Casking At Home
If you’re reading this page, you either have an interest in our Nine Rivers Casks for maturing your own spirits at home or you already have your cask and you want to know the next steps that you need to go through to make this work best for you. Read on but remember that this entire process is meant to be a fun hobby for you to do at home to explore the world of oak cask matured spirits.
We offer two types of casks for home maturation. Both are approximately 3 litres in capacity (take note that there can be up to 10% variance on the capacity of the casks, depending on how thick the oak staves are). The first one (the left of the three images below) is made from French Oak. The other (the right of the three images below) is made from American Oak.
The process for making your casks usable is the same for both types of wood, so that’s where we will start.
When in doubt – rinse it out.
The first thing we need to do your cask is give it a decent wash. There will be bits of sawdust inside as a minimum and it’s also likely that there will be some wood chips and (when the barrel is charred) there could also be some loose charcoal that should really come out of the barrel. Start by filling the cask up to about half way which you can guess by the weight alone. If you can still slosh the water around, it’s not full. So get it half way, put your bung in and give it a damn good shake for 30 seconds.
Rinse and Repeat
After a vigorous shake, take out the bung and pour all of the water out as quickly as you can. This will get rid of some of the left overs inside. Some. Not all. So you have to repeat this at least three times. You could of course just ignore this process and deem it as unnecessary, so lets show you some of the things we poured out of one barrel.
While there are no worries about these goodies being derived from wood, probably organic and of course the high ABV alcohol that we will age in here would purify any nasties – they don’t look very appealing. So it probably makes sense to get these nibbles out of the cask.
Water Seasoning
After a recommended three rinses (half fill the cask and shake it all about for 30 seconds, just in case you’ve forgotten already) then fill up your cask again all the way to the top with bottled water. By all means use tap water for rinsing, but bottled water is less likely to impart any unwanted flavours on your cask. We are not suggesting that there are any issues with tap water. Simply that we are not scientists and we don’t have any way to test water from the hundreds of different sources that will be used to fill these casks. So lets play safe and use bottled water.
Let this sit for 24 hours. Then, empty the cask. Refill with bottled water. Repeat once more for a total of 3 days, each with a brand new fill of bottled water.
Here’s a rather patronising photograph that shows the cask and some bottled water – please note, in real life you would need to remove the bottle top before you pour or the water can’t get into the barrel.
Neutral Alcohol Flush
We would not advise anyone to skip any of the previous steps. However. This is a step that could be ignored if you prefer. That is the neutral alcohol flush. In our case we used house pour vodka. 4 times distilled vodka from Poland so perfectly drinkable – this isn’t a step you would want to waste your overpriced boutique vodka with.
We used just one bottle of vodka and during the office hours, we gave the cask a good 30 seconds shake and rotated the cask 90 degrees every hour. Then we left it overnight and emptied the vodka back into the bottle. As you can see, you don’t get the full bottle back. We intend to use this vodka again for another cask.
Decision Time
Here’s the point at which you decide what YOU want to do next. You could:
1. Go bare and go virgin and just get your new make whisky spirit in your cask to create something pure.
2. Season your cask with something else first.
If you like ex-bourbon cask style whisky, why not fill it up with bourbon first and let all that American whisky goodness soak your oak before you empty your cask and fill it up with new make. You could do the same with Port wine, red wine, white wine, or pretty much anything else that takes your fancy.
We went for cheap, non-vintage Australian Chardonnay for our American Oak cask. We were left with just under a third of a bottle from 4 x 750ml bottles.
Other Considerations
With the Chardonnay we deliberately chose “screw top” bottles. The thought being that if the chardonnay improved in the casks, why waste it? We will put it back in the bottle and drink it.
But take note. The vodka that came back out of the cask after the neutral alcohol rinse, still had sawdust in it. So we would filter any liquid that had been in the cask before drinking it. Our filtering will be setup from a coffee filter, a funnel and a bottle.
How to make your filter
While this probably wont make the grade necessary to get the necessary licenses to bottle and distribute home matured spirits, it will help turn your potentially good booze into something that is free of chunks of wood and sawdust. All you need is a funnel and a coffee filter.
While the pictures probably make it very obvious what needs to be done here, lets make sure we’re all on the same page. Get a funnel. Put a coffee filter in the funnel, put the point end of the funnel into the receiving vessel, and then pour your matured alcohol through the bit end of the funnel.
Questions and Answers
What am I actually buying when I buy a cask and new make spirit?
You’re buying a cask of about 3 litres capacity (give or take a bit) which comes supplied with a bung (to create a closure at the top of the barrel), a spiggot (or tap) form which you can pour out your matured alcohol, a wooden stand for the barrel, and 4 x 700ml bottles of new make, malted barley derived spirit.
When should I expect delivery?
Normally, about 2 weeks after you make your purchase. The casks are made to order and we place orders in batches of 50 casks.
How long should I season my cask for?
This is entirely down to you. There are too many variables for us to give definitive answers and one such small casks, it would be impossible to give a “one size fits all” response.
Our own guidelines are based on when the seasoning liquid is at it’s optimum. By this we mean, when there is an obvious and noticeable improvement to the seasoning liquid. For example, when we used a cheap Chardonnay wine, we gave it enough time that we could really taste and smell an improvement in the wine. We know then that the oak has had an effect on the wine, and so there absolutely must me some wine soaked into the cask
Are those photos of the things inside the cask actually real?
Yeah, alas they are. That’s why we think rinsing the barrels out so much is an important part of aging spirit alcohol at home.
What liquids do you think are suitable to season casks with?
There are the obvious things – bourbon, sherry, port, red wines, white wines, sweet wines and dry wines. Less obvious things would include beer (craft beers – lagers probably wouldn’t have any impact), good quality apple cider, rum, brandy or tequila.
Neutral liquids, or liquids with little flavor or weak flavors, don’t really do anything other than extract flavors from the oak. The whole concept of seasoning the cask is to imbue flavors into the oak.
How much wine or whatever do I need to season my cask with?
The American Oak cask takes just UNDER 3 liters. We used 4 bottles of 750ml wine, and we had about a third of a bottle left of the Chardonnay, which we used for daily tops ups.
The French Oak takes just OVER 3 litres, so we use 5 bottles of 750ml port and we had just under half a bottle left. We used this for daily top ups.
How can I filter what comes out of the cask?
Make your own filter, with a funnel and a coffee filter. Instructions above.