by OzKev » Sun Apr 13, 2014 7:48 am
It's their reputation for quality barrels why I went with them. The smell of the barrel is very different to the dominos. With the dominos I get virtually no distinct oak, vanilla or sweetness, where from the barrel it is in your face. The main thing I noticed with the dominos are when I broke one in half it was toasted all the way through. Which when you think about it, with the depth of toasting on barrels and dominos, and on a domino it's toasted from both sides it would end up all the way through. So there is no raw wood for the spirit to penetrate into and pickup these extra raw flavors and characteristics. I plan on filling a jar and dropping in 10g/Liter dominos and aging it along side the barrel to do a side by side taste test.
This barrel is the smaller 50L version, I've got almost 40L in it so far and hope to have it filled in the next couple of weeks. It's been a bit of work to get this much whiskey together as it's all full corn mashes. Depending on how the taste tests goes between barrel vs domino and how much whiskey we do get through, I do plan on getting a 100L on in a couple of years time. The 50L will become rum, and the whiskey will be upgraded to the bigger barrel. It should work out good as the 50L barrel will be milder for the rum, and the whiskey gets a freshly charred barrel. It also makes filling the 100L a bit easier as I will have 50L as a starter fill.