Distiller magazine

138 distiller believe most distillers want to make a high-quality product. is becomes much easier and more con- sistent when we fully grasp the potential of the tools of our trade, casks included. And that, my friends, is the raison d'être for this book. Like much else in the distilling industry, find- ing reliable information and learning materials to better your craft can often feel like a daunting task. In the kingdom of alcoholic beverages, distilled spirits come off as arcane witchcraft and sorcery. Far more research and time has been spent learning and explaining the scientific minutiae of wine and beer. Spirits have typically received the short end of the information shaft. Distillers are usually a convivial folk, and most don't mind sharing information, but that's still far from ideal with regards to raising the technical level of the industry as a whole. We need to move beyond the anecdotal and apocryphal into the realm of fas- tidious research. Sure, the internet is your friend, but it's not your only friend. e story of cask management is just like any other story. First it requires a beginning. For us, that beginning is in the forests where our cask wood grows. To understand how to better manage our bar- rels and maximize their potential for our products, we need to understand where this particular ingre- dient comes from. ere is understandably a sort of terroir with regards to oak and differences in loca- tion and growth factors can have pronounced effects on the sensory character of the finished barrel. is ignores the obvious differences that can arise from the different species of oak or even different types of wood apart from oak. We will explore what makes American oak different from French oak, Oregon oak, and Japanese oak. And for the sake of cat-kill- ing curiosity, we will look at a few woods making minor headway into the spirits industry such as chestnut and acacia. Tree felling and stave cutting are not insignifi- cant tasks. Neither is the crucial time of stave dry- ing, whether it is in a field of stave ricks or through forced air drying. We will discuss the benefits and disadvantages of both and how they affect the final barrel. Moving into the cooper's workshop, we discuss the basic techniques for shaping the cask from stave selection to heading. is is also when fire is introduced to the stave wood and we toast or char the barrel to the desired specifications. How this is done has a profound impact on the wood chemistry and subsequent sensory characters that our casks contribute. In Chapter 2, we get down to the molecular level of the cask to explore some of the important chem- ical changes that casks can contribute to immature spirits. ese reactions are roughly grouped into four major classes: reductive, additive, subtractive, and productive. We will explore them all and how they can be manipulated in subtle ways to give us more control over the maturation process. Chapter 3 is where we begin the process of select- ing our cask. Barrels should be selected for the express purpose of modifying our spirit in ways that we find desirable. Certainly, what may be desirable for one person may be anathema to the next. is chapter deals with that disparity by tackling the many factors that go into cask selection and how they may alter the spirit maturation process. is includes barrel sizing considerations, char and toast levels, and the use of used barrels. Chapter 4 is interesting in that here we step away Barrels stored outside Speyside Cooperage, Photo © Matt Strickland

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