The other day I had a comment on Facebook about wanting to hear my thoughts on barrels and warehouses. I have written several blogs on both subjects before, but I thought I would add a few thoughts here.

On barrels, I have written about what goes on in the barrel and about small barrels, but I have a few other thoughts I could add. Small barrels of the two liter size are popular with people who want to age cocktails. They are excellent for that purpose, but not so good for aging whiskey. They lack the complex flavors from the wood you get from 53 gallon barrels. Other small barrels of 10 and 25 gallon barrels can make decent whiskey, but you need to control the amount of char in the barrel. The staves are not as thick and they do not get the toasting needed for vanilla and butterscotch flavors as a result. When you char a smaller barrel to a number four char, you end up burning away most, if not all of the toasted wood. I think that a number two char would be best for a smaller barrel, and then you need to have a deep toast to start with when making the barrel. The char, after all is mostly giving you tannins which color the whiskey and give the whiskey a bitter, oak flavor.

On warehouses, I have written about this subject several times. I am a believer in the old fashioned rickhouse style of aging whiskey. You can use the two barrel racks used for aging wine barrels that can be moved with a forklift, but this is a system where the barrels are filled from the side and not top filled. Top filled barrels can make decent whiskey, and I know of several distilleries that are using this type of barrel for aging their whiskey and these distillers make good whiskey. However, I believe that if they used traditional warehouses, it would be even better. I say this because palletized warehouses lack the air flow needed to age great whiskey. Plus, they are losing the benefits of both heads. The heads are thinner wood, but they impart a lot of flavor. When you fill the barrel from the top and stack them on pallets, the top head loses contact with the whiskey very quickly and the bottom head is flooded with whiskey and there is a very limited flow in and out of the wood because gravity lets the whiskey in the wood, but limits the flow of flavor out of the wood. Palletized warehouses are cheaper to build and this means that many new distilleries opt to build them. However, they are inferior to traditional warehouses.

Heated warehouses were created to allow more cycling of whiskey in and out of the wood during winter. They are expensive warehouses to build because they tend to be made from brick or stone and the fuel cost for running the boiler to heat the water that heats the warehouse is expensive. There are advantages in that they do increase the interaction with the wood during winter. Lincoln Henderson once told me that he believed that a four year whiskey from a heated warehouse is the equivalent to six year old whiskey from a traditional iron clad warehouse. I will take his word for this but there are still oxidation processes that simply take time.

Four Roses Distillery and George Dickel’s Cascade Hollow Distillery use single story warehouses. They do this for the consistency of the whiskey. They want all of the whiskey aging in these warehouses to age at the same rate. There is still some variation of the aging, but it is minimalized. Four Roses actually goes a step further by insulating the roofs of the warehouses to keep a more constant temperature all year round. These distilleries both make excellent whiskeys and I have to say it works for them.

These are a few of my thoughts on barrels and warehouses. I hope you enjoy this blog.

Castle & Key

Photos Courtesy of Rosemary Miller