OT - Synthetic Whiskey

I'd think you'd get a very oaky form of vodka.

There's more to whisky than oak, namely the original flavours of the grains. Although vodka is also made from grain most of the time, the flavours are filtered out in commercial vodka. I don't think there's a way to add that in.

wd41

You could make a wheat wine, fortify the heck out of it with everclear, then try aging it.

As I understand it, distilled spirits are not generally aged in a plain oak cask to pick up oak flavours, but in a charred oak cask so that the charcoal absorbs the fusel oils and other things that make pure distillate undrinkable.

Cheers,

You could make a wheat wine, fortify the heck out of it with everclear, then try aging it.

As I understand it, distilled spirits are not generally aged in a plain oak cask to pick up oak flavours, but in a charred oak cask so that the charcoal absorbs the fusel oils and other things that make pure distillate undrinkable.

Cheers,

Well, I don't know if I would call it "Whiskey" but you will definately have an oak flavoured vodka. I have done it before and it is not all that bad.

Perhaps this forum could give you more answers to your question.

rec.crafts.distilling

You can buy charred oak barrels and you can make something a lot like Canadian whiskey with them.

Basically you fill the charred barrel up with vodka/everclear mix ( you need the higher proof as alcohol will evaporate).

You will NOT get something like a fine scotch or burbon though. When those makers distill their spirits they leave a lot of the extra "stuff" in there that gives it the flavor. You can buy this stuff "Shine On" which is unaged corn whiskey, taste that along side vodka and you will see what I mean.

Now, what woudl be interesting is if yuou made a wheat or corn wine, mixed it liberally with everclear (you want it to be something like 67% alcohol going into the barrel) and then age that in charred oak. That may be interesting.

There seems to be a consensus that a significant part of a spirit's character comes from the, um I'm not sure what the terminology is, raw material that it was distilled from. I thought the whole point of distilling was to separate the ethanol from everything else, and that if you had done a thorough job, there wouldn't be much difference between something distilled from fermented corn, wheat, or barley - maybe even wine. So maybe my premise was wrong. If so, the idea of using a wheat or other grain wine might be worth a try. Or just adding a quantity of beer.

Thanks for all the input. I'm still mulling the idea, and I will see what the good people on rec.crafts.distilling have to say.

Erroll

there are 3 phases to a alcohol distillation, the first part, called the heads (some people further divide this up into two more categories, but we will not get into that) contains most of the methanol and ethyl acetate. Every distilliation gets rid of that fraction, because it will make you sicker than sick

The next part to come off the still is the ethanol fraction This is for the most part pure ethanol and water. This is what is kept for the largest proportion of all distillations.

That last bit is the tails. The tails contain things like isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) and other fuesel alcohols that are part of the certain fermentation and are dependant on the starting material. Different whiskeys keep a differnt proportion of these to give the whiskey flavor. That is why scotch still retains some of the smoked malt character, and burbon keeps the corn character and why neither tastes like canadian whiskey which does not keep any of the tails and has no character of the starting material. That is also why Rum and tequilla have their specific flavcors and why none of them taste like vodka. Vodka is basically a neutral spirit. you can make vodka from anything because you do not keep any of the tails involved with them. Canadian whiskey keeps very little of the tails and then ages it in charred oak for some flavor and color.

Maybe that is why I like Canadian Whiskey the best of all.

Thanks Droopy,

That's just the sort of information I was looking for, and it makes the reasoning behind your Canadian whiskey recommendation much more clear. I think I'll try something like that. Though I'll be using a glass jug, not a barrel.

Errol