Hello greybeards of the craft, I humbly come to you with some questions on aging that I think represent a bit of a learning journey. I'm going to try and thread the needle of explaining said journey while also being direct in my questions.
Question 1) Does Whiskey (or liquor of your choice) age inside a sealed bottle.
If you Google this, you'll get a lot of information about the industry standard of aging for ~12 years and once it is in the bottle is chemically stable, etc. I don't believe this is true for quick aging that the individual distiller does. If you put staves into a bottle you can oak in a few months and hit the tannin levels you want. But that Whiskey is still really "green". In my own experiments, I can notice a change in as little as 12 months in a fully sealed jar. Am I crazy? Thoughts?
Question 2) Does aging impart complicated flavors?
Early in my journey, I thought you made a mash, fermented it, distilled it, got a product and the aging was where most of your flavors came from. I've since become very skeptical of this flow. I think aging on Oak adds *Some* flavor based upon the oak, the toast, the char, etc. But this isn't the majority of the flavor. They key concept here is I thought the majority of the flavor came from the aging. I no longer believe that. I don't think you get a Maker's Mark by aging alone. In fact, I'm leaning towards aging being a minority component in the flavor of your whiskey. By minority I mean number of notes, not strength if that makes sense. Thoughts?
Novice Aging questions
Moderator: Site Moderator