an obvious distinction between the jar method and barrel method other than flavours. i'm thinking things like angel's share and smoothing, etc. i've read about the benefits of spirits "breathing" in a barrel occasionally but in practise did you find anything?
Well, sort of.
I mean to have the "breathing" be a part of the experiment.
I aired out the jars 5 or 6 times over the course of the year, pouring the whiskey from one jar into an empty then back again.
I had a couple jars that I labeled "no airing", but I didn't always notice the labels and they may or may not have gotten some air.
Not as much as the others, but I know I opened one of them at least once.
I haven't compared the no-airing jars directly to the similar airing jars yet, but perhaps that will be tonight's assignment.
As for angle's share, I lost about a gallon in the barrel, so about 20%.
I lost about half that rate, I'd say, with the BadMo barrel, about 10% overall.
Of course the jars were way more stingy and gave up none to the angles.
One of the interesting things I found was the difference with the BadMo barrel.
I wish I had thought of it at the time and used the same wood for the jars as the BadMo, but I didn't.
I used a big hunk of 1/4 sawn for the BadMo and some different plane sawn planks for the jars.
This has made the BadMo sort of an outlier with a strong butterscotch flavor when compared to the others.
The other thing different about the BadMo barrel head is that I couldn't toast it in the oven so I heated it slowly over about 20-30 minutes with a torch, slowly moving around from area to area.
Not sure what that did for toasting under the char, but I was trying to replicate what might happen when using a fire to heat barrel staves before bending into the barrel shape.
That is another thing I discovered, that they taste quite different when compared directly to each other at a single tasting, but they seem way more similar when just randomly tasting on on any given day.
When I set out 3 or 4 of them to compare, and I go back and forth tasting them, they really start to show their own character in contrast to one another.
For example, when I taste the strong butterscotch flavor it is when I am comparing it to some of the other jars. If I just pour myself a glass of the butterscotch by itself sometime, I don't notice the butterscotch flavor being nearly so pronounced.
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
Curious to how that "MEGA" jar is coming along? I got a gallon of sugarhead bourbon aging that I know isn't over oaked, but I over charred the sticks. Hoping it'll come back around and get better with more age, it's only about 3 months at this point.
Swedish Pride wrote:
get a brix reading on said ball bearings and then you can find out how much fermentables are in there
Antler24 wrote:Curious to how that "MEGA" jar is coming along?
Well I haven’t tasted it since I opened everything up but I remember it being harsh and acrid, burnt and ashy.
Not sure if those flavors evolve over time, maybe into “leather” or “tobacco”, wouldn’t that be nice.
But probably will just keep tasting like burnt wood. I’ll check it out and report back.
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
Antler24 wrote:Curious to how that "MEGA" jar is coming along?
Well I haven’t tasted it since I opened everything up but I remember it being harsh and acrid, burnt and ashy.
Not sure if those flavors evolve over time, maybe into “leather” or “tobacco”, wouldn’t that be nice.
But probably will just keep tasting like burnt wood. I’ll check it out and report back.
It's gone through the transformation time (attic in the summer).
Now, I need you to march on up there and start drinking!
"Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond."
ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:Now, I need you to march on up there and start drinking!
And so I did.
First off, the Mega jar is awful. Still. The Acrid is gone but still nothing but crap flavors.
Charred, burnt, untoasted oak tastes like garbage in whiskey. Confirmed.
Moving on.
There has been some discussion recently about the effects toast and char have on color of whiskey.
Here is a stack of jars, single toast on left, quad char on right, 375F on top, 400F middle, 425F bottom:
Here is another interesting photo, 400F very light char top left, mega char top right, standard 400F single toast bottom left, standard 400F quad char bottom right.
Without the toasting, all that mega char doesn't really bring that much color to the party:
Here is a photo of my jars all stacked up today, higher temps on top, toasted on left, char on right:
There is quite a variation of color and depth of color.
Here is a photo of my best arrangement of the jars from lightest to darkest, left to right:
While they were all out, I decided to do another round of comprehensive tasting.
It was exhausting and now I'm half lit.
I put all the jars into a big pile at one end of the table and drew one at a time, without looking, and tasted, wrote down notes, placed the jar in my table grid, and then looked at the name.
Not too scientific, but better than nothing.
Upper left is "headsy" "youngish" "woody", and lower right is "mature" "caramel/vanilla" "rich" "damn good brown whiskey":
Then I went to the outlier jars, the cherry, maple, light toast, mega char, and the original white.
The cherry and maple have WAY more color, hands down, (oak on top, maple in middle, cherry on bottom):
Here is a shot of the 400-2C oak vs. the 400-2c maple:
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
Here are my notes, not in the order I tasted them but rearranged according to treatments.
375-1T : Lightish, good, tastes a bit like commercial stuff, bit headsy especially on the nose.
375-2T: Very nice nose, no heads, mature flavors, buttery, smooth and warm
375-2C: Headsy, ok but not great, whiskey flavors but young and homemade
375-4C: Light heads, good whiskey flavors but thin.
400-1T: Youngish, headsy smell, early young whiskey flavors, headsy taste
400-2T: Spicy cinnamon nose, young light flavors, not very headsy, good but thin, off taste?
400-2C: Pretty good, a solid average whiskey, balanced, happy with this
400-4C: Light heads, smooth but unremarkable, a good drinker, not bad at all
425-1T: Small bit of heads, very nice, good, average +
425-2T: Very good, solid but a wee bit hoochy, exaggerated flavors
425-2C: Good, solid, happy brown whiskey
425-4C: Good, among best, nice whiskey
Mega: No good, dump it out.
Gibbs Barrel: Very smooth, heavier, different smell, no heads, good flavors
Badmo Barrel: Very good, different, solid brown whiskey, no off flavors
400 Light Toast: Headsy, young, don't like much
Maple 2C: Woody, barky like cinnamon or nutmeg, spicy
Maple 4C: Less nose, a bit funky, not as interesting as Maple 2C.
Cherry 2C: Very good, smooth, candy flavor? reminds me of some kind of candy at the beach
Cherry 4C: Richer, mild chocolate? Taffy?
Not sure what the candy flavor is with the cherry wood, it's not "cherry". More like a mild chocolate nougat? Maybe a Charleston Chew? The end of an ice cream cone?
White Whiskey: Sweet dough flavor, very smooth, very nice, surprisingly great flavors, no heads?? entirely different than all others.
Edit:
I posted all the photos and then the tasting descriptions without first comparing my pic of the flavors arranged from young/headsy to rich/tasty.
Going back and comparing the tasting notes to the way I spread out the jars I'm pretty happy that the two things match up so well.
One note: my favorite 5, the 375-2T, 425-2T, 425-4C, Gibbs, and Badmo are all very good. They are not in any real order in the photo, just all bunched up as my favorites.
I could go back sometime and maybe sort out the differences between those 5, but that will be for another day....
The other thing to be wary of is that this is all very subjective to me. The 400F-2T has been a big favorite among some other tasters, (ha, as you can see by the level of what's left in that jar), just not my fave.
Interesting to see the 375F-2T make it into the top 5 when the other 375F jars didn't fare nearly as well.
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
My God, friend. Good job, good write up! You have done your duties, thank you for the conclusion to this experiment. I was just curious if that mega ever pulled through, but you stepped up.
A year ago you had concluded that you liked the 2c sticks. Is that still the same conclusion? Or now all 4 char? Or 1 stick of all toast, 1 all char?
Anyways, this is a good resource. Thanks for the documentation and effort .
"Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond."
ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote: Is that still the same conclusion?
Ha, no conclusion here. May just be that my taste is in one place tonight and will be somewhere else tomorrow.
I do think I can set some aside now. Mega, gone. Maybe pull out 375-1T and 400-1T. You know, cull the herd a bit.
Then I can take another stab at what I like and dislike about the remaining jars.
I do think it's a bit of a moving target though. Compared to notes I made originally I can tell that the whisky is definitely changing in the jars.
That great spicy flavor in the 400-2T jar may be turning, the butterscotch of the badmo seems to have faded.
I distinctly remember from last tasting that I thought 400F was going to be my max temp but now I think the 425F is working out ok.
Some of the more harsh char jars, 425-2C and 425-4C, have mellowed out a bit and now fall into may favorites.
And this is only the beginning!
The jars I'm tasting are only HALF of what I made, the other half was left on the various wood sticks aging for a second year.
So next January I can open them up and compare the TWO years on wood jars to the One year on wood jars! Ha ha ha, it will never end!
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
Whoa, wait. You pulled the oak last year? Well shit none the mega wasn't going to change. Glad to hear the whiskey changed off the wood, though. Now I have to remember to remind you for the second year update!
What a worm hole!
"Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond."
I've been putting this off for a while just because I'm not sure how to best present my latest (and last) update to this thread.
There is a lot of info and I don't want to just ramble on.
I had a set of jars from 2018 that had been in glass, not sitting on oak, from my original tasting.
I also had the same set of jars, still sitting on oak the whole time, 4 years on the original oak.
As a first pass, I think it might make sense to add my new notes to my original tasting notes to allow for direct comparison.
I'll add the new tasting notes for the jarred whiskeys in BLUE, and the notes for the whiskeys still on oak in GREEN. Numbers in () are a random rating system I used to try to compare.
375-1T : Lightish, good, tastes a bit like commercial stuff, bit headsy especially on the nose. Funky smell, light caramel, thin, headsy (70) Medicinal, light, boring, light but caramel (80)
375-2T: Very nice nose, no heads, mature flavors, buttery, smooth and warm Funky smell, sharp light fruit, light caramel, smooth, buttery, light creme brulee (81) Good, cherry, solid (85)
375-2C: Headsy, ok but not great, whiskey flavors but young and homemade Green nose, good, sweet, caramel (84) Raw wood, thin, good, light, light caramel (80)
375-4C: Light heads, good whiskey flavors but thin. Light nose, good whiskey aroma, sweet, light, caramel pudding, one of the best (84) Light funky wood smell, off flavor (79)
400-1T: Youngish, headsy smell, early young whiskey flavors, headsy taste Funky musty smell, light heads, some heat, good but bland? (76) Light, funky, simple, good, light (81)
400-2T: Spicy cinnamon nose, young light flavors, not very headsy, good but thin, off taste? Strong amaretto, sweet marmalade, caramel, bit hot, light heads, good at first then woody (78) Gone
400-2C: Pretty good, a solid average whiskey, balanced, happy with this Good nose, solid whiskey smell, no off smell, smooth, honey, weird finish but good (82) Thin smell, solid, smooth (84)
400-4C: Light heads, smooth but unremarkable, a good drinker, not bad at all Good solid nose, smooth, sweet, maybe the best (86) Clean fresh smell, smooth, creamy caramel (86)
425-1T: Small bit of heads, very nice, good, average + Cherry nose, great aroma, woody but not oak?, good whiskey, not so much caramel/vanilla (80) Flat smell, strong caramel, solid (85)
425-2T: Very good, solid but a wee bit hoochy, exaggerated flavors Amaretto with caramel, woody taste, very good but strong oak (79) Funky smell, strong wood, boozy, astringent (73)
425-2C: Good, solid, happy brown whiskey Lighter, light fruity, smooth, solid, light wood, light tanic, not much oak flavors (82) Moderate smell, spicey, sweet, rich (86)
425-4C: Good, among best, nice whiskey Light nose, off wood? Good but lacking (79) Headsy, funky, little left, unique, strange, weird spice (78)
Mega: No good, dump it out. Off, medicinal smell, way out of spec, bitter, bad, no rating, stopped tasting. Thin smell, boozey, grainy, scotchy?
Gibbs Barrel: Very smooth, heavier, different smell, no heads, good flavors Good smell, light clean solid, thin but good (83)
Badmo Barrel: Very good, different, solid brown whiskey, no off flavors Good smell, light clean solid, thin but good (83)
400 Light Toast: Headsy, young, don't like much No nose, Good light whiskey, smooth, irishish(79) Weird, spicey, cloves? Cinnamon? gum? no score
Maple 2C: Woody, barky like cinnamon or nutmeg, spicy Thin nose, sharp wood, sweet but different, orange? fun flavors(81) Muddy smell, off wood, sweet but odd (79)
Maple 4C: Less nose, a bit funky, not as interesting as Maple 2C. Off smell, smokey BBQ, not lovin it, definite BBQ (70) Strong off wood, burnt ash, overdone, no score
Cherry 2C: Very good, smooth, candy flavor? reminds me of some kind of candy at the beach Old whiskey smell, in a good way, solid rich funk(82) Light weird smell, thin, candy, novelty (80)
Cherry 4C: Richer, mild chocolate? Taffy? Headsy, weird, off wood, no score Tanic, sweet, seems good but confusing, cherry?(78)
One note: my favorite 5, the 375-2T, 425-2T, 425-4C, Gibbs, and Badmo are all very good. New Favorites, in order: 425-2C, BadMo, 425-T, Gibbs, 400-2C, 375-2T
I'll go through my notes and post some final observations and impressions soon.
Shouting and shooting, I can't let them catch me...
I've been putting this off for a while just because I'm not sure how to best present my latest (and last) update to this thread.
There is a lot of info and I don't want to just ramble on.
.
.
.
I'll go through my notes and post some final observations and impressions soon.
Years into this thread and I'm still excited about it. Thanks MCH; always enjoy your tests.
I can't seem to find what percentage of alcohol you started this with?
I've made some adjustments myself on these things in the past year. I realized I was aging too high a percentage of alcohol on wood, starting 62-65%, and migrated to 58-60% for more sweetness and less 'woodiness' I guess. For a bourbon mash I'm aging on a mix of two side charred plus some 400 toasted. I think I'll get this figured out by the time I expire.
