Is Faster Whiskey Aging Possible? These Distillers Think Wood Chips Are the Answer.
When Bespoken Spirits founder Martin Janousek asked Jordan Spitzer to come try some whiskey out of his garage, Spitzer wasn’t sure what to expect. Janousek told him that instead of aging whiskey for years in barrels, he had tested using “microstaves” — small pieces of wood dropped inside whiskey to increase extraction and speed up the maturation timeline.
When Spitzer took a sip from a batch, Janousek prompted him for tasting notes.
“You want my honest opinion?” Spitzer asked. “Dog food.”
It was an inauspicious start. But out of the several batches Spitzer (now Bespoken’s Head of Flavor) tried that day in 2018, a handful weren’t so bad. Like so many Silicon Valley tech companies — and some whiskey brands — Bespoken took those garage-incubated ideas and evolved them into something a little more palatable for consumers.
The brand is now part of a larger trend of distillers experimenting with the, well, age-old question: How long does it take to produce good whiskey? Is there a way to bypass time? And how much can humans stretch — or in this case, condense — a natural process?
Reversing the Whiskey-in-Wood Relationship
Even casual whiskey drinkers are likely familiar with how it’s produced — and why aging is so important. The longer the spirit stays inside a barrel, the more flavor it extracts from the wood. The maturation vessel also works to soften the kick-you-in-your-face flavor of unaged whiskey, otherwise known as “white dog.”
“It’s a very controlled, gentle process, which allows characters about the grain and forest to shine through into a really interesting product,” says Seth DeBolt, director of the University of Kentucky’s Jim Beam Institute. “[The process] is a little bit of a miracle in itself.”
But now, producers wonder if there’s a way to refine that miracle with more science. What if, instead of putting whiskey in a barrel, you could get the barrel inside the spirit?
With wood chips thrown into whiskey, the surface area in contact with the spirit is increased. As that surface area and, by extension, extraction increase, the timeline to a finished product theoretically decreases. Several are in the throes of investigating this process now.
In Ohio, Tom Lix of Cleveland Whiskey adds lightly aged whiskey (aged from a month to two years) into a stainless-steel, pressure-capable vessel, then introduces one-inch-wide, cubed wooden staves. The whiskey stays in the vacuum vessel anywhere from 22 to 26 hours.
“These accelerated aging techniques, quote unquote, are really just accelerated extraction techniques. They can add a lot of extraction very quickly. They [producers] just have to do some work in other areas to balance it out.”
At Copper Fox Distillery in Virginia, Rick Wastmund uses wood chips about half the size of a hockey puck, which are submerged inside the whiskey in cheesecloth bags (about the size of a volleyball). When he sent off a batch to the Scotch Whisky Research Institute — a batch that had never been in a barrel, and had only been “chipped” for six weeks — Wastmund says the organization estimated the spirit was between seven and eight years old.
Bespoken, which started in that California garage but has since opened a facility in Lexington, Ky., uses a laser to cut one whole stave into about 100 microstaves roughly the size of a finger. The brand uses a gas chromatography flame ionization detector to measure the content of ethanol, acetic acid, and ethyl acetate — markers of age.
Possibility and Skepticism
Naturally, there is skepticism among purists that these new methods can yield whiskey that rivals traditionally aged products.
“These accelerated aging techniques, quote unquote, are really just accelerated extraction techniques,” said Andrew Wiehebrink, director of research and innovation at the Independent Stave Company. “They can add a lot of extraction very quickly. They [producers] just have to do some work in other areas to balance it out.”
Wiehebrink points to four pillars of maturation: extraction, oxidation, reactions, and subtraction. The potential problem with rapid extraction is that the rest of the components don’t catch up.
“He sort of looks at the wood as a marketing tool: ‘I found this 200-year-old piece of wood, I’m going to chop it up and throw it in the whiskey, and you’re going to think of that old tree when you’re consuming this.’”
“There is no substitute for time,” says Heaven Hill master distiller Conor O’Driscoll, who’s worked in production and facility manager roles at Brown Forman, Woodford Reserve, and Angel’s Envy. “Any enhanced maturation products I’ve tasted don’t stack up. … It’s like instant coffee versus a really fresh espresso.”
Some innovators bristle at the idea that these processes actually have anything to do with speed. Rather, it’s a novel way to add complexity and create something completely new.
Doug Hall, co-founder of Brain Brew Distillery in Newtown, Ohio, is tightlipped about his process — how long it takes, the size of the wood pieces he uses, etc. But his experimentation with other woods besides oak — materials that might not work for traditional whiskey barrels — has caught the attention of some in the industry.
“Doug Hall is really the one who changed my mind on it,” says Erik Owens, president of the American Distilling Institute. “He sort of looks at the wood as a marketing tool: ‘I found this 200-year-old piece of wood, I’m going to chop it up and throw it in the whiskey, and you’re going to think of that old tree when you’re consuming this.’”
What’s in a Name?
As producers try to figure out what combination of technology, woods, and processes could potentially make faster whiskey, they’re also trying to figure out how to actually describe what they do. Is it speed-aging? Rapid maturation? Wood finishing?
“I think the term I’ve landed on more is spirit finishing,” Owens says. “It’s not really about aging or maturation. It’s about rounding out that final product, pushing the things we don’t like out of there through energy … then introducing new and unique flavors.”
“I think the people that have been part of the growth of bourbon in the last 10–15 years have been coming to the category because they appreciate the tradition, nuance, handcraftedness, experience, and story.”
The industry is also still figuring out labeling terminology and consumer potential. Bespoken lists its products as “bourbon whiskey” or “rye whiskey,” followed by the phrase “finished with oak staves.” At Copper Fox, Wastmund’s whiskeys are a “specialty product” that can’t make age representations on the label.
Without traditional terminology, how consumers respond is a lingering question. Will people purchase a “whiskey distilled from bourbon mash” or a product “finished with oak staves” — or will they ask, as Spitzer describes, “What is that and why is it not a bourbon?”
“I think there are people that will never be swayed,” Wastmund says. “But I think that’s a small minority. I think there’s plenty of people willing to try what you have. If what you have is worthy, then it’s worthy.”
Lix says he’s conducted 3,600 blind taste tests of his rapid-aged product against a highly respected and widely available Kentucky bourbon brand, and consumers chose his product 54 percent of the time. Hall says his products are favored about 60 percent of the time when tasted alongside a more traditional product that costs twice as much.
But people don’t just buy a product on a shelf. They buy a story, and their place in it. And that’s where traditional whiskey has always buttered its bread.
“I think the people that have been part of the growth of bourbon in the last 10–15 years have been coming to the category because they appreciate the tradition, nuance, handcraftedness, experience, and story,” says Four Roses master distiller Brent Elliott, who’s worked in the bourbon industry for 20 years. “I don’t think they’d reach for (rapid-aged products) on the shelf.”
The Economic Value of Mystique vs. Efficiency
At the end of the day, whiskey is not just whiskey. It’s a business. And some distillers see a couple problems with today’s industry that they believe rapid maturation technology can solve.
One is balancing aging alongside fluctuating demand. Speed aging technology wouldn’t solve an oversupply problem in the market. But if demand rises, it’s tough to quickly accelerate production of, say, a 10-year-old traditionally aged whiskey.
“I don’t think it’s going to be any time soon where somebody nails this down and can take a 2-year-old whiskey and turn it into a 23-year-old whiskey.’”
“You can’t crank up production [of whiskey] like cornflakes or computer parts,” Lix said. “You’ve got to make it, put it in a barrel, and wait and wait and wait. … With us, you can sort of scale your production.”
The other macro-level issue some see with traditional whiskey aging is the lack of consistency. Hall is steadfast about this: Quality, he says, is not a specific recipe or a number of years aged in a barrel. Quality is removing variation from the process.
But does streamlining and driving out any deviation kill the magic?
“It’s exciting as a producer to have natural variability,” Elliott says. “I think part of the appeal of bourbon is the fact you have to be patient. … You can’t just make it one day in a machine and spit it out in a bottle.”
How Far Can Technology Take Whiskey Aging?
When these techy innovations hit the market, is something vital about whiskey lost? Or are streamlined processes just a natural next step in the evolution of an industry? More importantly, do these processes work?
“I don’t think it’s going to be any time soon where somebody nails this down and can take a 2-year-old whiskey and turn it into a 23-year-old whiskey,” Wiehebrink says. “I don’t think all the variables have been solved for. … Maybe at one point it could be, but I think we’re a long way away.”
“I’d like to remain open-minded,” O’Driscoll says. “It’s like saying we were never going to fly faster than the speed of sound, the world was never round. … Maybe there’s an algorithm and machine that goes ‘ping’ that can replicate [barrel-aged whiskey], but I haven’t seen it yet.”
At its core, making whiskey has always been a balance between art and science, innovation and tradition. Evolution has been a vital part of the lore, too. Some see rapid-aging, wood-finishing — whatever you want to call it — as just the next chapter in whiskey’s layered history.
“The whiskeys being made today don’t use the same grain, don’t use the same yeast, don’t use the same wood, don’t use the same process control, don’t use the same water filtration process,” Hall says. “Everything has changed. There’s nobody making whiskey like they made it in 1850. There’s nobody making whiskey the way they made it 50 years ago. So there’s a mythos of tradition.”
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