Why Barrel Aging Matters: Control, Not Myth

Reframe barrel aging as a downstream enhancer. Understand why large producers report rising barrel influence and how craft distillers can win by starting with richer distillate.

Quick summary

Core principle

Hi there, welcome back to IJssel University Online and today I think we've got an interesting topic for you. I want to discuss barrel aging.

Barrel aging is important for most products, for whiskey, for rum, for brandy even. And there's a lot of myths out there, so today I want to talk about what barrel aging really does for you and how you can manage it in such a way that it helps make the product, the spirits, the whiskey, the rum, the brandy that you want to bring to the market.

So I want to educate you, I want to share information and teach you what you need to look at when you look at barrels. Now why are barrels important?

If you read the text and if you go back, like do a Google search, go back 10, 15, 20 years, what you'll read is that people say, whiskey makers, bourbon makers, they'll say and they'll talk in an interview and say like, barrel aging, wood management is amazingly important. 50, 55% of the flavors of our whiskey, of our bourbon, of our rum actually come from the wood, come from the barrel, so it's really important.

How it works in practice

Then if you scroll forward a little bit, if you actually go to, for example interviews done with big whiskey houses and they talk about barrel aging, all of a sudden they say like, what, barrel aging and wood management has become even more important than it used to be, 85% of our flavors come from the barrel. And you might think like, wow, that's really important, right? So the barrel has become more important over a period of just 10, 15 years, but I need you to listen carefully to what they say.

They didn't say that a total flavor inside their whiskey was going up, they basically said if we say our whiskey is like 100% of the flavors that it is, in the past it used to be 50% wood flavors and now it's basically 85% wood flavors. So what they've done is they haven't augmented their barrel management or their wood management, wood flavors stay the same, barreling times stay the same. What they actually did is start to produce their whiskey more and more efficiently on bigger continuous columns.

The product, the new make spirit that comes out has less flavor. So relatively, relatively, the barrel becomes more important.

Common mistakes and decisions

I think barrel aging is important for a whiskey, a rum and even a brandy, but I think it should always only add to your new make, add to your whiskey instead of completely overpower it. You as a craft distiller can batch distill. That means you can cut for heads, hearts and tails.

You can create a three dimensional product that stands up to the wood and it gives you an opportunity to make a better flavored whiskey, rum or brandy than the big boys can. Today, I want to talk about how that works and what you need to do in order to get there.

Continue with Links barrel strategy to desired whiskey dimensionality. to build directly on this foundation.

Key Takeaways