Home Distillation of Alcohol (Homemade Alcohol to Drink)

Aging Spirit

To round out or smooth the flavour of your liqueur or commercially flavoured drinks, it often pays to artifically age your drinks.

This can be done using : When aging your spirit, it is best done between 58-70% alcohol.

Smoothing Agents

Using a non-sweet aging syrup can mellow out your spirit, without having to store it away for years. Just don't use too much to kill the character of whiskeys.

Try 20g/L of glucose, or 5 mL per litre of glycerine as a starter.

Other Tricks


Other little tricks to help round out/mature your whiskey include adding:
Manuka honey at 1 tablespoon per 1125 mL nicely rounds at the Drambuie type flavours.

Soak raisins and/or prunes in some 70% alcohol for a while, then add to brandy.

Try the "liquid smoke" sold by BBQ shops, to enhance that smokey/peaty flavour (just use it very sparingly !)

Maurice writes about some older techniques ... Les concurs ...

Blending

Jack offers the following suggestion ...

Charcoal & Wood Flavouring

It is estimated that around 80% of the flavour of bourbon and whisky comes from the oak barrels used to store them in. We can replicate those flavours by soaking our spirits with oak chips or shavings. Start by using one teaspoon of oak per litre of alcohol, and let it soak for a week. Taste test frequently to find the level of flavour intensity that suits you - eg maybe a little more oak, or longer, or different % alcohol, or different levels of oak toasting.

For an excellent article on the composition of Oak, and its affect on maturation, download http://www.cooperage.com/pdf_whtpapers/97symp_comp_oak.pdf (690kB) from the Cooperage website.

Donald advises ... If you can't buy the commercial toasted/natural oak chips for flavouring and aging, you can try making your own. Make sure you use oak or non-resinous wood - using a soft resinous pine will only give you a retsina. Be ingenious when looking for old oak - locals here use bits of old furnature etc (after shaving off the varnishes etc). Smoked manuka timber is particularly good.

To make your own toasted timber, find a tin with a push on lid of 1-2L. Split your timber into thin enough strips to fit your bottles. Light the pieces, and when well charred, place in the tin. Place the lid on lightly to snuff out the flames. Add more wood as it becomes ready, replacing the lid each time. When cooled, push the lid on tightly to retain the smokey aroma until ready to use.

Another way is to wrap the oak chips/shavings in aluminium foil, and bake them in your oven for a while.

The temperature of the toasting will affect the flavour that develops...


Diagram from http://www.cooperage.com/spec1.htm

Jack advises :
Jack also writes : The Household Cyclopedia recommends ...
You can also use virgin wood shavings - the greater surface area will work faster. Taste regularly to ensure that it doesn't get too wooded, then filter out when ready.

Wood-essence can be made by soaking the shavings or toasted wood in 70% alcohol for a couple of weeks, then strain them off. Another suggestion is to pressure-cook the shavings with neutral spirit for 10 minutes at medium pressure, but this sounds risky!).

Jeanette suggests to use the toasted oak by ...
From Cheryl (Victoria, Canada)...(posted on http://www.onelist.com/community/Distillers)

to which Ray Toms added ..
See below about using casks

Where to source the wood chips ? Donald suggests ...

Casks

For an excellent article on casks, see Aging of Spirits

Some wine-making shops sell little oak casks. These really do work well. Leave your finished liqueur in these for a while, and they mellow out even more.

See http://www.ibrew.com.au for a selection of the small casks available in Australia.

If you leave the bung-hole of the cask (once filled) open for several days, it is said to improve the flavour. Donald disputes this ...
To price out full sized barrels for yourself, see See http://brewery.org/brewery/library/LmbicJL0696.html#Oak for more information about oak casks. Its written regarding using them for brewing Lambic beers, but there's heaps of info that's still pertinent.

Kristofer D offers the following advice :
Mike P writes : How do casks work to mature the spirit ? Its a matter of the wood letting in a little oxygen, and letting out different proportions of the alcohols and cogeners present, as well as reacting with some of the ligins & other substance of the wood. An email from Jim Busch, to the HBD, offers: Arthur Bell, at http://claymore.wisemagic.com/scotradiance/bell9711.htm says .. Charlie Maclean, writing "The Language of Whisky Tasting" at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society offers .. Another article, "Whisky Dectectives" at the Scotch Malt Whisky Society descibes how different techniques for drying the wood affects how well the spirits mature.

Yue Hung has forwarded some information from an article "The Production and Aging Of Wine in Small Oak Cooperage" published in the May 1969 edition of "Wine & Vines¨ ...

Jack Daniels Whisky

See Jacks instructions on the Preparing Grain Mashes page for the grain bill, and his comments in Aging re passing it through maple charcoal.

Johnnie Walker Whisky

Les suggests ...

Bourbon

Bill recommends the following for a Bourbon made from essences ... Brian adds .. Mecakyrios writes ...

Rum

Ed of http://www.MinistryOfRum.com writes ..
A lecture on Processing of Jamaican sugar cane by Robert Lancashire yeilds ..
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