Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

Guys I am pretty new to distilling about 12 months in and have progressed quickly thanks to this site, I have just completed a MAC Whiskey and a Nutrigran whiskey and a MACRum batches are all on on wood 2-3 weeks atm. Some are on rum barrel chips and some are oak some French med toast chips and some American Med toast dominos and some Americas heavy toast dominos, I've mixed them up to experiment with different outcomes.
The part of this process I want to better understand is the ageing verses wooding, are these two terms exclusive of each other?
Can or does one "wood" for a period of time and then remove the wood and continue to "age" a spirit or is aging only taking place whilst the spirit is exposed to wood? I have sampled the whiskeys after about 3 weeks on oak and am very pleased with the taste.
Should I stop here or can I continue in the hope of it getting even better, but I am not sure how, because for mine its bloody fantastic. The rum on the other hand I think can benefit from a bit longer going by my taste analyses.
Should I remove the wood now or continue on? How long is enough with chips and dominos and or how long is too long?

Gidday Jedstar
Mate what a rabbit hole you have descended into lol.
Different woods, different toasting temperatures of the same wood, charring the same wood, all give a different flavour. The ABV that you age at also influences the flavour as well.
You just need to be careful with the chips though mate as there is a lot of exposed wood so it can take on the wood flavour quicker than with dominos. It’s not good bad it is just different and can over oak quickly if you are not careful. Like you I am still learning mate but for me over oaking tastes like sucking on a pencil when you are a kid and getting that bitter acidic taste, no idea whether I am right or wrong but that’s how I describe it. Easy to fix just dilute with more unpacked spirit.
Some will puts lots in to start then take a lot out to let the deeper buried flavours get exposed.
It all gets down to personal taste. As for the ageing question the spirits tend to smooth out a little over time but I suspect the greatest change happens in the first few months with unoaked spirits.
Many will say the spirits really change after 2 years on oak but like you I am struggling to see how mine will last that long
Hope it helps mate

what weight are you using ?
Airing or not?
How much spirit you got ?

If you are happy with it now you could do the following

Pull it off the wood and bottle / drink
Pull it off the wood and leave to age unoaked
Let it go longer as is
Let it go longer with 1/2 wood
Pull 1/2 and bottle / drink and experiment with the other 1/2
Try all of the above.

If you stuff it just re-run it.

Dominoes , suspend don’t just dump em in .
10g/L and hide them away for 2 years .
Enjoy
Your welcome :teasing-neener:

Air interaction helps also. Open bottle let it air or use large jar leave headroom cycle air gap in jar often i open fortnightly normally.. :handgestures-thumbupleft:

Corny keg , no seals and a tap in the bottom :handgestures-thumbupleft:

:handgestures-thumbupleft:

Never heard it referred to as "wooding". When your talking brown spirits "oaking" and "aging" are essentially the same thing.

Once oak it removed and it's diluted/bottled it will only change ever so slightly from that point. All the "aging" has already happened.

The Stig wrote:Dominoes , suspend don’t just dump em in .

Why suspend and not dump?
Do we want to have some of the oak exposed to air?

No what stig is saying when the dominos become fully soaked they will sink. Dont let them sink, use a bit of stainless wire to have them suspended in the alcohol at different levels. Works well in a tall slender corny keg.

Thanks BigRig, that’s exactly right :handgestures-thumbupleft:

I've found that over the first 2 years in oak barrels you have extraction going on. The spirit interacting with the wood and pulling compounds out. I've found this part of the process is heavily influenced by the ABV going into the barrel. After the 2-year mark extraction from the wood seems to fall off a cliff, but there are still changes occurring through micro-oxygenation. This is influenced by how full the barrel is/how much has gone as an angel's share. The oxygenation/maturation end of the spectrum is destructive and breaks down compounds that are in the spirit post the 2-year mark. Some of the compounds break down into more positive flavours and aromas. I'm sure these things can be replicated on smaller scales and shorter timelines. I've heard of using a carbonation stone on a corny keg with half staves in it, to add oxygen in a slow methodical way to replicate the whole process. There was a blow-off valve on the exit side of the corny to allow the pressure to be regulated. Temperature and humidity play parts in influencing maturation either through the quantity and ABV of an Angel's share or how tight the staves and heads fit to allow for more or less micro-oxygenation and the time of year that these changes happen.

Just my 2 cents from my own experience wrangling barrels.

As always tremendous information whenever it is required, for all the input, GRATUTUDE.