barrel is the popular term for a cylindrical container assembled from wooden slats—“staves”—hooped together with steel or wooden bands that can be used to transport and mature spirits. Properly, barrels are a subset of casks (the generic term for all such built—“coopered”—wooden containers) and contain between 119 and 300 liters, depending on what they are designed to hold. The standard bourbon barrel, used for aging spirits throughout the world, holds 53 US gallons, or 200 liters; the standard cognac barrique now holds 300 liters.
barrel storage systems.Three things that a barrel is not, however, are cheap, sterile, and non-reactive. To make a watertight container out of separate pieces of wood is a tour de force of woodworking that requires great skill and years of apprenticeship, which means money. As master cooper Kenneth Kilby put it, “There are no amateur barrel makers.” (The chief cooper was typically one of the highest-paid men at a distillery.) No matter the elegance of their structure, barrels did nothing to stop water, beer, or wine stored in them from spoiling on long ocean voyages (this led, at the end of the eighteenth century, to experiments with charring the inside of the barrel, which largely worked, at least for water). Spirits did not spoil, but barrels proved to be a dynamic container for them in a way that earthenware jars like the ones used for shipping spirits in Asia and parts of South America were not. See pisco. Barrels are slightly porous, like the jars were, but in addition to the oxidation that came from that, the spirits leached a good deal of color and tannins, lignins, and other compounds from the oak. That took some getting used to: spirits that came off the still as clear as water came out of the barrel tan and woody. But they were also smoother and richer in texture. See maturation.
At the height of the coopered cask’s use as a container for shipping spirits, it came in an impossible thicket of sizes and names, as this sentence from the 1790 Ship-Owner’s Manual demonstrates: “The aume is reckoned at Amsterdam for 8 steckans, or 20 verges or veerteels; or for one-sixth of a tun of 2 pipes, or 4 barrels of France or Bordeaux; which one-sixth is called at the latter tierçon, because three of them make a pipe or 2 barrels, and 6 make the tun.” Easy. Spirits casks varied according to nation and spirit, and a merchant’s warehouse could easily contain elongated, 300-liter pieces of cognac, large puncheons of Jamaica rum (400 liters), even larger teakwood “leaguers” of Batavia arrack (this was the Dutch legger, which held about 575 liters), smuggled Highland whisky in cigar-shaped 40-liter ankers, perfect for hanging off a pony’s back, and more. See arrack, Batavia.
Today, barrels are rarely used for shipping spirits, having been replaced mostly by the 1,000-liter (275-gallon), steel-framed plastic “tote” (with a ratio of 1:16.25, clearly very efficient indeed, although it requires a forklift to move). Millions of barrels are of course still in use for maturing spirits. It’s safe to say that most of these began their working lives as bourbon barrels: the United States requirement that straight whiskies be aged in new, charred oak containers means that barrels cannot be reused. Most of the ones that are emptied are broken down back into staves and hoops and shipped to Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Japan, the Caribbean, and a great many other places where spirits are matured. In Scotland, it is common to raise four larger barrels out of the staves from five standard ones; these 250-liter barrels are known as “hogsheads,” an older measure that used to equate to a barrel and a half, or 300 liters. Supplanting this “American oak” cooperage, as it’s known, is “French oak,” used for cognac, Armagnac, and calvados (some of the oak used is in fact from eastern Europe, but European oak nonetheless).
In some parts of the world, such as Brazil, oak is supplemented by other, more local woods. See oak alternatives. Smaller barrels are also found in use, mostly by newer distilleries wishing to give their product the appearance of maturity as quickly as possible (the smaller the barrel, the greater the ratio of oak area to spirit, which creates more extraction of barrel compounds). Spirits left too long in such barrels can become very woody.
Kilby, Kenneth. The Cooper and His Trade. London: J. Baker, 1971.Ship-Owner’s Manual. Newcastle-Upon Tyne, 1790.
Stevens, Robert White. On the Stowage of Ships and Their Cargoes, 7th ed. London: Longmans, Green, 1878.
Work, Henry H. Wood, Whiskey and Wine. London: Reaktion, 2014.
By: David Wondrich