Hey Mark – Most of the barrels that we use have been toasted before charring. We also use 18-24 month yard-aged staves as a standard. The idea is to use the best quality barrels that money can buy (within reason). We also have done some of the different toast profiles from ISC. We don’t have a ton of data, but the different profiles seem to…[Read more]

Side question: Something I’ve been curious about – do you guys typically use barrels that have been toasted, then charred? I know there are some out there but I’m curious about how common they might be.

We’ve done some experimentation with different char levels. All 53s. The first group of char #1s that we laid down are just hitting 2.5-3ish years. Definitely some significantly different flavors coming out then the similarly aged char #3s. If you are ever near Seattle we’d be happy to share some tastes of both to compare.

That is a great idea, but I think it will depend a lot on the particular distributor. In my experience, some will require a contract and some won’t, but if they do there will likely but some severe penalties for getting out of it. I think the best thing to do is meet with as many potential distributors as you can and ask hard questions about…[Read more]

It can’t hurt to ask for something like that, but it may be tough to get a high-quality distributor to be willing to agree to such terms in a contract. They often want to make sure they get paid if you stop working with them since they invest a lot into helping grow your brand. As John hinted at, doing so without a written contract could be your…[Read more]

Hey all,

Being a vendor on this project has been an incredible lift, considering the boiler inspector issues. I’ve permitted 60 MGY facilities under the US EPA and didn’t have as many issues as we did with NV’s team. They consistently didn’t follow the verbatim regulations and exemptions listed by their own authoritative codes…even when…[Read more]

Hey,

Great idea and it’ll come down to the contract (or lack thereof) that you sign. You may need to negotiate performance waterfalls, “if you sell this much, then we keep going…if not, then we can split ways” kind of language.

Cheers,
McKee

We have been playing around with some lower char (level 2), but heavy toast barrels recently. I’ve found that especially when using a smaller size (25 gallons) our spirit develops vanillin & caramel notes sooner when compared to the standard #3. Color intensity and development does seem to slow a bit, but again, in small barrels that has never…[Read more]