Living bottle

[kobold]

without realising it, i started a 'living bottle', a poor mans solera; i'm adding freshly made spirit, toasted and charred white oak dominoes, a handful of toasted hickory chips, and, sometimes, small amounts of good quality oloroso sherry and pure maple syrup. i am sampling it regularly - 5mls in a nosing glass and i keep a log of everything so i can track and identify the influences and make changes to get a taste i like.

i started with a 5l demijohn, soon moved to a 10l, now it's in a full 15l demijohn, i am moving it to a 23l carboy next and will keep it there permanently... since i am usually adding about 3l newmake at a time and only when there is enough space in the carboy the proportion of the aged spirit is ever increasing (each newmake will only be 15% of the total volume but the overall age will be cumulative). it seems like the aged spirit absorbs the shock of added newmake in a week or less.

for the first two months i used 1 domino/l, just to get oaking upto speed, but now i slowed down and wanna see how much can i strech it.
my abv fluctuates: 54-59%, but i reset it to 55% occasionally.
it's at room temp and air-exchange happens whenever i fiddle with it (always!). i don't shake or air it, just uncork it, draw a sample and i'm done. it's just dwwg, but the nose is getting really good, the rest is not far behind.
whatever i learn from this, i can apply in the future in one single step. my experiment is only two months old; still at the beginning, but lots of fun.

[NcHooch]

Dominos are made of white oak? ....
aren't you concerned that they were treated with something before they were painted? Sealer for instance?

[DavidWatkins]

Or he could just be using domino size slices of oak.

I run ex-wild turkey barrel staves across my jigsaw and end up with end grain slices about the size of a domino. End grain gets you some fast flavor transfer.

Also, as far as the original topic goes, this is an excellent idea. I'll have to start one for my rum. Now that you've planted the seed in my mind, I envision one day owning a keg of beautiful perfect rum that never seems to run out or change drastically from one run to the next.

[kobold]

Dominos are made of white oak? ....
aren't you concerned that they were treated with something before they were painted? Sealer for instance?

this is it: http://stilldragon.com.au/punkins_dominoes.php

[kobold]

Or he could just be using domino size slices of oak.

I run ex-wild turkey barrel staves across my jigsaw and end up with end grain slices about the size of a domino. End grain gets you some fast flavor transfer.

Also, as far as the original topic goes, this is an excellent idea. I'll have to start one for my rum. Now that you've planted the seed in my mind, I envision one day owning a keg of beautiful perfect rum that never seems to run out or change drastically from one run to the next.

that's the idea!
one thing to do is to periodically replace the spent wood with new pieces. probably once a year or something like that.