Home Distiller

I've often wondered how long sone of the people here have been distilling and their will power to keep their hands off their well crafted spirits.

So what's your oldest bottle/keg/barrel of spirits?

Rough date, grain bill and How long it sat on wood for.

Let's see how good people are at keeping their hands off.

1980. The last run I made with my grandpa. Pure corn likker. Still have two gallons.
Will open one at 40 years. The other at 60 if I make it that long.

woodshed wrote:1980. The last run I made with my grandpa. Pure corn likker. Still have two gallons.
Will open one at 40 years. The other at 60 if I make it that long.

Nice! Wish I had some around from my grandfathers runs.

Would have never kept it but he passed four days later.

Rough date: Monday before last.
Grain bill: two boxes all bran.
Time on wood: it sat on the kitchen table for nearly a day.





Sorry.
Couldn't resist!

woodshed wrote:Would have never kept it but he passed four days later.

Sorry to hear that, I would most defiantly have some to sip on now and then for life.

woodshed wrote:1980. The last run I made with my grandpa. Pure corn likker. Still have two gallons.
Will open one at 40 years. The other at 60 if I make it that long.

Wow. Them bottles are older then me. I'm guessing that will be a mighty fine drop. Good that you have been able to keep it so long in memory of your grandad. That makes them bottles even more special then just 34 year old whiskey.

I make at least 50 gallons of wash per month. By the end of the month, I am bone dry.

1 month max round here...

9 years, turbo and sugar with a 18% Abv wash.

It will easily be another 9 years before I open the top of that particular train wreck again.

Found a bottle of fifteen year old plum schnapps a few months ago when cleaning out my feints collection. Had a sample and left it there. Very nice.

I still have some of every run I've made. Including the first. Which I guess is a little over 3 years old now? That don't seam right though? But I guess it is.

I really don't drink much. So keeping it around. Isn't that hard.

Two weeks 1 gallon of ujssm at 55% abv sitting on some oak. Plan on leaving for at least three months. Took me a bit to get enough saved up from what I give away and drink. Gonna order a couple 1 gallon barrels now when I get a good AG done. Then gonna fill them up for when each of my kids turn legal drinking age, so ten years for one, 11 for the other. Should be nice to have a drop with them then!

moosemilk wrote:Gonna order a couple 1 gallon barrels now when I get a good AG done. Then gonna fill them up for when each of my kids turn legal drinking age.

I plan on doing the same thing. My daughter is only 8 months old at the moment. But 17 years is still a long time.

I managed to keep some stuff around for 6 months once. My best just don't sit long. Maybe I'll have enough to stash some away now that I've fixed my fermentation issues. Maybe I'll sprout wings and fly too.

5 gallons of rum on multiple chips. Aged dunder in spirit run and in the cask. 7 months now.very nice. Tried some of the whiskey of the same age.. needs more age!

A gallon of UJSSM with a stick of cinnamon. Wood and cinnamon removed after 1-1/2 months. Bottled 4/17/14.

tp

I still have some UJ charred from 2011.

BG

I have older spirits elsewhere. At my house, I have grappa from 2009. Just white, not aged. It was made from Himrods and frankly tastes like apples and cardboard... Never make grappa from bland grapes

My 2011 grappa is very nice. It won't get used for a long time as I've had good crops since then and have plenty of 2013 & 14 so there's not much temptation to get into it.

I just finished the last of my first UJSM, 8/2013.

Left it on JD smokin chips for what I thought was too long. Proofed it down to 90 proof. 2 months later it was just right.

Got a hip flask left of white dog brandy made with my uncle and his side kick 1987, guess I'll never drink what I got left

This was from the last batch I made on my old pressure cooker potstill. We opened it this past thanksgiving (2013) for it's 6th birthday. It was absolutely terrible. I can't believe I actually though it was good back then. That was the last batch I made before I discovered the distilling forums. I think about it every time I make a donation.
This was the night of the run: Oh yeah... aluminum pressure cooker... plastic tip where the distillate comes out... it was bad. I owe these forums a lot.

I have 1/3 fifth left of a pear brandy I made in 2000. Only reason its still among the living is it got lost in the back of the bar behind lots of other crap. Its really nice, very very pear forward. Now its tiny sips and smells since I dont want it to be gone.

Aside from that fluke, I have a couple gallons of 2012's apple run left still sittin in the barrel. And a few whiskies I made in 2012 in jars on oak, the oddball stuff mostly. The bourbons get drank up pretty quick. My oldest Bourbon is maybe 12 months old. At a fifth a week, and lots given away, it depletes pretty quick, why I do 28 gallon mashes now. I try to stay 3 batches ahead, and start drinking it at 4 months. If it lasts a year Im happy. Hard to do tho.

Everything I make is gone down the hatch before the year is out, usually before six months is out. I don't really like oaked spirit, and I make my cuts accordingly, so beyond a month or so to "rest" I don't find ageing does much for me, though the rest period is important.

Having said that, there is a gallon of some "creation" that I made some years ago sitting at the back of my booze chest. It is a spiced, oaked, sloe-ed, date brandy, and is exactly as disgusting as it sounds, and looks set to remain so, for ever.

Couple a weeks.
Corn, barley, and rye.
Maybe a day on oak. 3 trips thru the nuker.

Actually, I lost a bottle of absinthe in the back of a cabinet one time. Found it at 15 months. It was truly unbelievably amazing. May have been the best I have ever tasted. Drank it in a week. I admire people who can age their spirits. I want to take them apart and see what's inside. It takes strength. I'm weaker than Canadian hot sauce.

Prairiepiss wrote:I still have some of every run I've made. Including the first. Which I guess is a little over 3 years old now? That don't seam right though? But I guess it is.

I really don't drink much. So keeping it around. Isn't that hard.

That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

skow69 wrote: I want to take them apart and see what's inside.

Exactly!

I kept a library of everything I made for about fifteen years. Then I got a bit slack and didn't do an extra run for a couple of years and ran out of drinking likker before the grapes came ready for the annual grappa. By the time the grappa was ready I'd drunk my library.

I'm trying to age a couple of whiskeys I have stashed in the cellar. Today I'm running a UJSSM that should give me enough corn likker for about two years so that there is no reason to be raiding the keepers.

After more than a year at it this is all I've managed to stockpile. Trying to get to at least the 6 month mark. Notice the gaps in the dates when I couldn't resist. I have another 3 quarts to add as of today.

I have my 100 proof in a 750 ml bottle that was in heavy charred oak sitting on my shelf . I'm trying hard to keep away for at least another month!

I drink or give away all that I make white normally. I have one aging experiment.. It's the middle jar of a run of 5-8th generation ujssm. I ran it in june 13 using my old brewhous ee-2. It was 62.5% and dead center of the hearts. I got about 10 or so of the largest jd smoking chips I could find in the bag and burned them with a torch far too much. I dropped them in and then loosened the lid 1/4 turn past touching the center lid, and then put it in my attic. It was on a box about a foot from the huge south facing wall where it would hit probably 150 f or more every day and then cool back down at night. Life got in the way and I think it stayed up there till October or November last year. Tasting it was like getting hit in the mouth by a baseball bat that was on fire. About a month ago I finally took the chips out of it. It's been in my pantry since November. So at 14 months it's over oaked and darker than a G-D Dr. Pepper. I figure I'll leave it another year and see if it helps.