I still don’t think that toasted oak chips are going to give you the “right” flavor. If you tour a distillery (or watch a barrel being charred on YouTube), the amount of char on the inside of the barrel is much more than toasted, it is heavily blackened. Not that it won’t give you flavor, but it’s more likely to be a wine-type oakiness.
I think you’ll have good results with a medium toast oak or medium plus. You can get them at any homebrew shop. You won’t need any artificial coloring - 6 months with those will provide plenty of color. Keep in mind that you get more surface exposure using chips than a barrel, so going with something blackened like you might see in a barrel will result in burnt-tasting booze. And oak cubes instead of chips can give more consistency in surface area exposure (which might not be a big deal for what you’re doing).
My personal experience: I was playing around with a column still I made, and distilled a bunch of random crap I’d made that didn’t turn out for various reasons (too sour beer, too sweet mead, pear wine with no flavor, etc.). The resulting liquor came out around 150 proof and was god awful even after diluting it down a bit. So I threw it in a jar with some medium toast oak cubes and forgot about it for 6 months. After that time, it had a nice caramel color and tasted surprisingly decent. It wouldn’t win any awards but it didn’t taste like cheap hooch. If I’d started with decent liquor, it would have been even better.
Good luck, looking forward to hearing how it works.
It’s not really anything special; you’re just reproducing the same processes that go into making normal whiskey, rum or brandy, just in a junky way. It’ll probably be somewhat disappointing, if only because there are 2 things missing.
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Most whiskey is not distilled to be as flavorless as possible. While it’s not nearly as flavorful straight off the still as after aging, it’s still quite a bit more flavorful than Everclear.
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The barrels interact with the whiskey in different ways than wood chips will. The whiskey concentrates somewhat while in the barrel, and the whiskey does different things in the bottle seasonally due to temperature and humidity.
What you’ll end up with is toasted oak flavored everclear. It may work for say… mixing with Coke, but you probably won’t want to drink it straight.
Didn’t see this…
It’s the grain bill that makes it whiskey/whisky. It’s defined as the distillate obtained from fermented grains. Where it’s made and what it’s made from is what defines the particular style.
Broadly put, here are the big styles:
Scotch Whisky: made from barley malt and/or wheat (blended whiskies), and made in Scotland. Generally pot-distilled, although I’m not sure that’s actually a requirement, but just a tradition.
Bourbon: 51% corn, aged for at least 2 years in new, charred oak barrels, and produced in the USA.
Irish whiskey : made from barley malt in Ireland, usually uses column still.
Canadian whiskey: must be aged 3 years in wood barrels, typically has a noticeable rye content.
Indian whiskey is properly a sort of rum, since it’s typically made from molasses, even if it is trying to imitate Scotch whisky.
Something else that needs to be noted if you haven’t started yet is that the percentage of alcohol on you oak will determine what flavors you pull out. Typically you don’t want the flavors that come out of the oak over 130 proof. I personally prefer aging at 120 and then at 100 proof with 50% of the time spent at each step. Dilute your Everclear first.
By the way this is a process similar to what many micro distillers do while they are waiting on their aged spirits to finish. They but neutral grain spirits and then age/flavor them prior to selling them.
I don’t doubt one word of what you said, but how do you know it?
I know they do this with clear spirits such as vodka and gin - most microdistillers start with neutral grain spirits, and simply dilute and filter it in the case of vodka, or flavor it and maybe run it through another distillation for gin. This is based on direct conversations I’ve had with 4-5 local distillers. Of those, only one mashed their own grains for their vodka.
I haven’t heard of them starting with neutral grain spirits for whiskey or other aged spirits - not to say it doesn’t happen, but the ones I’ve visited didn’t do that. One distiller that opened a couple years ago is still waiting for their own whiskey to age, so in the meantime they take bourbon from another distiller and “finish” it for a few months in their own barrels.
I think they have to; nobody I know of sells what’s called ‘compound’ gin, meaning gin where the botanicals have simply been macerated in the distillate, then filtered out and bottled.
Usually they macerate the botanicals, and then distill the results, sometimes putting botanicals in the still itself.
Why not just go with a small barrel? There are several manufacturers that are able to sell you a ‘personal sized’ barrel, and if you live in the right places, and/or have a good enough liquor store they can order you the neutral spirits as well.
Top 10 spirit launches in January - The Spirits Businesswhiskey-ageing-kits
Yes, that matches what I saw. And now that I think about it, I’m sure you’re right that all the gin is distilled after maceration. Otherwise the flavors would be too much and it would be cloudy/discolored.
Oak chips are a few bucks. A decent barrel is probably $50-100 for a small one, and several hundred when you start getting into the larger sizes. You can find oak chips on the shelf of any brewshop, but you’ll probably have to order a barrel. A barrel might still be worth it if you’re serious about making good whiskey, but it’s overkill if you’re just messing around.
Wow, this all seems much more involved than making red label Scotch.
Sorry I haven’t updated this. Having an odd bit of trouble procuring a bottle of Everclear. None of the liquor stores around me have it (they’re more of the “Wild Irish Rose”-types) and I haven’t had time to go out to a better class of store to get some. But hopefully I’ll get some this weekend and get this ball rolling.
I knew what that was before I clicked it. 
bump
DCnDC, did the ball ever start rolling? Have you snuck any tastes?
I haven’t been able to actually do this yet. I have the wood chips but I’ve not gotten around to locating some Everclear yet. I got married two weekends ago and it was all DIY so there was a ton of stuff to do both beforehand and afterward, and there’s still gifts and thank you notes and all kinds of other crap to take care of.
But I promise I’ll get on this soon, hopefully by Halloween. When I do I’ll be sure to come back here with updates and links to pics. Your patience will be eventually rewarded!
Priorities, man, priorities!
(But congrats for real.)
Sorry for not posting on-going updates, I’m lazy; it’s been a while but late last year I finally got my shit together and this was a go.
Back around last Halloween I filled a 10 oz mason jar with about an inch of toasted oak chips and filled the remaining space with Everclear, diluted with distilled water down to roughly 120 proof, give or take a few points. I gave it a gentle stir once a week for the first month, then after that just opened it up once a week just to give it some fresh air.
About Easter this year, about 5 months later, it had taken on quite a bit of color, not unlike a cola with lots of ice that had sat for a while. It smelled not very pleasant, and tasted about the same. At this point I considered scrapping the whole project, but I thought maybe I just hadn’t given it enough time; after all, real whiskey is aged for years. So I scooped out the old wood chips, added a fresh batch, and closed it back up, continuing to air it out once a week.
As it turns out, time heals all.
By Thanksgiving, it was very dark, almost opaque. I opened it up and the aroma had grown quite sweet. I had not tasted it since mid-summer, at which point it was not unpleasant, but not very good either. But now it’s actually quite good! Mellow, smooth, a little sweet, a good smoky tinge to it. I’ve not compared it side-by-side with some real stuff, but it’s definitely sip-able. It will never replace a properly made, fine whiskey, but still, much better than quite a lot of the cheap rotgut I drank in my younger days.
I declare success!
Since the flavor is derived from the alcohol going in and out of the wood, why not try shaking the jars instead of waiting for months. In the old days people used to prize whiskey that was made in the holds of ships because all the jostling made it better.
I’m sure it got a little bit of a shake whenever I opened it up, but yeah, I stopped intentionally stirring it after the first month for reasons I do not recall. I was probably just skeptical it was going to work at all.
But thank you, I will take heed of your comment for the next batch, maybe see if it reduces the “aging” time.
On our tour of the Bacardi distillery in Puerto Rico, we learned that they age their rum in used barrels they buy from Jack Daniels. We were told that JD only uses their barrels once, and Bacardi needs used barrels, so it’s a win-win arrangement. There’s a cooper at Bacardi, and apparently they clean, re-char, and scrape the barrels.
So let’s assume I procured some ‘fresh’ (un-aged) rum. I don’t know if anyone sells that, but let’s assume it’s available. Could I, like the OP, put chopped-up whisky barrels into Mason jars, fill it with the hypothetical rum, age it for a while, and expect tasty results?