Oak vs. Other Woods
Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2012 5:38 am
At the risk of ruffling a few feathers, I want to pitch something out there as food for thought.
I have been entertaining a theory that one of the primary reasons why they make barrels out of white oak instead of other hardwoods is not because white oak imparts liquors and wines with more magical flavors/colors than other hardwoods. It is actually because white oak imparts liquor and wine with less flavor or color over time than many other hardwoods.
Let's say that a distillery makes a liquor with an overabundance of undesirable head esters that need years to break down into something more palatable.
If they put their liquor into a barrel made from a darker, potentially more flavorful wood like apple wood or plum wood for three or four years, just imagine how dark and flavored it would be when it finally comes out of such a barrel.
That is why they use white oak, emphasis on the "white" part -- less color and I would venture less flavoring potential than other woods.
I am basing this theory on my own experiments using apricot wood. I was given a good deal of apricot wood by my neighbor, who ripped out an older orchard to make room for corn, and I am really liking how apricot wood flavors and colors my spirits.
And it doesn't take long, either. Oak might take a lot of folks weeks to get much flavor or color out of it, but I can get some really great flavor and color from apricot wood in a matter of days. I actually have to keep a close eye on things to keep from going overboard with it.
So I am thinking that there have to be many other alternative woods that will work just as well as white oak for coloring and flavoring spirits and that there are some woods that will actually work a lot better for some hobby distillers in certain situations.
Hobby distillers are not trying to meet production quotas and profit margins, and they can afford to play it safer with their cuts. So they really don't need to age their spirits for four years to get them to a drinkable state.
Me, I can't even imagine putting my liquor in a barrel and hoping I will still be around in three or four years to enjoy it.
Let's face it, barrel aging has its roots in an era when distillers didn't have access to biochemists who could tell them what kinds of chemicals a particular yeast is producing and why or access to gas chromatographs to tell them what they need to pitch and what they need to keep.
They got what they got, they dumped it in a barrel, and they came back a few years later to find that their liquor had magically been transformed into something much more desirable than it was when it first went into the barrel. And they passed that tradition down from generation to generation.
Of course, we hobby and craft distillers, living in the age we do, have the internet and more information than we could ever hope to absorb in a lifetime: recipes shared by wonderful folks who don't feel the need to carefully guard their trade secrets, yeast producers' websites and all of their considerable knowledge, forums to ask questions, you name it.
So I would contend that we have all the tools that we need to make a better liquor than our forefathers could have ever imagined with the tools and information they had access to a century or more ago. And we are not chained to a barrel for long-term aging purposes.
Moreover, we hobby and craft distillers should be looking at wood, not for long-term storage purposes, but as "flavor sticks" and "color cubes", if you will.
We should be exploring the benefits of a variety of alternative woods -- apple wood, plum wood, cherry wood, pecan wood, etc. -- and a myriad of combinations of those alternatives, with an eye toward imparting our liquors with the most desirable flavors and colors that we can come up with.
Yes, maybe it does make sense to age whiskey on oak. But how much sense does it make to age peach brandy on oak? Think about it. Wouldn't it make much more sense to age peach brandy on peach wood? Apple brandy on apple wood? Rum on, say, a combination of cherry wood, apple wood, and plum wood?
It seems to me that there is a whole realm of flavoring and coloring possibilities that have probably never been properly explored. And we hobby and craft distillers are the ones who should be leading the charge. Heck, we're the only ones with the freedom to actually do it.
I mean, it's not like the Jack Daniels folks can come out and say, "Hey everybody, we were wrong about the mystical properties of our charred oak barrels. We found out that Japanese Plum wood works a lot better."
It would be like "New Coke" all over again ... for those of you who were around to witness that fiasco.
As a general guideline for which woods might be acceptable, I would encourage folks to peruse any of the various "wood toxicity charts" available on the internet.
These charts were not created with the concept of "extracted essences and colors of particular woods through direct contact with ethanol" in mind, but they are certainly helpful as a starting point.
The only woods that I am sure one would need to avoid are the ones that say something to the effect of "direct toxin". Oddly, they say that sassafras is one of only a handful of woods that are "direct toxins", and for how many centuries was root beer and tea made from sassafras root? Go figure, huh?
But, of course, many of the other woods on the lists might impart flavors or colors that would make a liquor terribly undesirable or unpleasant to drink. For me, pine comes to mind, but perhaps somebody else might actually like using a little pine for something like gin. Who knows?
I, personally, like the idea of using woods from trees that produce things that we eat on a regular basis and that tend to have an agreeable and complementary aroma when freshly worked. But that's just me.
So what do you all think about all of this?
Am I full of crap?
Or have some of you had good experiences infusing your liquors with flavors and colors from other woods?
If so, what were they?
I have been entertaining a theory that one of the primary reasons why they make barrels out of white oak instead of other hardwoods is not because white oak imparts liquors and wines with more magical flavors/colors than other hardwoods. It is actually because white oak imparts liquor and wine with less flavor or color over time than many other hardwoods.
Let's say that a distillery makes a liquor with an overabundance of undesirable head esters that need years to break down into something more palatable.
If they put their liquor into a barrel made from a darker, potentially more flavorful wood like apple wood or plum wood for three or four years, just imagine how dark and flavored it would be when it finally comes out of such a barrel.
That is why they use white oak, emphasis on the "white" part -- less color and I would venture less flavoring potential than other woods.
I am basing this theory on my own experiments using apricot wood. I was given a good deal of apricot wood by my neighbor, who ripped out an older orchard to make room for corn, and I am really liking how apricot wood flavors and colors my spirits.
And it doesn't take long, either. Oak might take a lot of folks weeks to get much flavor or color out of it, but I can get some really great flavor and color from apricot wood in a matter of days. I actually have to keep a close eye on things to keep from going overboard with it.
So I am thinking that there have to be many other alternative woods that will work just as well as white oak for coloring and flavoring spirits and that there are some woods that will actually work a lot better for some hobby distillers in certain situations.
Hobby distillers are not trying to meet production quotas and profit margins, and they can afford to play it safer with their cuts. So they really don't need to age their spirits for four years to get them to a drinkable state.
Me, I can't even imagine putting my liquor in a barrel and hoping I will still be around in three or four years to enjoy it.
Let's face it, barrel aging has its roots in an era when distillers didn't have access to biochemists who could tell them what kinds of chemicals a particular yeast is producing and why or access to gas chromatographs to tell them what they need to pitch and what they need to keep.
They got what they got, they dumped it in a barrel, and they came back a few years later to find that their liquor had magically been transformed into something much more desirable than it was when it first went into the barrel. And they passed that tradition down from generation to generation.
Of course, we hobby and craft distillers, living in the age we do, have the internet and more information than we could ever hope to absorb in a lifetime: recipes shared by wonderful folks who don't feel the need to carefully guard their trade secrets, yeast producers' websites and all of their considerable knowledge, forums to ask questions, you name it.
So I would contend that we have all the tools that we need to make a better liquor than our forefathers could have ever imagined with the tools and information they had access to a century or more ago. And we are not chained to a barrel for long-term aging purposes.
Moreover, we hobby and craft distillers should be looking at wood, not for long-term storage purposes, but as "flavor sticks" and "color cubes", if you will.
We should be exploring the benefits of a variety of alternative woods -- apple wood, plum wood, cherry wood, pecan wood, etc. -- and a myriad of combinations of those alternatives, with an eye toward imparting our liquors with the most desirable flavors and colors that we can come up with.
Yes, maybe it does make sense to age whiskey on oak. But how much sense does it make to age peach brandy on oak? Think about it. Wouldn't it make much more sense to age peach brandy on peach wood? Apple brandy on apple wood? Rum on, say, a combination of cherry wood, apple wood, and plum wood?
It seems to me that there is a whole realm of flavoring and coloring possibilities that have probably never been properly explored. And we hobby and craft distillers are the ones who should be leading the charge. Heck, we're the only ones with the freedom to actually do it.
I mean, it's not like the Jack Daniels folks can come out and say, "Hey everybody, we were wrong about the mystical properties of our charred oak barrels. We found out that Japanese Plum wood works a lot better."
It would be like "New Coke" all over again ... for those of you who were around to witness that fiasco.
As a general guideline for which woods might be acceptable, I would encourage folks to peruse any of the various "wood toxicity charts" available on the internet.
These charts were not created with the concept of "extracted essences and colors of particular woods through direct contact with ethanol" in mind, but they are certainly helpful as a starting point.
The only woods that I am sure one would need to avoid are the ones that say something to the effect of "direct toxin". Oddly, they say that sassafras is one of only a handful of woods that are "direct toxins", and for how many centuries was root beer and tea made from sassafras root? Go figure, huh?
But, of course, many of the other woods on the lists might impart flavors or colors that would make a liquor terribly undesirable or unpleasant to drink. For me, pine comes to mind, but perhaps somebody else might actually like using a little pine for something like gin. Who knows?
I, personally, like the idea of using woods from trees that produce things that we eat on a regular basis and that tend to have an agreeable and complementary aroma when freshly worked. But that's just me.
So what do you all think about all of this?
Am I full of crap?
Or have some of you had good experiences infusing your liquors with flavors and colors from other woods?
If so, what were they?
How about the wood from an avocado tree?
) that little to no research has been done on what other woods release when exposed to 50-65% ethanol 
