Do you need a barrel to get oak flavour into a home spirit

Do you need a barrel to get oak flavour into a home spirit

Somebody will tell you that if it hasn't sat in wood it isn't the real thing, and that line gets passed around sheds and forums until it sounds like a rule rather than an opinion. It's worth pulling apart, because a barrel does a specific set of things to a spirit and only some of them are things you can reproduce at home, and only some of them are things you actually want.

The licence bit, said plainly

Owning a still is lawful and selling them is lawful, and running one to actually distil spirits at home without an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO isn't, so if you're going down that road the licence is the part to sort out first. Adding an essence to a base spirit you bought is a completely different activity and it needs no licence at all. The whole thing is written up in making your own spirits at home without breaking the law.

What a barrel is actually doing

Oak contributes vanillin and tannin along with the colour, and the charred layer filters out some of the harsher compounds over time. On top of that, a barrel breathes, so the spirit is very slowly oxidising and losing volume while it sits, and that slow loss is the part distillers call the angel's share. All of that's real and all of it takes years at commercial scale in a temperature stable warehouse.

Why it's hard in a shed

• Surface area works against you. A small barrel has far more wood per litre than a big one, so it over oaks fast and the window between underdone and woody is short.
• Temperature swings. A shed that bakes by day and cools at night pushes spirit in and out of the wood much harder than a cellar does, which speeds everything up and makes it less predictable.
• Evaporation. Losing a meaningful share of a small batch hurts far more than losing the same percentage of a commercial run.
• You only get one go. A batch that goes too woody can't be walked back, and you won't know until the end.

What an oak flavouring does instead

An oak concentrate puts the oak derived character straight into the spirit in drops rather than months, and the honest description is that it gives you most of the flavour and none of the slow oxidation. What you gain is control, because you can taste as you go and stop exactly where you want, then write the dose down so the next bottle matches. What you give up is the very slow change that only time in wood produces. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on whether you would rather have a good bottle now or a lottery ticket in 18 months.

How to dose it

1. Start with a clean base spirit, because oak won't rescue a rough one.
2. Add oak a little at a time, somewhere in the range of 1ml to 10ml per litre depending on the product and how heavy you want it.
3. Stir, then leave it a couple of days before you judge it, since the flavour keeps rounding out after you stop.
4. Layer in a second note if you want one, and change only one thing per batch so you can tell what did what.
5. Write the dose on the bottle. Every single time.

The bit worth saying out loud

There's something genuinely nice about a barrel sitting in a shed and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. If you want one and you have the patience and the volume for it, go for it. What isn't true is that you need one, or that a spirit finished with an oak concentrate is somehow a lesser thing, because the only test that matters is what's in the glass and whether you can make it again.

Shop related products

• Still Spirits Oak Cask 50ml. The general purpose oak character, and the one to start with.
• Still Spirits Mellow Oak Spirit Flavouring 50ml. Softer and rounder, for when Oak Cask is too much.
• Still Spirits Cedar Oak Profile 50ml. A drier, more resinous oak note to layer underneath.
• Still Spirits Top Shelf Whiskey Essence 50ml. The base profile most people are oaking over.

Did you know we also stock the Still Spirits Sweet Vanillin and the whisky profile range in the shop, and they aren't on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest is in the Still Spirits collection and the wider homebrew collection.

If you want a hand narrowing it down, Brewhilder is our homebrew adviser and it will walk you through it: Brewhilder.

Read next

• Making your own spirits at home without breaking the law.
• Building complex spirits without waiting months.
• Turning everyday spirits into craft level infusions.

I still like the idea of a barrel in the shed and I'm nowhere near patient enough to own one.

Candeece

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