Barrel-Aged Cocktails, pt 1 - A Rant
From Science & History…
Trends inspire a mixture of curiosity and suspicion in me. The beverage industry falls prey to silly trends from time to time, and I content myself with ignoring them. Barrel-aged cocktails are one trend which I think is going to stick. “Barrel-aged” or “cellared” cocktails are featured on many craft cocktail menus around the world. Yet, in almost every bar, in almost every city, the bartenders there are making these cocktails incorrectly, and the proof is in the taste.
First, a quick bit of history: Humans have long recognized the benefits of barreling alcohol, and our species has long known what happens when we barrel or bottle our booze for extended periods of time. In 2010, Jeffrey Morgenthaler (formerly of the much-beloved Clyde Common), who was inspired by the years-long bottled Manhattan cocktail program offered by Tony Conigliaro at 69 Colebrooke Row, made his first Barrel-Aged Negroni. The cocktail game would never be the same. What started as a thoughtful experiment became a trend which then became a staple.
Conceptually, the idea of barrel-aging a cocktail is brilliant. Like Conigliaro, Morgenthaler wanted to study what happened to a cocktail over time. Science backs up barrel-aged cocktails one-hundred percent: During a barrel’s charring process, hemicellulose and lignin are converted into important wood sugars which impart flavors of caramel, toffee, and vanilla. These sugars exist in a barrel’s “red line,” the garnet-colored area underneath the charred layer. During hot days, barrel liquid seeps into the wood, permeating the red line and absorbing the wood sugars. As temperatures cool down, the liquid retracts and carries the wood sugars back inside the barrel. We call this process “breathing.” Barreled cocktails, like American whiskeys, gain their flavor and their color from their barrels during this process.
Now, a Questionable Trend
A barrel-aged cocktail program should seek to accomplish two goals: 1) age a cocktail in a barrel long enough to impart a barrel’s flavor on the cocktail; and 2) give the cocktail time to marry and oxidize in a safe environment. What do you think is happening inside that 5L barrel your neighborhood cocktail bar has used for the last seven years? Simply put, nothing. The barrel is too small, and the extraction time is too short. That barrel has been “dead” for years, imparting little or no flavor to its constituent cocktail. These cocktails could be called “naturally aged,” or something similar, but not “barrel-aged” in the same way we age American whiskey.
A successful barrel-aged cocktail program needs a system of constant oversight. In a brand-new barrel, successive batches of a typical Negroni might age 6-8 weeks, then 12-14 weeks, then 18-24 weeks, to allow the later batches time to penetrate the wood. Otherwise, you are oxidizing your Negronis, not barrel-aging them. Your $100 10L barrel might only get 3-4 uses depending on what kind of cocktail you are aging. You need to amortize the cost of the barrel over the lifespan of those 3-4 batches—while also planning how to reuse the spent barrel. The spent barrel could be a place to oxidize a homemade vermouth or vinegar. Barrel-aged cocktails are complicated. They require a well-executed system to ensure a program’s cocktails not only taste appropriately barrel-aged, but also pay your overhead costs.
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