Draft #4 BA (Barrel-Aged)

I love how barrel-aging changes whiskey. I also fear it. Small barrels (1-5 liters in my case), can impart superb flavors from vanilla to nuttiness to toasted coconut. But they can also obscure subtlety with the overwhelming taste and scent of wood.

I used a new 5 liter toasted oak barrel from Red Head Barrels to age 1 liter of Draft #4 for a month. I didn’t want to lose too much volume to evaporation, so I kept the barrel in the coolest part of the kitchen for the duration. Thinking about it, it’s probably more appropriate to call the month this blend spent in the barrel ‘finishing’, given the fact that all the ingredients in the blend had already been aged.

The resulting liquid shone a beautiful mahogany red, yielding a pleasant, but far less complex nose than its un-oaked self. The palette followed suit, the barrel having significantly rounded and focused the flavor profile, adding a welcome heft to the mouthfeel as well. New wood dominated the finish. The overall result was very pleasant, perhaps even more universally appealing in a commercial sense, but it lacked the distinctiveness I expect from a 51 ingredient blend.

In order to integrate the changes wrought by the barrel with the complexity and breadth I appreciate from Draft #4, I took the extra step of blending 20% barrel-aged and 80% non-barrel-aged whiskeys together, bottling Draft#4 BA on August 4, 2020. This was also the first Draft to receive the newly minted 50 State Blend label, I’m eager to hear how this Draft is received.

Finally, I bottled about 500ml of 100% barrel-aged #4 and left 300ml in the 5 Liter Barrel to contribute to the next blend, solera style.