by 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.
Gary
Last edited by
gillmang on Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.