- The Plate
The Well-Hidden World of Whiskey Aging
It’s hard to understand and experiment with a process when purveyors keep their research under wraps.
As pioneers in the world of whiskey distilling take advantage of the brown liquor’s resurgence and try to speed up the traditional oak-barrel aging process, they face a big roadblock: an old guard of distillers who refuses to share their secrets.
An article from the tech news site, Ars Technica, does a deep dive into the whiskey production wars, complete with an explanation of what we know about the aging process (char, type of wood, and time in the barrel, etc., contribute to the flavor) and of some attempts to speed up and improve on the product. But it also highlights how companies are afraid to disclose details of their research for fear it could give a competitor an advantage.
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