How to age White Dawg?

[goose eye]

Remember bout 7 years ago had a go round with
folks that said likker wont age in glass.
Think they quoted out of a book.
Is good to see what the ole boys learned a long time ago
wont a lie. Alot of thangs they learned are facts but had
no idea of the reasons it was.
First bit of likker out of the kettle the ole boys tossed it
was called cleanin out the outfit. Had no idea it was the
wash an not the outfit.

Them Mason jugs are sealed by heat so they lettin air in an out.
ole boys juged up a barrel of wine an came back to it an
it had turned. Good thang bout it, vinegar is good to.

So I'm tole

[MDH]

A lot of people still believe that Goose... Remember these lads recently who were selling "24 hour whisky aging sticks" and had a kickstarter page? One of the claims on their page was that all the flavor in Whisky came from oak, and that plain spirit by itself never changed with age, hence why you had to buy their sticks to "quick age" your booze.

I cringe every time I see this false fact re-printed online, because the first thing I think of is this, from one of the most awarded modern distillers and creator of Monkey 47...


Or, this, from a producer in Alsace...

who lets their totally white spirits age for years, and boy does it make a massive, massive difference if you have ever smelled one beside the other.

[Dan P.]

I made some AG a while back. I had kept the feints seperately in the containers in which they had been collected. It was remarkable how much more spirit was useable than I had thought at the time the final cut was made, especially in what I thought were the tails. This was after them being left in the shed for a few months.
In future, I will be doing the same; ageing the feints along side the initial final cut, in the same containers as they had been collected in (i use 50cl beer bottles. No shortage of those (burp!)), and do a re-analysis and re-cut after some months have passed.

[sltm1]

Not having a humongous stash of whiskey (yet), besides the on-oak UJ I'm aging 4-6 months, my drinkin stash of white dog seems to show a remarkable change in just 2 months stored in glass containers. Never thought about airing out though, I'll try that next. Thanx for the info, it ought to be a sticky in the aging thread.

[thumper123]

I bought a bottle of Inverness Scotch years ago that was on sale at my local Booze store. Any of you remember it? Smooth as a kiss was their claim. I think Seagrams owned the company. Anyway, it was on sale due to the fact that it was no longer made and the retailer was trying to clean out his old stock. It still had the old paper tax stamp across the cork. I tried a little, and decided that they SHOULD be out of business. Many years later, I tried it again, and surprise, surprise - it was really fine. That particular liqour definitely improved in the bottle.

[Jimbo]

For those who dont think aging takes place white in a jar I invite them to keep their feints in the seperate jars and pull them out and taste them in a year. Dan and I had the same experience, as Im sure many here have. Feints will surprise you, and you'll wonder if youre cutting too tight. I did, and have since opened my cut. Wet dog tails turns nice and grainy. Heads mellow but dont change as much so you still gotta be careful with the heads, for all the obvious reasons, and stick to late heads. I go one jar deeper in tails now (the first jar that smells funky) and a touch more up into late heads for my whiskeys. I believe it adds a nice character and complexity and the result is still silky smooth after a bunch if months in barrel. Everyones taste is different tho, so experiment carefully. If you keep careful track of your jar stash you can always add some more from the cut into the keep later, like Dan explained.

[Dan P.]

It is also true that some (and obviously this is up to the end user to judge very carefully themselves) some of the louche that happens with AG below a certain abv% will drop out of suspension (or solution? Bit of both? Chemists feel free to chime in.) after being left stock still for a long time. When I first started out, anything that louched over or at drinking proof (45% or so) went into the feints. This seemed to coincide pretty closely with the cut abv that commercial scotch distillers were making, so I went with it. My opinions are always changing, though. Scotch distillers seem to cut out to tails at 60% or above, most a bit higher, 65% or so, from ca. 25% still charge. I think the home distiller might be able to go a little lower than that, maybe as far down as 50%. But of course, all stills are different, so the ultimate arbiter will be, as always, your own taste, in both senses of the word.

[netman86]

Question for someone with a bit more stillin' under their belt...

Has anyone re-run an aged spirit?

Seems to me that if the miracle of age is just breaking down things that ought not be there, re-running it wouldn't create more of them.

My last run of whiskey was stripped hard and fast, I took two bottles out of the hearts and put the rest (a few gallons, to be honest) in a keg and forgot about it. It's been sitting for a few months now- I've been meaning to re-run it and get actual cuts out of it, but just have not had the time. It was the biggest batch of anything I've ever made so far, so it took a lot out of me just to get it all run.

Curious if aging low wines is a thing- if so I could see myself stockpiling some low wines in the summer when I can ferment but don't have the time for cuts (But I can do quick and dirty strips), and then making cuts in the winter when I've got time for cuts but nowhere to ferment.

[Jimbo]

Yes Ive rerun aged stuff that I wasnt totally happy with. The esters that are created in aging (congeners attaching to the chain ends of ethanol molecules) dont seem to mind having their asses boiled again. At least in my experience, but Im no chemist. Oak flavors come through in the new run too.

[Dan P.]

There is a thing called "hydro-seperation" that sometimes does the rounds in the home distilling community. It is something to do with ageing low wines and/or feints at a certain %abv. I don't knw much about it, as I don't really have the patience for it, but a google search might turn something up.

I do not know first hand, but I have heard that oaked spirits cannot be re-run without a bad woody (not good oaky) taste coming over, like boiled wood (whatever that tastes like, you get the idea). The person who told me that was trustworthy enough for me never to have tried to repeat his mistake. I don't know if this conflicts with Jimbo's experience.
Aged white spirits, however, please feel free to re-run them over and over until your head drops off, though I believe (from experience) that it will undo the ageing process each time, perhaps to a variable degree.

[Jimbo]

I don't know if this conflicts with Jimbo's experience.

Seems. My experience was a subtle oak flavor, I was pleasantly surprised. Same flavor but to a lesser extent. Like an oaked white. If that makes any sense. I dont recall anythign objectionable about the flavor. But Ive not done it more than a couple three times, and I dumped it right back in the barrel again so didnt spend much time really studying it.

[Dan P.]

I don't know if this conflicts with Jimbo's experience.

Seems. My experience was a subtle oak flavor, I was pleasantly surprised. Same flavor but to a lesser extent. Like an oaked white. If that makes any sense. I dont recall anythign objectionable about the flavor. But Ive not done it more than a couple three times, and I dumped it right back in the barrel again so didnt spend much time really studying it.

As ever I imagine the amount of time oaking, volume of oak, char, and personal taste all have their part to play in whether this turns out ok or not.

[borntofli]

A couple charred oak sticks in the thumper?????????

[S-Cackalacky]

I don't know if this conflicts with Jimbo's experience.

Seems. My experience was a subtle oak flavor, I was pleasantly surprised. Same flavor but to a lesser extent. Like an oaked white. If that makes any sense. I dont recall anythign objectionable about the flavor. But Ive not done it more than a couple three times, and I dumped it right back in the barrel again so didnt spend much time really studying it.

As ever I imagine the amount of time oaking, volume of oak, char, and personal taste all have their part to play in whether this turns out ok or not.

I was sort of forced into rerunning some over oaked over charred product once. I charred JD chips and didn't rinse them. I nuked a couple of quarts of SF and what I got as a result was some really nasty tasting smoke flavor. I reran it with some added low wines and was pleasantly surprised with what I got as a result. It still had some of the same smokey flavor, but not near as intense. I aged it in glass for a couple of months and it was nice, but weird - oaked white dog. Hadn't really thought about doing it again. Just chalked it up as a happy accident.

[netman86]

This thread was too good to let it die.

Last time I made whiskey, I took a good solid hearts cut for myself and my brother and threw the rest of the run (minus tails and heads) in a stainless steel vessel, sealed it up, and put it way for another days run.

That was about 8 months back. Finally got back to that part of the shop and remembered what that was- poured some out and had a sip. Certainly better than when it went in- but still has a bit of tails to it. Should have made better cuts!

Anyway I'm wondering if anyone has more to add to the whole aging white idea, other than "it sorta works!"

I'm going to be able to make another whiskey run again in the next month or two, and I'm hoping to be able to actually make cuts and set aside some hearts to age white for a year, while still having a bottle to take up and share with the family this summer.

Best I can figure, the age process is a factor if decomposition. Heat, oxygen, and movement would all be key factors, here.
Now I'm reading about people putting vibrators/ultrasound machines on their spirits.

Is anyone set up to age some whiskey under an o2 rich environment, or am I going to have to be the one to bite the bullet? My stillin' isn't that consistent yet so it's hard to do a controlled experiment.

[Jimbo]

Is anyone set up to age some whiskey under an o2 rich environment, or am I going to have to be the one to bite the bullet? My stillin' isn't that consistent yet so it's hard to do a controlled experiment.

Some folks have let aquarium pumps run into their hooch. Not sure the results. Be aware oxygen will accelerate teh esterification of ethanol and acetone into ethyl acetate. Whether thats a good or bad thing I dont know and wont comment. I did read that someone has a patent on adding ethyl acetate to whiskey to make it taste like aged whiskey. Damned if Ill ever do that, but playing with methods to prod mother nature along, naturally, is fun if nothing else. My dildo exercise was a bust. Evaporation through a barrel seems best so far. Perhaps accelerated evaporation and heat with barrels stored in hot attics or such, to combine losses and accelerated esterification.

[Dan P.]

If you google "angel blaster" "zymurgy bob" you might find some information about bubbling new-make with oxygen.
Having said that, aging white, it changes for years. There is a lot of chemistry going on. For most of us, maybe we can be satisfied with 6 months of chemistry, or maybe as little as 2 weeks. But it's there. I have little samples of white spirit from 2-3 years ago which I pull out and think "what the hell was that?" It's so different.

[netman86]

Catching up on my reading, I ran across this thread:
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 44&t=55301

seems by the end of it, people were saying just storing sealed jars of newmake at 150F for a few days was making a huge difference in "age" by taste.

however, I just read this in a whitepaper somewhere:
"above 25C, o2 is 5-7.5 times as soluble in ethanol as in water"

In researching this, I found a paper that I don't have the sobriety to follow.
http://www.nist.gov/data/PDFfiles/jpcrd219.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow
(page 8/170 looks the most useful to me)

I'm convinced that much of the aging process (at least for whitedog) is just decomposition of complex chemicals- and the best way to speed up decomposition is by adding heat and oxygen.
There are plenty of people here who tell tales of over-oxidation of ethanol, though- so I need more input.