20 years of aging in 6 days

[pope]

I have loads of bottles of different projects going back 10 years, some of it in half-full glass with plenty of breathing going on. But all that is with no notes, just a name, abv, and whatever I can remember. I'm hoping with this kind of tool to get more scientific approximations of sensory feedback in a shorter amount of time.

I haven't tried UV but need to look into it. Just realized there were two patents filed, I've read the first one but not the second. I know the patent holder uses light in his process because I've been to the distillery, but I don't know if that's his only source of ultrasonic energy at this point, or if something is going on inside his heated reactor tanks too. Time and testing will tell. Since it's patented my best hope is to use this as a learning tool and on a hobby level, I don't see a way to use this process legally in a licensed distillery except by deliberately over or under powering the ultrasonic mechanisms just to get around the limits established in the patent.

I separately am working to chance my distilling practices to use a flute/plated column to slowly draw off heavily refluxed fores and heads, and find a shut down point for my dephleg where I transition to pot distillation methods - I know others on here have used ultrasonic cleaners with the heat on to blow off heads but maybe I can keep them out better in the first place. Cutting out flavor, of course, is the thing I need to worry about avoiding. Or I need to collect fores/heads in small jars and add heads to my hearts cut with an eyedropper!

As for neutrals I find I really don't like fully refluxed boka results, pure ethanol has a mildly sweet rendering that's unfamiliar and it doesn't hold up in cocktails where it disappears. I want a little bit of heads and character but need to find a way to get that balance (the first step for me is that I have a very small hearts cut from a very large batch of 100% flour wash that I plan to mix into fully refluxed hearts).

[cayars]

Try an experiment with a jar of heads. Heat it to 150, let cool and taste. Next heat to 155, let cool and taste, then 160 and 165 following the same pattern.

See if just using heat at specific temps is enough to blow off a portion you don't want while leaving a bit of heads. Of course the heads will be by temps so if you happen to like the heads that come off closest to ethanol then you might like this.

You can heat using a microwave, your boiler, etc

OR

Maybe your spirit is just to clean and needs a bit of something else. Try small amounts with glycerine, sugar, gram of lemon zest or orange zest. Often times just a smidge of something else will do the trick.

[pope]

The boka-refluxed spirits are very clean ('too clean'), I'll play around with heating of the heads fraction in my whiskies, brandies, rums, and agaves. Also interested in the rapid aging effect on gins and liqueurs as well. I believe it was Odin who mentioned the impact of ultrasonic cleaning on pre-distilled gin macerations leading to a reduction in botanicals to 1/3 of a typical maceration.

[SaltyStaves]

An Ultrasonic patent was submitted, but I don't believe it was granted.

[NZChris]

The rum I'm sampling now is made from molasses that I suspect is at least thirty years old and it has just spent ten days in my Reactor at 150F.

It's nice already, but experience says it will still improve over time. If I was in a hurry and had an empty cellar, I would be very happy

[pope]

I never asked about the story behind the 30-year-old molasses but I want to know more...

As for an on-topic update, I haven't done much with my ultrasonic and none with me mini-still/reactor (as a reactor), but the first ultrasonic tests were very promising. Lots to work out but it certainly paints a picture of time travel. It wasn't a proper experiment but I did a control vs. oxy treatment vs oxy+heat vs oxy+heat+ultrasonic vs oxy+heat+ultrasonic+oak and its amazing what each component of the treatment did to the white dog.

I still have Bryan Davis' second patent (with the light process added to ultrasonic) printed and gathering dust on my coffee table, so before I get too deep into bench trials I'll be reading that eventually.

[NZChris]

If you read the thread, I haven't had much joy out of the light process.

The molasses was given to me out of a far corner of a farmer's shed. The price written on the container was less than I paid for for my first molasses thirty years ago and it had come from the same town.

[cayars]

"20 years of aging in 6 days"
I was just thinking about the title and the op post where it was declared the aging was only 20 years and could not do older or younger.

I've tasted a lot of 20 year old whiskeys in my day and actually most are pretty bad, very oak tasting. The same whiskey at 12 years old is wonderful. Some at 20 year old are wonderful but they are few and far between. Most are way too woody.

20 years sounds great, but even a lot of 20 year old Scotch in used barrels is overly woody even stored in cool environments.

Now when someone comes out with an instant 4, 8 or maybe 12 year aging process I'm game.

[Corsaire]

StuNY just posted this link in another thread. I think it belongs here. I'm at work and can't read all of it so I'll park it here where I can easily find it

Thanks Corsaire, I found a lot to read about Oxidative aging and it was very helpful. Here is a pretty good link that kept my head spinning for quite a while! Looks like it has more parts to it as well, a lot of great aging information in here:

https://distilling.com/distillermagazin ... n-studies/

[jonnys_spirit]

This works well for me with a sous vide cooker in a water bath - spirits + oak in a corked jar or three. I might pick up a canning pot that’ll hold 7x quart mason jars. Widgetco #44 standard cork.

Cheers!
-j

[WestVAGuy]

While I agree is truly not aging (which implies time) there was a show on Moonshiners where Tim Smith (in a Legal Distillery in Virginia) had several thousand gallons of white processed with wood staves with what appeared to be pulsing current thru the staves. The results were pretty spectacular overnight, but I don't know exactly how it was done. This product was later sold to a Buyer and appeared on shelves as Wood Fire Whiskey (or close to that name). I do believe that IF you can speed up the exchange rate of the spirit into and out of the wood, you can speed up the process of pulling the desirable qualities out of the wood and into your spirit. That will be one of my focus areas, after legalization at the state Level.

[ThomasBrewer]

Please keep in mind that the Moonshiners show is scripted crap. It might be entertaining, but that's about it.

The only thing electrolysis will accomplish is turning alcohol into CO2 and water.

[junkyard dawg]

man, I hate these threads...

[icrazy]

Ok so ive been reading this a bit latley and was thinking of setting up to do some crash aging here is what im thinking

1. Heat in microwave with lid off then put the lid on and cool in the freezer. Repeat 6 times

2. Put into ultrasonic bath for 5 days with uv on it for the first 2 days with oak in then remove oak and uv for the last 3 days and run ultrasonic only.

4. Remove from ultrasonic bath and bubble air through for 1 day or 24 hours

5. Leave for 4 weeks before proofing down and botteling

Anyone have any thaughts on this

[NZChris]

Anyone have any thaughts on this

I think your method is more closely related to the Nuclear Whiskey thread. viewtopic.php?t=38991

[thecroweater]

Distress aging does work, at least to a fashion. There are a whole bunch of methods to achieve this and some are better than others but none I'm aware of ever really replicate time aged spirit and there is no way in hell you are getting 20 years of aging in 6 days, that would be a mean feat for 6 years. There are probably a whole range of reasons above my pay grade for why you can not exactly clone a spirit matured over a long period of time that goes beyond oaking on a more chemical/ physics level. On oaking some of the reasons boil down to the volatility of the compounds and chemical composition of the oak itself verses the effects of ullage and speeding that up is likely to throw that exact ratio outa whack. On just time itself well many folk will tell you aging stops at bottling and and in an exercise in semantics that is technically correct but sure as god made little ants maturing continues so there is still stuff going on on a molecular chemical level. To give just one example of this you can find a thread of mine here back in say 2011-12 making fig Rakia, it turned out awful, virtually undrinkable , Some of it got lost in the back of cupboard all these long years and a month or so back I found a flagon or two. To my surprise the spirit had wildly changed, now it ain't exactly a gold star winner but not only could I swallow it without doing the chicken dance but came mighty close to enjoying it. Bottom line : 20 years in 6 days is a hoax and an outlandish claim but you can do something in that time

[squigglefunk]

Bottom line : 20 years in 6 days is a hoax and an outlandish claim but you can do something in that time

make something that will be drinkable in 20 years?

[BrewinBrian44]

Distress aging does work, at least to a fashion. There are a whole bunch of methods to achieve this and some are better than others but none I'm aware of ever really replicate time aged spirit and there is no way in hell you are getting 20 years of aging in 6 days, that would be a mean feat for 6 years. There are probably a whole range of reasons above my pay grade for why you can not exactly clone a spirit matured over a long period of time that goes beyond oaking on a more chemical/ physics level. On oaking some of the reasons boil down to the volatility of the compounds and chemical composition of the oak itself verses the effects of ullage and speeding that up is likely to throw that exact ratio outa whack. On just time itself well many folk will tell you aging stops at bottling and and in an exercise in semantics that is technically correct but sure as god made little ants maturing continues so there is still stuff going on on a molecular chemical level. To give just one example of this you can find a thread of mine here back in say 2011-12 making fig Rakia, it turned out awful, virtually undrinkable , Some of it got lost in the back of cupboard all these long years and a month or so back I found a flagon or two. To my surprise the spirit had wildly changed, now it ain't exactly a gold star winner but not only could I swallow it without doing the chicken dance but came mighty close to enjoying it. Bottom line : 20 years in 6 days is a hoax and an outlandish claim but you can do something in that time

Part of the equation that should be considered is how wide you can make your cuts if you intend to age something for 20 years. If you plan to distress age, there's no way a really wide cut will transform into the good, rich flavors one would expect in 6 days. I've experimented with the nuclear aging technique in the past, and yes, it definitely does something to the base spirit, even without wood. I still haven't tried the ultrasonic, but I hear good things about that as well. From my experience nuclear aging, I still needed some decently tight cuts and the wood contribution is what you'd expect... wood. Not bad, but not even close to a real matured spirit.

I like the idea of ultrasonic processing my white dog, prior to barrel aging. I believe Odin has written about this.

[jonnys_spirit]

I experimented with the method outlined here by putting jars of hearts+various woods in a sous-vide bath @ 150*F for about a week. It definitely made some progress compared to same without the sous-vide. I used too much oak so blended it back with straight hearts... I then put all of that into a BadMo and kept testing it until it was gone six months or so later.... It's not the same as aging it but it might give an idea of where it might go over time.. Not something I'm going to do with all my spirits but I might do it again too - I haven't yet ....

Cheers!
-j

[The Baker]

Bottom line : 20 years in 6 days is a hoax and an outlandish claim but you can do something in that time

make something that will be drinkable in 20 years?

Nice idea but I am 81.
Something for the grandkids...

Geoff

[NZChris]

Just because it hasn't worked for some forum members who didn't follow the protocol exactly, including me, doesn't mean that the method has no benefit for home distillers.

I've never regretted doing my experiments, and I will be doing more experiments in the future without known mistakes that I made in the past.

Even without the UV light treatment, I have learned a lot from experimenting with hearts, recycled feints and testing different oak toasts. You can either carry on doing what you've always done, or you can try something new and learn something. I only ever commit samples and leftovers to these types of experiments, the majority being aged as normal.

The advantages of reacting don't stop when you turn the power off as aging continues. When looking through the cellar for something to proof for drinking or blending, I often choose Reacted over normally aged. My cellar has a quite a bit of Reacted product that is many years old.

[squigglefunk]

The advantages of reacting don't stop when you turn the power off as aging continues. When looking through the cellar for something to proof for drinking or blending, I often choose Reacted over normally aged. My cellar has a quite a bit of Reacted product that is many years old.

for sure. I can understand the ideas behind trying to "accelerate" things. There's certainly fun in experimenting and finding your own way and there's also some sense in the idea of "if it ain't broke" which also can work OK, i seem to be getting good results without any special acceleration but it gives me food for thought! At one point I do remember using the "wood stove" acceleration method by putting booze near my coal stove to get it toasty warm then putting it away to age... didn't seem to hurt anything for sure ...

[RockinRockies]

All of this is why I started buying barrels to fill. There's just no substitute for time in oak. Period.

Start filling minimum size of 5 gallon barrels. I'm positive the result is far superior to any other method I've researched or attempted thus far, based on my experience

[Saltbush Bill]

There's just no substitute for time in oak. Period.

I'm positive the result is far superior to any other method I've researched or attempted thus far, based on my experience

Ive found the same to be true, anything that Ive barrel aged long term is much much better than anything Ive aged using other methods.
Having said that barrels are expensive and not everybody wants to go to that much expense .

[NZChris]

All of this is why I started buying barrels to fill. There's just no substitute for time in oak. Period.

You tried Bryan Davis' method and it didn't work?

[RockinRockies]

I've found the same to be true, anything that I've barrel aged long term is much much better than anything I've aged using other methods.
Having said that barrels are expensive and not everybody wants to go to that much expense .

Given the hell I've been encountering pressing 85# of grain for each fermenting drum... Yeah.. Have to say I agree.

Price wise for barrels, we have a place in Denver, Rocky mountain barrel company, and those guys are great. I picked up a used 15 gallon from them for $115 two years ago. We then find a distillery that went out of business and took the last used oak barrels for a song. I'm also expecting 2 used 7 gallon bourbon barrels from a dude I met in town once we get together and he shows us how to sparge large batches.. When they are as cheap as we found them, it makes the rest of the endeavor worth attempting.... Maybe..

[RockinRockies]

All of this is why I started buying barrels to fill. There's just no substitute for time in oak. Period.

You tried Bryan Davis' method and it didn't work?

I used tee-pee method and Corene's method IIRC, bulk aged in glass carboys 1 stick per quart. Airing weekly. Even after 2+ years, all my different recipes had the same, bland oak profile. So far what I've got in barrels is already significantly more promising than anything I've ever done with toasted and charred sticks in glass

[NZChris]

All of this is why I started buying barrels to fill. There's just no substitute for time in oak. Period.

You tried Bryan Davis' method and it didn't work?

I used tee-pee method and Corene's method IIRC, bulk aged in glass carboys 1 stick per quart. Airing weekly. Even after 2+ years, all my different recipes had the same, bland oak profile. So far what I've got in barrels is already significantly more promising than anything I've ever done with toasted and charred sticks in glass

That is not Bryan's method, and is not the subject of this topic, so you haven't tried it.

T-Pee's method is here. viewtopic.php?t=50348

[RockinRockies]

I'm confused. You mentioned Bryan's method and I responded that I wasn't familiar, while expanding on the methods I used. I don't understand why you referenced the "subject of this topic" as we're talking about rapid aging. My responses were related to aging and my preference for barrels. CAVEAT: I researched that method through HD search function and my own Google search and couldn't find what you were referring.

I am genuinely confused. I think I'm misreading something

[NZChris]

This is a thread about a particular claim made by Lost Spirits Distillery and shouldn't be confused with the many other methods posted all over the forum.

viewtopic.php?t=55301