#WhiskyHaiku 5: Barrel Char

I don’t know about you but things are heating up. That haiku made me hot… scorching hot in fact. Kind of like the inside of a whisk(e)y barrel.

If you’ve drank whisk(e)y before (which I assume you have or else why am I emailing you!?), you’ve probably heard that whisk(e)y barrels are charred. This process involves lighting the inside of the barrel on fire for 30–60 seconds (approximately) to burn the top layers of the staves.

Do you know why they are charred?

Well, there are a number of reasons why this process is important including:

Charring the wood caramelizes the sugars in the wood, creating those delicious caramel, toffee, and burnt sugar notes.
The char acts as a filter and pulls undesirable congeners and stuff like sulphur out of the whisk(e)y… making it more delicious!
Deeper chars crack the skin of the wood making it easier for the whisk(e)y to penetrate it, pulling other delicious compounds like vanillins, lactones, phenols, spices and more into the whisk(e)y.

When I say ‘deeper char’ I mean that there are different levels of charring that can occur, and it is up to the distillery to decide which level(s) they would like their casks to be. Here’s the rundown of the basic char levels:

Level 1 (15 seconds): Light char, great for quick-aging whiskies
Level 2 (30 seconds): Medium char, not very common for whiskies to be ages in Level 2 barrels but will accentuate caramel notes
Level 3 (35 seconds): Probably the most common char level for whisk(e)y barrels and is rich in woody, spice and earthy notes.
Level 4 (55 seconds): Heavy char (known as an alligator char) is when the wood cracks allowing the whisk(e)y to penetrate deeper and pull rich flavours of vanilla, sweetness and spice

I’m not going to dive-in too deeply about the nuances between different chars today. But one thing to think about this week is how theres only seconds between the different char levels and yet the resulting impact is ENORMOUS. Think about how you’re spending your time this week — every second counts!