I have largely been adverse to oaking my experiments until now for the simple reason that the "white lightning" I made is pretty good on its own with mixers. Another reason is that oak is harder to source in the tropics -- not even as sticks, let alone barrels. But I've finally dipped my toes into the water of oaking, a/k/a aging spirits.

The basic recipes in play are UJSSM and TFFV, blended together. So the ingredients are sugar, yeast, and corn (majority), bran (minority), the grains being added for flavor and yeast nutrient. I understand that proper mashing with enzyme action would provide more authentic tastes, but I am socially and geographically distinct from the places that produce authentic whiskys.

My first experiment was ~1.3 liter of 65% product, majority being UJSSM hearts from a stripping run, with minority factors being heads and tails to taste, along with some TFFV stripping. I added more heads and tails than I normally would to a finished spirit with the assumption that the oak would neutralize off-tastes.

Toasted 20g of oak chips in the oven at 180*C for 90 minutes, wrapped in tin foil. After cooking, I let them cool to room temp, and I could see, smell, and taste a difference. Threw them into a jar with my blended spirits with plenty of head space.

2 days later, there was already a huge improvement. Compared to regular "white dog" hearts, there was a lot of good complexity with a lot of off-tastes negated. I finished aging off with a tiny dash of vanilla extract (less than a tsp) and a tiny dash of barley malt syrup extract (maybe a tsp). Dilute down to 45%.

Despite the minuteness of the vanilla and barley syrup additions relative to the total product, they definitely supported the oak in balancing out spirits that would not have been very good on their own. This spirit is good unmixed, and better than whiskeys in my price range I'd tried in the US -- for $1 a bottle.

Future oaking experiments will involve buying proper wood boards, cutting them down, boiling, toasting, then charring. Oak chips are not easy to char and are easy to overdo, hard to do for long periods due to the surface:mass ratio they offer. I feel like an oak stick, charred and toasted could do something even better if it were given the time. Oak chips do their job almost too well.

More experiments will follow