While 53-gallon (201-liter) barrels are the default for aging whiskey in the United States, it was not always this way, and many craft distillers are exploring barrel size as another tool to shape their whiskeys.
Although all whiskey must be aged in an oak vessel, the size of that vessel can vary widely—and historically it has, as the barrels originally used to store spirits were often reused storage containers made by hand, with no mind to any kind of standard size.
That tradition remains visible in Scotland, where barrels can range from refurbished quarter casks as small as 13 gallons (49 liters) to the gigantic port pipes that can hold upward of 172 gallons (651 liters). Until this past century, American whiskey barrels mirrored that level of variety. But for practical and economic reasons, domestic distillers eventually settled on new charred barrels of a standard size.
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To begin with, crafting new barrels was not as economically prohibitive in the lumber-rich United States as it had been in deforested Scotland. Soon, American cooperages were rolling out standard 48-gallon (182-liter) barrels.
While there are legends and folk histories explaining the choice of size, it likely had to do with maximizing volume while still allowing warehouse workers to handle and move the vessels around. That kind of practical math was evident in the move to 53-gallon (201-liter) barrels during World War II: Distillers responding to material shortages increased the size to save money, while still having to work within the space constraints of existing rickhouses.
Those 53-gallon (201-liter) casks became not just the standard size in the United States but also the most common barrel around the world, as used bourbon and rye barrels flooded into other whiskey and rum warehouses for a second life.
Deviant but Pragmatic
So, why deviate from this standard?
Many craft distilleries adopt smaller barrels to speed up extraction and potentially hasten their first whiskey releases. These smaller barrels typically range in volume from five to 30 gallons (19 to 114 liters), and there are other practical reasons for using them.
“Originally, we were a very small distillery,” says Colin Spoelman, founder of Kings County Distillery in Brooklyn, New York. “We made about a gallon and a half [6 liters] per day, and so, in the beginning, it made sense to fill five-gallon [19-liter] barrels because it took us two-and-a-half days to do that.”
As Kings County grew, so did their barrel program. Soon they began to fill 15-gallon (57-liter) barrels, then 30 gallons (114 liters), and then finally the standard 53-gallon (201-liter) size. Today, the distillers at Kings County still fill some 30-gallon (114-liter) barrels, and their blenders treasure the 15-gallon (57-liter) casks in their warehouse.
“We still pepper in some smaller sizes,” Spoelman says. “We haven’t completely sworn off small sizes, but they’re being used very judiciously as a component of a more standard aging program.”
Some distillers in Spoelman’s situation eventually leave smaller barrels behind. Others continue to use only small barrels, to maintain consistency in a product of which they’re proud and that sells well.
The Sweet Complexities of Aging
Meanwhile, the impact that smaller casks have on maturation is more complex than simply speeding it up.
“We realized that the advice that we were given, which was a month of time for every gallon, was not necessarily true,” Spoelman says. Smaller casks do some things faster, but nothing can speed up the entire maturation process.
Smaller casks do increase the rate of wood extraction; they increase the ratio of surface area to volume, so the spirit can extract color and flavor compounds from the barrel at an increased rate. That means that a spirit in a smaller barrel will more quickly take on a rich brown color, along with the notes of brown sugar, vanilla, and spice that come from oak.
The math is simple enough but, as always with whiskey, the reality is more complex. A 1995 study compared Longmorn single-malt Scotch aged in six-liter (1.5-gallon) barrels with the same aged in 180-liter (48-gallon) barrels. Some compounds, such as eugenol—often responsible for clove notes in spirits—were significantly higher in the smaller casks. Other compounds, including various polyphenols, were higher in the larger barrels.
Still, there was one major conclusion of the study, according to Gregory Miller, author of Whisky Science: A Condensed Distillation: “Small barrels are associated with a much greater sweet character than large barrels.”
Photo courtesy of Clear Creek Distillery (Hood River, Oregon)
That correlates with anecdotal evidence. Caitlin Bartlemay, master distiller at Clear Creek Distillery in Hood River, Oregon, says their 106-gallon (400-liter) casks don’t provide the character they want for their McCarthy’s Oregon single-malt—at least not when filled the first time.
“The spirits coming out of them were fairly dry and tannic,” Bartlemay says, “For whatever reason, the whole cask picture wasn’t being translated.” After a second and third fill, however, they hit the sweet spot and become a more valuable addition to McCarthy’s.
Ranger Creek Distilling in San Antonio relies on smaller barrels—ranging in volume from five to 25 gallons (19 to 95 liters)—for some of its whiskeys. “The way I describe them is oak-forward, punchy, and compact bourbons,” says cofounder Mark McDavid.
The authors of the Longmorn study suggest that the variation in concentrations of different compounds is related to oxidization: The high ratio of surface area in smaller barrels means a higher rate of oxygen contact—crucial for many of the chemical reactions that occur inside a barrel, including esterification.
Complicating the matter further, barrels don’t just impart chemical compounds into whiskey; they also help remove some unwanted flavors. Barrels help filter unpleasant sulfur molecules from whiskey, and time in the cask also allows for unpalatable fusel alcohols to volatilize off.
Cost and Versatility
While it may be true that smaller casks can help distilleries to get whiskey to market faster, and to begin making a profit more quickly, they come with an added cost: the casks themselves. Half-sized barrels are not half the price.
In fact, a 30-gallon (114-liter) barrel may be almost the same price as one that holds 53 gallons (201 liters). That can dramatically increase the up-front cost of nonstandard barrels, especially as the cost of all barrels has shot up over the past decade.
“They were just really becoming onerous and expensive,” says Spoelman on why Kings County phased out 15-gallon (57-liter) barrels.
Yet some coopers are excited about the challenges of unique barrels, and they’re willing to work with distillers.
“We're working with a very small cooperage,” says Bartlemay at Clear Creek. “They are as nimble as they choose to be, and we’ve been very grateful that we’ve had such a great relationship, and continue to have such a great relationship, with Oregon Barrel Works.”
Photo courtesy of Oregon Barrel Works (McMinnville, Oregon)
That relationship is largely the reason they have their 400-liter (106-gallon) series, she says—because Oregon Barrel Works owner Rick DeFerrari said, “Hey, I’m thinking about making some real big ones. Do you want to have some?”
Whether the barrels are large or small, filling a variety of sizes can provide blenders with a wider range of flavors and notes with which to work. Having an array of cask sizes “adds to the complexity of what we can do on the blending side,” Bartlemay says. “Having a little bit more variation within your barrel program gives you a lot more levers to pull when you’re crafting and sculpting the flavors of your final blend.”
Taking all those different options into account can be challenging, however, requiring close attention.
“Kings County has always been pretty rigorous,” Spoelman says, “and I trace it back to Nicole Austin, who was our first blender and is now at George Dickel. It was her insistence on a level of rigor, [on] tasting every barrel. It had nothing to do with age. It had everything to do with [assembling] the blend.”
That kind of respect for whiskey on its own terms, regardless of age, can be difficult to cultivate—but it’s crucial for anyone working with different cask sizes.
“You have to be very intentional about all of that to glean any benefit from this,” Spoelman says. “I mean, you could have multiple formats and then be very stupid about it, and just the minute it turns four years old, you dump it in a tank, and whatever is there, is there. That is not the way we do it.” Instead, their blending process is “like a piano,” he says. “And you find the low notes, and you find the high notes, and you assemble them into one piece.”
Winning Over Skeptics
No matter how delicious the whiskey from smaller casks, there is still one obstacle distillers must overcome: consumer bias.
“The market seemed to believe that 53-gallon [201-liter] barrels were sort of inherently better and that small barrels were some sort of a cheat,” Spoelman says.
That prejudice is deeply embedded among whiskey drinkers and writers alike.
“I was wary of the idea at first,” says Lew Bryson, former editor of Whisky Advocate. “Even with only 20 years of drinking whiskey behind me, I’ve already encountered folks who thought they could speed this up and have been disappointed.”
Bryson eventually came around, to a degree. “I’ve had some young whiskey aged in small barrels that I liked, and I’ve decided that maybe small barrels aren’t necessarily the horror that I’d originally thought they were.”
Not exactly a glowing endorsement, but it’s something.
Yet despite the skepticism from whiskey purists, craft distillers have begun to disrupt the spirits world by winning both awards and fans with whiskey from all barrel sizes. That kind of variety is helping push whiskey into new areas—and that can only be good for a spirit that is all about complexity, subtlety, and variety.
