Barrel-Aged Cocktails, pt 2 - An Example
I get contentious when I am charged $16 for a Barrel-Aged Manhattan which tastes like it never saw the inside of a barrel. As a consumer, I think a premium price demands a premium cocktail. In the previous post, we discussed the failure of many craft cocktail programs to manage their barrel-aged cocktails’ overall quality, since solera-style barrel-aged cocktails tend to be “oxidized” rather than truly “barrel-aged.” This time, I want to take a deeper dive into the mechanics of barrel-aged cocktails, and I want to address what types of cocktails your program can barrel and how your bartenders should be trained to make them.
Basic Guidelines
Allowing bartenders to flex their creativity by designing unique cocktails for your menu is a cornerstone concept of modern bars and restaurants, but an untrained bar staff can make a lot of costly mistakes when batching barrel-aged cocktails. Not every type of cocktail should be barrel-aged. For example, never age a cocktail made with citrus juice, eggs, or dairy; spoilage and mold are an inevitable result. Furthermore, not all bitter, boozy, and stirred cocktails are a good fit for barrel-aging. Your bar staff should focus on higher-ABV, vermouth-based cocktail builds, which tend to produce the best-tasting cocktails with the smallest initial investment. Straight American whiskeys are aged in new charred oak barrels already, so you should use unaged (or under-aged) spirits, such as many types of gins, light rums, and blanco tequilas.
As consultants, we regularly remind our clients of the two purposes of barrel-aging: 1) age a cocktail in a barrel long enough to impart a barrel’s flavor on the cocktail; and 2) give the drink enough time to marry and oxidize in a safe environment. These goals are an important reminder; the biggest mistakes I see on menus is the Barrel-Aged Bourbon Old-Fashioned, since this drink fails to achieve either goal.
An Example
Let’s assume your choice of bourbon is Old Forester. First, your bourbon was aged already for 4-6 years at the distillery. You paid for its age when you paid the wholesale price; you have little incentive to spend money on a new 10L oak barrel, age it for 6-8 weeks, then resell it to a guest. Instead of wasting $100 per barrel (not to mention valuable payroll hours for your staff to batch and barrel the cocktail), simply buy an older bourbon whiskey. Second, as a cocktail build, the Old-Fashioned is almost entirely spirit, which reduces the effectiveness of oxidation. Aging a vermouth-based cocktail in a barrel causes the wine to break down slowly, creating new smells and flavors, while an Old-Fashioned will remain largely unchanged. Acidity in vermouth is also known to trigger the hemicellulose found in barrel wood. Hemicellulose is responsible for the wood sugars that help to “soften” the taste of barrel-aged cocktails. If you use a sugar syrup to sweeten your Barrel-Aged Old-Fashioned, then you run the risk of contaminating your barrel-aged investment altogether.
Barrel-aged cocktails can require more consideration, planning, and maintenance than your average BuzzFeed article suggests. If your program isn’t being run by an experienced manager and you suspect you are losing money, then it may be time to explore a free consultation.
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