newbie question....

[SalvatoreCarbone]

sorry i searched around but could;t find the exact answer i was looking for.

Im not looking to be a distiller, or make my own whisky and what not, the main reason i started looking into this is because this old guy i was speaking to the other day was telling me about how when he was younger he worked at the distillery where they make el dorado rum in guayana (my favorite rum even though im a whiskey man myself), well to make a long story short, he was telling me about how he got his hands on a old barrel from the distillery and how he was adding rum to it little by little until it was about half way full and he forgot all about it and years later etc etc the rum was smooth as silk.

Anyway, i dont know how much truth there is to his story, but my question is this. Can i take a bottle, of my favorite whiskey (jameson), put it in a 5l oak barrel, let it sit for 2 years, and have it be a better and smoother whiskey? It sounds too simply and easy to be true, but would that work? I have heard terms here such as over oaking, or it turning black because left in too long, but then again what about the major brands that have there liquors aged 10,15, even 20 years? i know the barrels are alot larger and that plays a big role.

From my searches it seems that everybody agrees the best barrels are gibbs. I noticed on there website they have the 1 gallon sap cleared charred, and sap cleared toasted. IF its as simple as just buying a bunch of bottles of jameson and filling er up. Which would be best for that?

[Dnderhead]

ill say yes and no..yes it can be done thats the way spirits are aged.. BUT
a barrel that small your going to have problems with. first the loss to the "angels" will be grate and in a short while there will be nothing left. next a small barrel "flavors" fast so it could very well end up over oaked. rum is aged in oak depending on what is wanted.heavy rum/lite rum is distilled different, dark or light rum is aged different.

[Durace11]

I have a friend who brews beer but refuses to distill because of the legal issues involved so what he is testing is exactly what you described. He buys whisky on sale and adds oak cubes or chips or whatever and waits a month or two and tries it out to see what changes it's made. So far he's gotten some good results.

He's working on an "Evan Williams Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey" right now and has already done a "Canadian Club Classic 12" with med+ & heavy toast cubes. Of course, when he tasted my faux Scotch he deemed it the best hard liquor he's ever tasted but his reservations about doing anythnig illegal outweigh his desire for a good drink.

I'd say give it a shot and see what you get. I don't know if I'd go for a barrel but oak cubes are like $5 USD from a homebrew shop plus a bottle of whiskey you are going to drink anyway, how can you go wrong. Just go easy on the amount of cubes you add into the bottle and taste it often(weekly) to ensure you don't over oak it. Once you have the timeline of aging you like you can set up several bottles or maybe one a week/month and have a supply chain going to keep you in good drinks all year.

[Dnderhead]

""He buys whisky on sale and adds oak cubes or chips or whatever and waits a month or two and tries it out to see what changes ""
"your friend" is braking the law by doing this....legally you cannot rebottle/relabel,alter/flavor distilled alcohol in the US.

[SalvatoreCarbone]

well i think i know what u mean by loosing it to the "angels".

Im dominican, and we have a drink called "mamajuana". A drink which need to be "cured" first. Something i have done plenty of times. For those of you who arent familiar with it, basically you, and by you its usually a very old lady whos done it a million times and knows what she is doing, grabs a empty liquor bottle and starts with adding a bunch of chunks of not oak, but a wood called "palo de brazil", to that some leaves and other dry ingredients are added. After that you add molasses, honey and dark wine. Shake it up, and after about 3-4 days, all that wine and honey and stuff is gone and all sucked up by the palo de brazil chips. After that u repeat, and the same will happen. After 2-3 times doing so and having the wood soak up the wine/honey/molasses mix, u then add dark rum, after that it should also get soaked up until the bottle is dry. You then add more dark rum with honey until it no longer gets soaked up by the wood. When that happens u then discard of that liquid and add a fresh batch of WHITE rum. Leave it for about 1-2 months, and its good to go. The way it works is the longer you leave it the better it taste. I myself have 2 bottles of it (ill try and upload pictures) one of them is from 2006 and its still there. And another bottle i bought 2 years ago which i had a taste of the other day and it was great.

So if you mean i will loose liquor that way to the barrel, thats fine. What i was thinking i will fill it up with a more "low quality" whiskey that is in the same lines as jameson, something like bushmills, or cutty sark which i can get pretty cheap, and just keep adding them until the barrel is no longer soaking it up any more, then once that happens, fill it with jameson all the way (?). Would that work?

If i did all that, and i fill the barrel to the top with jameson, and let it sit lets say 3 years, what should i expect when i take it out and give it a taste?

[Dnderhead]

angels share" is loss do to evaporation.this is 2% or more per year and happens faster in small barrels than large.

[Durace11]

What i was thinking i will fill it up with a more "low quality" whiskey that is in the same lines as jameson, something like bushmills, or cutty sark which i can get pretty cheap, and just keep adding them until the barrel is no longer soaking it up any more, then once that happens, fill it with jameson all the way (?). Would that work?

what should i expect when i take it out and give it a taste?

If it's only 1 gallon I'd say use all the same whiskey, don't start with a lower brand and work your way up. Just fill it up and put it away & maybe roll it around once a week IMO. No matter how much you put in it it's always going to lose some due to evaporation so adding a little at a time until it doesn't lose anymore is going to be a neverending process. Plus, if you only keep it partially full you may get half the barrel wet and half dry which could cause problems with the sealing of the staves.

As far as what it's going to taste like, no one knows. Different oaks and different whiskey will produce different results. It's a cornicopia of possibilities.

""He buys whisky on sale and adds oak cubes or chips or whatever and waits a month or two and tries it out to see what changes ""
"your friend" is braking the law by doing this....legally you cannot rebottle/relabel,alter/flavor distilled alcohol in the US.

I know I've seen you post this before but I didn't have the heart to tell my friend it's illegal only because he's having so much fun experimenting with it and it keeps him interested in the hard liquor which he loves.