Water Bath Ageing

brewsmith

I recently came to own a sous vide immersion circulator which is used to heat a water bath to a very specific temperature and maintain it for any length of time. I have done a number of different "nuclear" treatments in the microwave and got to thinking how to apply the technique to larger volumes and thought the sous vide might work nicely.

I just diluted a peated scotch run to 65% and have 4L spilt to two 1/2 gal mason jars, one w/ 14g American oak and one with 14g French oak, both with a medium plus toast, and since these wont fit in my microwave I figured this would be a good batch to test the water bath on. What I was hoping the community would weigh in on what temperatures and times would work best and also the number of heating/cooling cycles. I was thinking something like 140F for 8 hrs then cooled to room temp, and repeated for a 2-3 cycles. I am also thinking about using this method in conjunction with standard long term ageing, to serve as a jump start of sorts. Thanks in advance for the input, I will be sure to post results as they come.

Smaug

Nice.

Looking forward to your observations.

Sadi

Looking forward to your results too.

Will you be capping the containers? or let angels have their share?

FullySilenced

I have been around Nukin a little bit... and have read about water bathing as well ...

I look forward to your trial. Good Luck! and have fun with it ... don't let the naysayers get ya down if you think it works.

FS

Lloyd

@FullySilenced said: ... don't let the naysayers get ya down if you think it works.

Amen, brother FS.
Every "crazy" experiment that was challenged by the naysayers has had value for our continued understanding of the art and often even contains a seed of brilliance and inspiration.

@brewsmith, I'd think the best trial would be to use the exact same protocols, same booze, same wood type and quantity, etc..., but vary the proof. Something like 75%, 70%, 65%... down to about, say, 50% ABV.
When you find that magic number it seems that recipe development (cooking time and temperatures) would be easier.

It could even be a two part recipe of something like 1 part 75% cooked for 3 hours at 140F and added to 2 parts of 50% cooked for 5 hours at 120F.

Exciting stuff.

brewsmith

Thanks for the show of faith everyone :) I agree @Lloyd, I think there is a lot of room to experiment here, and really expand on the idea of a 'recipe.' This also may enable some larger scale tests on flavour contributions of grain, wood, yeast etc. on a truncated time line. I also have a 15 gal HERMS system (aka a jumbo beer sous vide) that I use for pilot batch brewing at our brewery, so this ageing method could easily be scaled up to larger volumes fairly easily. I am thinking a 1/6 BBL keg or corny with oak and spirits in a bath already, but may be getting ahead of myself :)

@Sadi I will start by having the containers loosely capped whilst heating and then sealing them as they are cooling, ala the @FullySilenced method to pull a vacuum on the container as it cools. While I have no physics based data to back it up, it seems to me that this would only add to the effect of pulling the spirit in and out of the pores of the wood as it heats and cools, and therefore further speed the ageing process. I will being the experimentation tomorrow AM and keep y'all posted as I proceed.

punkin

Yes it's fullysilenceds method he coined it and he owns it. :))

TheMechWarrior

Fortune favours the brave :-bd

BenStiller

I like the idea but I feel the water bath is a bit an unnecessary constraint. A mini-fridge or a box with a heater inside controlled by a STC would give you more flexibility in the temperature swings. You could even setup an BCS or Arduino to do the temperature cycles automatically over a long period.

If you could somehow get information on temperature cycles in famous distillerie's warehouses, you could even try to reproduce them!

grim

@BenStiller - Here's a fun project based on that. Write a little program that uses the online weather data to monitor the temperature of the town in which your favorite barrelhouse is located. Just add a little fudge factor multiplier to account for heat gain inside (10%) the structure. Turn it on, let it rip. Your hot box could mimic, almost exactly, the temperature in a barrel house in Bardstown Kentucky, even though you might be on the other side of the world. You could probably even mimic humidity if you were so inclined. Like a little portal to another part of the world.

I used to own a huge reef aquarium and did exactly this. I monitored a bouy in a reef, and mimicked exactly the water temperature, wave height, and sunrise/set of Tuvalu. I shifted the time back a bit so that it was lit during the day, but it was fun to have people ask why the lights unexpectedly went down in the middle of the day, "must be a thunderstorm in Tuvalu".

TheMechWarrior

Temperature cycles vary dramatically between famous/award winning distilleries.

Take Japan and the relative low variation and compare this to Tasmania and the relative high variation and you couldn't get two more different whiskies yet both have won best in the world.

I wouln't worry too much about the cycle just yet.

Lets see what this approach can produce, the yeast and brewing techniques as well as the operation of the still and cuts and the type of oak regime are also major factors impacting on the final product.

Don't get me wrong Ben, I'm with you 100% on setting standards and dialling things in for control and repeatability. I just think this is too early in the R&D cycle. But I could be wrong.

Keep it simple is what I'm thinking, one problem at a time.

CothermanDistilling

@grim - Woody Creek Distillers in Basalt Co has this in their barrel room, humidity included... saw it 2 years ago... controlled from an iPhone...

FullySilenced

So their barrel room is like a big humidor for cigars...only for barrels ...

CothermanDistilling

yep, the app could make it like any region he wanted... it is dry out there, in the ten minutes I was in the barrel room, I think it shot a mist of water in the air two times... I have a friend that works for a chip company, about 10 years ago, their CEO had their chips put into wireless sensors that he placed in his personal SoCal grape fields and they mimicked other climates.