speed-aging or rapid-aging is when mechanical, ultrasonic, or chemical methods are employed to reduce the time a spirit must spend maturing in wood. Beverage manufacturers have long attempted to cheat time using rapid-aging techniques. While the Romans first employed rapid-aging techniques in wine, they were not documented in spirits production until the mid-nineteenth century. In 1867, Frenchman M. Cousseilhat used rotatable wooden paddles to agitate the spirit in the barrel like a butter churn. Using a similar concept, the apparatus patented in the United Sates by Josiah Peiffer and Samuel Richards placed barrels on roller slats and agitated them back and forth in a heated room. The inventors claimed this “ripened” whisky within a few weeks. In the late 1800s, several more agitation systems would be created, including an 1879 heat-and-motion device that offered “practical value and utility.”
At the turn of the twentieth century, sonic and ultrasonic treatments showed positive effects on wine and would later be tested on spirits. In 1937, inventors used ultrasonic radiation to accelerate esterification, wood extraction, tannin hydrolysis, and aldehyde oxidation. More than a decade later, German researchers reported using sound energy to raise ester content about 120 percent in wine distillate. They also used ultrasound to emphasize ozone in spirits aging.
By the 1960s, rapid aging fell out of fashion and was considered “not very satisfying.” Nonetheless, contemporary spirits companies continue to experiment, aging whisky in five-gallon barrels, claiming the smaller size allows more surface contact with wood. They’ve used bass speakers to push spirits deeper into the wood and brought back agitation systems, ultrasonic energy, chemical reactors, and container pressure, all in an effort to create brown spirits faster.
None of these systems have proved to be entirely successful or satisfying. While many of them can increase extraction (where the spirit pulls compounds out of the wood) and a few can increase oxidation (where the congeners in the spirit break down and their components react with the air in the barrel), they struggle with mimicking the effects of the long, slow evaporation that helps so greatly to give the mature spirit its silky texture.
maturation.Peiffer, Josiah. Improvement in Apparatus for Aging Whisky and Other Spirits. US Patent 112,485A, March 7, 1871.
Singelton, V. L. “Aging of Wines and Other Spiritous Products, Acceleration by Physical Treatments.” Hilgardia 32, no. 7 (May 1962): 77.
“A Whisky-Ageing Apparatus.” Record of the Times, August 6, 1879.
By: Fred Minnick