With my 5th generation of McRum bubbling away I thought I'd share the results of a few experiments conducted along the way.
The plan is to do a spirit run in a week or so's time but I wasn't sure how to age the product. There's plenty of useful advice on this forum but there's nothing like seeing things before your own eyes.
With each generation I have stolen 300ml of product taken in the middle of the run... Copper 35 litre riveted pot still with both 1380 and 2000w elements running. About an hour to produce 5 litres of 40% abv spirit. Max abv 65%.
Each sample is 60 - 65% abv.
To the first I toasted (in the oven) a stick cut from a slab of of oak burl that was lying around. That's the first bottle on the left in the photo and was bottled on the 30th March
The second bottle has a stick on uncharred oak burl 6th April
The third bottle has a stick of uncharred Australian cedar 6th April
The fourth bottle has a stick of uncharred English Oak 16th April
The fifth bottle has a larger stick of charred (with the gas blowtorch) oak burl 25th April
The first bottle coloured up within a few hours and gradually became darker and darker until I took the stick out after 3 weeks. After about 10 days there were vanilla aromas then caramel about a week later. Just before removing the stick there were some definite raisins coming through. It lost it's winey smell after two weeks. A few sips along the way were promising. It smelt so good last weekend that I poured a glass and it's very drinkable. Lined up next to Bundy OP I'd choose mine. Lined up next to Inner Circle Black I'd still go for the Black but that's being unfair.
I'm just sorry I didn't steal more.
The next three bottles still have a winey smell and the colour is self explanatory.
The final bottle is only a week old but it's colouring up nicely. I had added 3 raisins to it as they were missing from the first bottle when I bottled the big one. When I sampled the first bottle a few days later there were raisins developing so I removed them from the big bottle. I stole 700ml because I realised that the remains of the first bottle aren't going to last long.
I collected 3kg of French Oak Chips from Baldoss today (THANK YOU VERY MUCH) and the aroma from them in the kitchen is amazing.
So I am hoping to get about 10 litres of product from the final spirit run (Is that being optimistic?) which I will place in two 5 litre demijohns. One with the French Oak Dominoes and one with a similar number of toasted Oak Burl dominoes
I'll report back on the results