466 - What's The Impact Of Stave Seasoning and Char? with Andrew Wiehebrink of Independent Stave Company

Bourbon Pursuit

Hobbies, Food, Arts, Leisure

4.9 • 866 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2024

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The barrel is where the magic happens and it takes years for your whiskey to achieve it's optimal flavor. Most of us are familiar with the standard american white oak barrel with a char 4. Yet, there are hundreds, if not, thousands of combinations that go into creating a barrel from the wood species, stave seasoning, char, toasting and how it ages based on location in a geography or a floor in a warehouse. There's one guy that does all this research and that's Andrew Wiehebrink from Independent Stave. This is his third time on the show and this time he brings different aging experiments for us to taste through. We taste the same whiskey from different levels of a warehouse and even the same american single malt aged in texas and scotland. We also dive into the state of the barrel shortage, our shared distain of amburana, the shift to char 1, and what new innovations are coming from the barrel and oak alternative market. Show Notes: Above the Char with Fred Minnick (@fredminnick) talks about will today's bottles be a new dusty. Talk about what stave seasoning does for the whiskey Why does Kentucky have more extraction than Texas? What does elevation from levels on a warehouse do to the aging process? How often do you revisit experiments? Does the mashbill make a difference to your experiments? Would American Single Malt make more sense to use new vs used barrels? What did the location differences for American Single Malt experiments make? Has the barrel shortage been resolved? Do you research the human element and what consumers are looking for in taste? What do you think of Amburana and exotic wood species? How are you smoking barrels? Why is Char 1 creating a darker whiskey and are there diminishing returns? Does pot vs column still play a role? Where are oak alternatives heading? How do you design a barrel correctly for double oaking? Support this podcast on Patreon

Transcript

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0:00.0	You know, it's so fun. I think Amberana, I mean, it had it's going to be like the nickelback of what's going to happen.
0:06.6	Everybody's going to start making fun of it and they're not really sure why.
0:38.4	This is Bourbon Pursuit, the official podcast of Bourbon, bringing to you the best in news, reviews, and interviews, with people making the bourbon whiskey industry happen. And I'm one of your host, Kenny Coleman. The barrel is where the magic happens, and it takes years for your whiskey to achieve its optimal flavor. And most of us are familiar with that standard American white
0:44.0	oak barrel with char level number four, yet there are hundreds, if not thousands of combinations
0:49.2	that go into creating a barrel from the wood species, stave seasoning, char levels, toasting profiles,
0:55.8	and how it ages based on location in geography or a floor inside of a single warehouse.
1:01.2	And there's one guy that does all this research, and that's Andrew Weebrink from Independence
1:06.7	Dave. This is now his third time on the show because, let's face it, he brings a ton of knowledge
1:11.7	and interesting things to this, but he brings some different aging experience for us to taste
1:15.8	through this time. We taste the same exact whiskey from different levels of a warehouse, and even
1:20.9	the same American single malt aged in Texas and Scotland. Then we also dive into the state of
1:26.8	barrel shortages, our shared disdain of Amberana,
1:30.4	the shift to Char 1, which are seeing to cross a lot of different players in the industry,
1:34.4	and what new innovations are coming from the barrel and oak alternative market.
1:38.8	With that, enjoy this week's episode, and now here's Fred Minnick with Above the Char.
1:42.9	I'm Fred Minnick, and this is Above the Char.
1:48.7	This week's idea comes from Andrew Durga, who writes me on Fred Minnick.com.
1:53.8	I have a question for you on Above the Char.
1:57.2	Do you see the bottles that are considered everyday drinkers like Buffalo Trace,
2:01.5	Maker's Mark, becoming dusty bottles?
2:05.5	Woo!
2:07.5	Andrew, Andrew, Andrew, you just done, opened up a can of worms up in my brain on something
	...

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