Page 59 - Craft of Whiskey Distilling

48 | CrAFt WHIskEy DIstIllInG
Quantity of pure water = Quantity of hearts X percent alcohol of hearts / 0.6 - Quantity of hearts
example: Say, there was 60 gallons of hearts at 70% abv
Quantity of pure water = 60 gallons X 0.7 / 0.6 - 60 gallons = 10 gallons of pure water
On the other hand, you may not want to bother with calculations, so you could simply dilute the hearts to 60% abv by judiciously adding small amounts of pure water and mixing thoroughly until the alcoholmeter reads 60% abv.
Next, make sure all the water has been emptied out of the barrel and then fill the bar- rel with the 60% abv whiskey. Hammer a beech wood or poplar bung into the bung hole.
Then, place the barrel where it can be easily observed over the next couple of weeks. This is a period where the barrel is proofed to make certain it doesn’t have any residual leaks. After the barrel is proofed and it’s clear that the barrel is not going to leak, it should be placed in the location where it’s going to be aged for a number of years.
As was pointed out above, hot places that experience temperature swings are the best locations to situate barrels with aging spirits, so the barrel should be situated bearing this in mind.
Also, if the barrel can be shaken or jostled back and forth periodically, this will speed up the aging process.
If the barrel is placed in a hot, reasonably dry location, and can be shaken occasionally, the whiskey will age out nicely in about three years. So, it’s important that the whiskey be sampled every few weeks or every month after the first 18 months of aging.
To sample the whiskey, remove the bung and draw up about an ounce of it with a glass wine thief or a large pipette, and empty it into a wineglass. Take a nose and taste of the cask- strength whiskey, and then dilute it half-and-half with water and nose and taste it again. While the whiskey is still immature, it will have an unbalanced flavor of straight wood and a burnt taste. When the whiskey is ìreadyî, it’ll have a smooth, rich, balanced flavor with characteristics of the wood and char, but the raw woody, burnt taste will have subsided.
After determining that the whiskey is mature, monitor the development of the whis- key each week for several more weeks to make sure the whiskey has reached a mature, rich flavor, but where you sense that any more oak contact may take it over the top. It’s best to have several people make these final evaluations.
At this point, the barrel should be emptied into glass or stainless-steel containers to halt the aging process. The container, or containers, should not have a lot of air space, and should be sealed up tight to prevent evaporation. The whiskey is now aged and ready for diluting, filtering, and bottling. The exact volume and percent alcohol of the whiskey should be measured and noted. You are now ready to proceed to the diluting, filtering, and bottling step. Both these methods involve double distilling, which gives smoother results, and is therefore what’s recommended in this text.