The Charred barrel in Bourbon and Scotch

There's a lot of history and 'lore' behind bourbon so discuss both here.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Wed Jun 07, 2006 10:44 am

I agree with Chuck and Gary that there may not have been a single moment when they decided to age whiskey in charred barrels, but I do think that there was one when they decided to market whiskey and charred barrels and that is the birth of bourbon.

The most frustrating thing I have found in researching the subject has been finding specific mention to charred barrels. When talking about 18th century barrels of whiskey there is never mention of whether the barrels are charred or not. Aging whiskey in an uncharred barrel will give the whiskey some wood characteristics such as vanilla, but not the color and the caramel. It is charring of barrels that holds the key to the success of American whiskeys.

In the 1870's E H Taylor, Jr. corresponds with a grocer in Atlanta who wanted his whiskey unaged like they used to make it. Taylor has the barrels special made to prevent the wood from affecting the whiskey too much. It should be remembered that many of the farmer distillers were making only gallons of whiskey at a time and their primary storage vessel was not the barrel but the jug, Jugs could often be made cheaper and if your season's output was 100 gallons, 10 jugs would be more practical than 2 or 3 barrels, allowing the farmer to barter with 10 people rather than just two or three.

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Unread postby gillmang » Wed Jun 07, 2006 11:41 am

I looked last night at M'Harry (1809) again. Since he wrote about a decade after the turn of the century, one can take it that the practice he described was well-established in the latter 1700's. He advises to "sweeten" (cleanse from off odours) vessels used to prepare whiskey and his comments clearly apply to barrels as well. There are a number of statements in the book on this, I'll collect them and put them here later. He says to clean wooden vessels, one way is to put burning straw or other burning materials in them and turn them over. As other evidence has shown, this was an old English "London Cooper's Practice" (per a late 1800's Household Cyclopedia I mentioned here some time ago). Straw can flare up hot and fast like a modern gas fire. It is evident these vessels were burned black (often). Some whiskey would have been sent to market in small or other barrels so treated. He does not, when speaking of an "aged taste", distinguish between charred barrel and non-charred barrel aging but bear in mind the aging wasn't that long to make a large difference or at least the difference wasn't yet noticed or recognised in stylistic terms.

He says sweetened barrels will give "color" and "may" give some "taste" to the spirit and as I said earlier, he viewed this as a disadvantage only for buyers who wanted non-flavored whiskey to add to brandy or rum to extend them. Also, in his costing examples of running a distillery, he refers to needing so many cords of wood. It is evident these were used for fermenting and distilling vessels and whiskey barrels (he devotes a separate section to the best wood and advises white oak, just as used for bourbon today). Then he works in transport costs and gives an example of a market 60 miles (not 20 as I thought earlier from memory) from distillery. 60 miles. Some whiskey may have gone to market in stoneware but most would have gone on packet horses and horse carts in wood (there can be little doubt of this especially when you factor in his concerns about selling whisky with taste and color). You send whiskey bouncing on a pack horse 60 miles over hill and dale and then it sits for months (sometimes) in different conditions of climate and you have ... bourbon. There can be no doubt about this in my mind. Lenell said the new Hudson Baby Bourbon was aged only three months and (or the distillery website mentions) that the whiskey took good color and flavor - in three months. I don't doubt this for a moment. I tasted privately rebarreled bourbons and rums that Doug Phillips kindly gave me that in a few months became significantly darker and sweeter tasting from the second barreling - from the greater surface area of the small charred barrels doing its work faster than in much larger standard industry ones. Also, M'Harry says the town markets to which the whiskey was sent developed in the last "20 years", i.e., from 1790 on and I'd have to think it began before that.

I think they had bourbon then in the later 1700's, this was the "aged taste" M'Harry is talking about and it would have started on farms and local grocers and small towns and then grown from there. If someone stored whiskey himself in a shed or barn on his farm, in a few months it would take good color just like the Baby Bourbon has, i.e., even without long shipment. This would have come from using sweetened casks which were cleansed by fire and the drink must have developed naturally without aforethought, but once the aged taste was appreciated and compared favorably to imported liquors, the circle was tied to contemporary European practice where aged liquors were liked (France for brandy, also the places where rum was imported, and I believe Scotland and England for some malt whisky). The Europeans may have toasted the barrels less, but on the other hand likely just stored them longer. The Scots may have done ditto but even if they liked clean new barrels, they may just have kept whisky for a long enough time for it to take color or (what I think) used sherry or port casks to hasten the process. They all got to the same place, but in different ways. At the same time, clearly into the 1870's many preferred as an historical hangover (ahem) the taste of very young or unaged whiskey. There is still a market for it in the form of corn whiskey and Georgia Moon and (where still consumed) the true moonshine. This is my interpretation from reading M'Harry's Practical Distiller and Byrn's book on the same topic of 65 years later.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Fri Jun 09, 2006 10:28 am

Gary,
I am not sure how much char would be created by simply burning straw in the barrel. This is an experiment I would like to see done. I suspect that it will heat the inside and burn any splinters that would hold bacteria and such, thus help keep the product from developing off flavors, but I I am not sure that it would actually create a level of char. As you point out, straw does burn quickly but it would not reach the levels of heat that modern gas burning flames used by today's cooperage. I suspect there may have been a toasting of the barrel, which would help break down the wood releasing some vanilla flavors, but not charring and the caramels associated with the heavier char levels. I think there needs to be a distinction between sweetening the barrel and charring the barrel.

The color from a toasted but not charred barrel will be more yellow than red. This color will develop in the aged product, but flavor will be much slower to develop. I think that may be what M'Harry is discussing in his book.

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Unread postby gillmang » Fri Jun 09, 2006 11:16 am

Mike: Maybe, but look at the link below under "London Coopers". The same term, "sweetening", is used as one finds in M'Harry. You'll note a "brisk fire" is mentioned which will "char completely" the inside of the barrel. This is written about 60-70 years after M'Harry wrote, not that long. True, it doesn't mean his barrels were blackened, but I think stuffed with burning straw that might do it. It would be interesting to see experiments done this way, absolutely. If the link doesn't work just input "London Coopers" and "Household Cyclopedia", it will come up right away, and scroll down about 3/4ers the page.

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Unread postby EllenJ » Fri Jun 09, 2006 9:31 pm

Like Chuck, I think you're both saying the same thing.

I'd like to add another view that I think reinforces both, with other examples.

It's so often emphasized how similar we are to our ancestors that we can sometimes forget however different things can get in VERY short time. You see, it was the choo-choo that changed everything. The railroads connected the producers (of whiskey, pigs, leather, whatever) with the market, even the retail market. Before that, the producers didn't have the time or resources to haul their products to where the retail buyers were. One of the things I've long said here and on our webpage, and that William Hogeland reinforces in his Whiskey Rebellion book, is that the requirement for a western distiller to travel overland to Philadelphia and back would simply leave him bankrupt. Producers took their products no further than the nearest wholesaler, sold it to him, and tried to get back home in time for supper (at least figuratively). In the 18th century, those who didn't were likely to find they had no home to return to. Life was hard on the frontier. Papa didn't have a spare six to ten weeks to haul four barrels of whiskey to the big city.

The wholesaler, perhaps located in Greensburg or Crab Orchard, would buy a barrel from this distiller, two barrels from that one. He might even have had a route and picked them up at the farms, just as dairy associations and fruit co-ops do to this day. Since the quality probably varied dramatically (as it also does with milk and peaches), the merchant most likely mixed products to maintain a dependable product profile. At least those merchants who were successful would have. He would also have transferred the whiskey from whatever the distiller brought it in to his own barrels, which were standardized for use with his mule tackle or wagons. When the the merchant had accumulated enough barrels to make a trans-Allegheney trip profitable, he would set one up. Until then, the barrels sat in his warehouse, aging.

Uh, did I say "aging"? As in, "carefully being laid down in order to mature gracefully, enhancing the depth and subtle nuances of the emerging whiskey product"?

Naah.. I meant "aging" as in, "waiting". Consider that most of that whiskey was produced between the time the grain was harvested in the Fall and when it would otherwise have rotted. Now consider that the Alleghenies were essentially impossible to traverse from late November until late spring. Now consider that, when the mountains could again be crossed, the merchant had far more perishible products to ship than whiskey.

And then, this merchant's destination would likely be, not Philadelphia or Baltimore, but Carlisle or Cumberland or Frederick, where the buyer might leave those barrels to sit in another warehouse for long periods. Remember, whiskey doesn't spoil, while other merchandise they are working with does.

The 1830s brought the Pufferbellies virtually (and sometimes literally) to the distiller's door, allowing him to ship his product directly to the final markets. At least some of which might have been horrified at the new-make whiskey being offered for sale! I think it would have been at about this point that the concept of making whiskey brown and oaky on purpose might have begun.

That timeframe also corresponds with the documented beginnings of bourbon, and also of the Pennsylvania and Maryland rye whiskey industry that displaced the original Monongahela.
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:41 am

John,
You make some interesting points but...

I think you Should not emphasis trains so much as the steam engine. Stemboats started the transportation revolution that trains completed. This also places better transportation ahead of your schedule about 20 years as well since steamboats are running the Ohio River in the 1820's. Trains do not really connect the west to the markets of the east until the 1840's.

Bourbon is being advertised in Kentucky in the late teens, about the same time as steamboats are starting up and down the Ohio / Mississippi Rivers. Now what makes bourbon different from the corn whiskey is the aging in CHARRED barrels, not just barrels that have been sweetened with some heat and lightly toasted. At least that is the evidence points to in my opinion. John is right that many things have changed in the last 200 years and knowledge that was common then is not readily available today. I think there should be an experiment to see how much char a barrel full of straw will give a barrel.

I have asked Chris Morris about the chance to get an uncharred barrel to do this experiment and he has said he could do so. I think I will have to do just that and get a barrel and a couple of bales of straw. Here is how I would do this experiment but if Gary, John, Chuck or anyone else has any suggestion, let me know.

I would take an uncharred barrel without heads and place it on two concrete blocks to form a chimney. I would then fill the barrel with some loose straw, not tightly packed so that it would burn even, but with enough straw to burn a few minutes before burning out. I would use some high proof alcohol for a starting agent pouring it in with the straw as I filled the barrel. I would light the straw from the bottom to let the flames burn up the barrel to increase the chances for the charring. I would let it burn itself out unless I thought the barrel was catching on fire in which case I would use a barrel head to smother the flames.

That would tell us what we need to know. I suspect the flames would burn out in a few minutes leaving the barrel toasted with some black soot, but no real char.

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Unread postby EllenJ » Sat Jun 10, 2006 2:59 pm

Mike, I was looking more broadly than just Kentucky bourbon and its relationship to New Orleans. You are quite correct about the steamboats and their contribution, as we've often discussed. But bourbon, or at least the kind that came in new charred oak barrels, wasn't around then, and the Pennsylvania rye that was around was marketed in Philadelphia and Baltimore.

Kind of a long walk from the nearest Ohio River steamboat, wouldn't you agree? :D

Also, although I did say the Choo-Choo arrived in the 1830's, I do agree with you that railroads didn't actually become useful for east-west transportation until the '40s or early '50s.

However, I'm a little confused by your reference to bourbon being advertised "in the late teens".
These are items I've taken from your own time line here on this forum...

1. 1821 - The first known advertisement for bourbon is printed in the Bourbon County newspaper, Western Citizen, as the firm Stout and Adams advertises "Bourbon Whiskey by the barrel or keg." (Crowgey, Kentucky Bourbon, p.120).
Well, as some of our wannabee (and future) bourbon enthusiasts are only all-too-well-aware, '21 just isn't close enough to "the teens" to score. :cry:
Besides, the timeline item fails to mention that the Crowgey article goes on to stress that the term "bourbon whiskey" was used only locally for the next several years (sort of like saying, "Support Your Local Distiller - buy this fine BOURBON whiskey, not that fancy imported stuff"). The word "bourbon" didn't become more widespread until the 1840s (same source)

2. 1836 - Dr. James C Crow hired by Pepper as distiller. Credited with first using residue from the previous batch of sour mash to prepare new batch. (C Cowdery, Hert. James E Pepper).
Crow is often thought of as the father of modern bourbon, but despite my relationship with "the Goddess" it's a long way from "the teens" to '36.

3. 1846 - "First printed mention of Bourbon of which writer is aware." (Carson, Soc Hist B p49).
(see what Crowgey had to say, #1)
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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:07 pm

John,
I stand corrected on the first advertisement of bourbon in Kentucky. What I was thinking is production of aged bourbon takes aging of a year or two. And then you have to convince people this new process is a good thing to sell it. There was probably a period of a few years where bourbon was made and sold without advertisement of the product, so bourbon production would start in the late teens - right after the whiskey tax from the war of 1812 was repealed in 1817. This would allow distillers and grocers to age the product without the added taxes on the whiskey lost to the angels.

Steamboats were important on other rivers besides the Ohio. The nation also had many canals built in the first three decades of the 19th century until the railroads made them obsolete. John Corlis' friends in Providence, R.I. mourn the coming of the railroads in the early 1830's because it is destroying their investments in several canals - investment that had made them big money for over twenty years. By the 1820's Pittsburg was well connected to the east coast even before the railroads. Railroads simply sped up the delivery.

I have always considered Carson as a book that should be taken with a grain of salt. I have had trouble tracing his sources before and I know he cites sources from the wrong collections. The prime example for me is the letter from Orlando Brown mentioning red liquor. That letter is cited as being in the Filson, but it is not there and there is no indication that it ever was. I suspect he looked at the letter in Frankfort at the KHS and screwed up his citation. Other things he discusses and footnotes are equally difficult to find.

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Unread postby gillmang » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:17 pm

Mike, to assist you and Chris to do the straw experiment, here is the part from Samuel M'Harry's Practical Distiller (1809) which explains the process:

"To Sweeten Hogsheads by Burning. When you have scalded your hogsheads well put into each, a large handful of oat or rye straw, set it on fire, and stir it till it is in a blaze, then turn the mouth of the hogshead down; the smoke will purify and sweeten the cask. [Note here he uses a synonym for barrel, so clearly and without question he sweetened barrels with burning straw, plus other statements in the book confirm this]. The process should be repeated every other day, especially during summer, it will afford you good working casks, provided your yeast be good, and your hogsheads are well mashed".

Admittedly, the process of repetition of the burning, plus the comment about the effect of "smoke" (not fire per se), may suggest that the vessels were toasted at most inside but not burned. But this is not clear. Large vessels for mashing and fermentation may have been so large as not really susceptible of charring in this way, so repeated smoke action may have been needed to keep them sweet. But a small barrel used to hold finished whiskey may have been burned by this process. Remember too the London Coopers process from the later 1800's which spoke of "sweetening", same term, by "charring".

In M'Harry's section on giving an "aged flavor" to "whiskey", he states that whiskey should be filtered before doubling in flannel and maple charcoal (just as George Dickel does today, they put flannel blankets at the bottom of the leaching vats, but they do it after doubling, not before). Then he advises to filter after doubling in "flannel". So this was a double Lincoln County-type process. Then he says, a little oddly to our ears, to add to a hogshead of the "clarified" (he means filtered through flannel and charcoal) whiskey "one pound of Bohea tea" and leave the hogshead in the sun for two weeks and after that the whiskey will have the flavor of aged whiskey. Tea is famously tannic. He is talking about imitating the taste of "aged whiskey". So evidently naturally aged whiskey was whiskey kept for a time in wooden sweetened barrels that imparted a tannic taste. Also, aging for long enough in wood would have removed the off-tastes of new distillations, as it does today. For M'Harrry's instant aged whiskey, his double filtration in maple charcoal and flannel took out the hog tracks just as Jack Daniel's charcoal leaching (done once after the doubling) does today and so removed fusel oils in this alternate way - some of them anyway. My point is, by necessary inference and comparison to his tannic but clean instant aged whisky, we can see that naturally aged whiskey was non-congeneric (or less congeneric than new spirit) and tannic - like bourbon. But did it taste like bourbon? I think it did but I can't prove it from the book, it is tantalisingly unclear on this point. But if you put 2 and 2 together you can come to this conclusion I think. If I am wrong, his naturally aged whiskey might have tasted something like a young Canadian whisky. But in another part of the book, he is talking about sending spirit to towns to use for blending with brandy and beer and it has to be unflavored for this purpose. Now listen to what he says: "New barrels will most certainly impart color, and perhaps some taste, which would injure the sale, if intended for a commercial town market, and for brewing, or mixing with spirits, from which it is to receive its flavor. For MY OWN USE (my emphasis), I would put this spirit [i.e., filtered through flannel and charcoal] into a NICE SWEET CASK (my emphasis again)...". Then he advises to add a pint of browned wheat to it. He is saying (I think) for his own use, new barrels are fine and if you can't keep them long enough add tea to darken the spirit (he also advises caramel or burned wheat in pther parts of the book, clearly these were alternate systems) - to make it taste like bourbon.

Again we have to remember he is talking about making palatable whiskey for immediate consumption. I think we can conclude that these casks were often charred at least to a no. 1 spec in our terms today and long aging would have rendered bourbon, and where it had to be imitated, he showed you how. The evidence is stronger certainly if the straw burning would blacken the inside of the size of cask used then to store whiskey. If it doesn't blacken it, I agree the case for bourbon existing then is weakened - existing at least in PA, where he lived and worked.

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Unread postby bourbonv » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:40 pm

Gary,
In my opinion, your arguemnet fell apart with one phrase - "a large handful of oat or rye straw,". A single handfull of straw would not char a barrel. The fuel would burn too quick and not nearly hot enough to catch an oak board on fire, let alone the inside of an oak barrel. He is talking about toasting at the most and I am not sure he would get even a toast of the wood. If done repeatedly, there would be plenty of soot in the barrel and that would give the whiskey a smokey flavor, more like scotch than bourbon.

Wood is going to react with alcohol even in the uncharred state. According to Chris Morris at the Bourbon Academy this uncharred wood impart some vanilla flavors, but only slowly. Toasting the barrel helps breack down the celluloss and speed up the process of releasing vanilla flavors. The whiskey would get more of a yellow color. Still, without charring, there would not be the caramel flavor and the red color.

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Unread postby gillmang » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:50 pm

You may be right Mike. I did not really focus on the word "handful". However the issue of repetition, which you advert to, could have resulted in a pretty sooty barrel - at what point does it become a heavy toast/light char? Also, small barrels intended for aging (for long holding) simply may have been charred because they weren't going to hold liquid temporarily like his mashing vessels (or temporarily in batches anyway) - again London Coopers charred casks. English-speaking Americans came from England (some) and other parts of Britain - this process would have come over on the ships. It can't have been invented in the mid-1800's, that is impossible. I take your main point Mike because also, he wouldn't want to burn down his production equipment and recall his book is focused on making whiskey for immediate consumption. But he was aware of what natural aging was. Casks were clearly in my view charred sometimes to sweeten them. He made imitation aged whiskey - it could have imitated bourbon (but it also could not have, I agree). Other books from this period also talk about use of straw to clean casks. I don't have the main other book, by Harrison Hall, do you (I think it is 1820's-era - may fill a gap)?

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Unread postby cowdery » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:55 pm

It is wrong to assume that any use, especially early use, of the term "bourbon" is intended to refer to whiskey aged in a charred barrel. Bourbon, initially, indicated place (as in region) of origin and nothing more. "Bourbon" whiskey was different from other whiskey known at the time because it was made primarily from corn, not because it was aged in charred barrels.

Here I should also acknowledge for readers other than the participants of this discussion that this is a point on which Mike and I have long and genially disagreed.
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Unread postby gillmang » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:07 pm

You know a funny thought occurs to me.

If Mike is right that aged whisky meant just clean (more or less) spirit lightly flavored with oak (like Scots grain whisky, or Canadian whisky which is very similar), then M"Harry's aged whiskey - all his whiskey was made from corn, rye and malt - tasted like a 3 year old Scotch grain whisky, say, or Seagram 5 Star or maybe Barrel Select. The Loyalists had gone to Canada before 1809 (or most of them). If there was no bourbon/straight rye/variant mash straights (like Michter's Pot Still Sour Mash Whiskey) in 1809, what did they bring to Canada? Not red layer straight whiskey but a lighter tasting oak-influenced spirit, which they still make today. In other words maybe the Canadian taste is not a later 1800's industrialised form of whisky but the American aged pre-bourbon!

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Unread postby gillmang » Sat Jun 10, 2006 9:46 pm

I want to go back to early 1800's distilling in America but my "funny thought" above may be of interest to some, especially John.

Tim Dellinger, a contributor to straightbourbon.com, went to the library last year and found some early American distilling books. In addition to M'Harry's, he found one by Krafft (clearly a Germanic name there), Hall whom I've mentioned above and Boucherie (sounds French-origin). These latter 3 wrote earlier than I thought, between 1813 and the 1820's. Tim wrote in a post on SB (and he didn't claim to be exhaustive), or that is how I read him, that Hall's book addresses use of the charred barrel to change flavor - not just to sterilise - but in relation to mashing and fermenting vessels only (intriguing unto itself). Tim also indicated that the long aging in cask of whiskey seems foreign to these writers who did however show that they knew the shipment of liquors would improve them (as I saw myself in M'Harry). These books are apparently available in libraries. Tim also found British distilling texts from somewhat earlier on the theory (with which I agree) that they would point to analagous American practice, at least to a point. He has a list of these.

When I put together what I read in M'Harry, when Tim said (again, provisionally) about these other books, and what Mike said about when the tax was repealed, it seems (at least until these books are closely examined) there is a good case to say that bourbon as we know it today (and I agree with Chuck it may have meant something different originally, or in different places) only developed as a consequence of, the tax repeal. It surely existed "under the radar" before and certainly would have existed in the teen years of the 1800's before the first ads appeared (things don't come from nowhere) and probably earlier here and there, but only really got going when the tax repeal made sense for aging to be systematic. I think it did exist before though, distillers would have known about it and made it for themselves and some freinds, or some would have, I think. We don't need to wait for Crow - his work resulted in the systematic, purposeful use of charred barrels (in addition to his work on sour mash which seems better known) but Crow didn't start the charred barrel.

Gary

P.S. In M'Harry's chpater containing detailed budgets for a whiskey distillery, there is no reference to taxes. (This is 1809). Why?
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Unread postby cowdery » Sun Jun 11, 2006 4:39 am

There was no federal excise tax on spirits between 1802 and 1812.
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