7 Barrel Buying Rules for Better Spirits

Convert barrel sourcing into a documented procurement workflow with concrete quality checks: wood handling, seasoning, tree age, terrain origin, shape, and finish quality.

Quick summary

Core principle

Okay, so we discussed barrel aging and how different woods, different types of oak can help you create certain flavors, or at least harvest certain flavors, and how the alcohol percentage is very important. And how the barrel isn't just about wood flavor extraction, but it's also a vessel where oxidation takes place and where recombination takes place.

Now that's all very interesting, right? I hope you learned a lot, but what I want to do to finalize this video is actually give you seven rules, seven considerations to actually talk to your barrel manufacturer, or to select your barrel manufacturer, and use the list.

Talk to him about it, get his feedback, and make sure he signs off on it. Because I want you to be able to buy the best barrels.

The way to do that is to go through these points, through these seven questions, as follows. First thing I want to discuss with the guy that's going to sell you barrels is how do you go with the wood?

Do you cleave it, or do you saw right through it? And basically, if you saw right through it, you create a lot of open end, a lot of fibers get exposed, you get a lot of tannin extraction, unwanted, uncontrollable tannin extraction.

You want to work together with a cooper that cleaves the wood. Because now he doesn't damage the wood so much, and you get better flavors, better barrels, better whiskey and rum and brandy.

Second thing you need to discuss is how did you dry the wood? How did you dry the staves before you turn it into a barrel that I'm probably going to buy from you?

Did you just put it outside, and for how long? Staves from which barrels are made are dried to make sure that a lot of the green stuff, a lot of the very tannin-y stuff, leaches out through sun and through rain.

But because it's cheaper to actually put it outside and rain it artificially, a lot of coopers actually do artificial raining. You get less well flavors, because basically they're now able to put your staves into a barrel after maybe 12 or 16 months.

How it works in practice

When you do it traditionally, the wood can be outside for two, three, four, or even five years. And the longer the wood stays outside, the better, the more amazing the wood flavors that come over into your whiskey. So you maybe want to make a well-informed decision.

Am I going to go for this cheaper barrel that is rained upon, so has less intense flavors? Or do I go for certain barrels that have been naturally rained on and naturally dried out in the open air, and that are of much better quality? And ask him, and let him tell you how he does it and why he does it.

Maybe he's got different varieties for you to choose from, probably at different price levels. But it's your decision now to go for one or the other, and you'll be better informed. Again, let him sign off on it.

Make sure you send him an email and letter where you say, this is what we discussed, and this is how you make barrels. And I'm very happy to do business with you under those conditions. How young is the oak that you actually use to make the staves from that you will make my barrel from?

In general, a young oak, and that's an oak tree that is below 75 years, younger than 75 years of age, will have less nice flavors than an oak tree that is over 75. The ideal age is 100 to 150 years for an oak. But of course, those oaks are very, very expensive.

So very often you see that coopers want or need to actually go to the younger trees or do combination, an old stave and a young stave, an old stave and a young stave. It's not really an issue as long as it, as long as you get where you pay for. I personally like the oldest staves and the oldest trees, but I understand it comes at a cost price.

So maybe for certain products you actually want to do a compromise, but maybe for some others you do not want to compromise. The fourth point I want you to consider and I want you to discuss with your cooper is, is this oak a lowland tree or a highland tree? And this is incredibly important because lowland oaks, sorry, talking Dutch here almost, lowland oaks grow very fast relative to highland oaks.

Highland oaks need to work, need to drill their roots into hard stone. They don't have an easy life and that makes them, weirdly enough, very characterful. So an oak that comes from a highland region in general creates better flavors or allows for better flavor extraction in the barrel than a lowland oak.

Common mistakes and decisions

This also has to do with the fact that the water in highlands is very calcium rich, mineral rich, flows, it's very oxygenated, where lowland oaks basically, well, they have to drink flat water, not mineral rich water, not very tasty water. That flavor, that taste or the absence thereof actually translates into the wood and into your barrel and into your rum brandy or whiskey. Imagine that an oak, for example 75 years old, 100, 150, drinks around 350 to 400 liters of water per day.

I hope that makes very clear that the kind of water it drinks is essential to the flavors you're going to get over in your whiskey. So discuss it, highland, lowland, there's going to be a price difference, or at least there should be. Water, I think we discussed that as well.

The shape of the barrel, now that's an important one. There are basically, well, there are many shapes, but there are basically two shapes of barrels and I'm going to draw them in an exaggerated way. A very long barrel, cigar-like shape, or a relative short barrel that is higher.

What I want you to know is that the staves that give the flavor are on the horizontal. And in this shorter barrel, there's more endwood or topwood. That is not the right wood we're looking for, the staves.

So a cigar-like elongated barrel has relatively more stave surface area and less top end wood. A shorter barrel that is higher to compensate in order to make it, for example, the same value or volume, or what is it, 50, 55 gallons, will have less of the staves and more of the top end wood. So basically you get less wood, less wood flavor for your buck.

So consider this, what do I want? Best product looks like this, this may be a compromise. The final point, number seven, God is in the details.

If you look at a barrel and it's not well made, doesn't look nice, it's not taken care of, and then the cooper tells you, but it's about the inside.

Continue with Keeps purchasing decisions tied to style intent. to build directly on this foundation.

Key Takeaways