"So here is the situation. I wanna run some whiskey that I plan on barrel aging for a special someone. The deal is she aint old enough to drink it yet since she has not been born yet. I want to make and age a whiskey around when my baby girl is born so that we can share it together many years from now. The quantity I would be aging is no more then 5 gallons and like I said earlier I would like to barrel age it.

So my questions are, after the whiskey has reached its maturity in the barrel and is ready to bottle

1. Can I continue to age it in the bottle on a shelf?
2. How long can I age it in a bottle?
3. Am I crazy for doing this?
4. If your answer to 3 was no, could you point me in the right direction?"

Thanks, I thought it was a cool idea. Im open to any and all ideas.

If you are thinking 18 or so years, my thought is the 5 gallon barrel is small and ageing in it for one year is about the same as 10 years in the 55 gallon barrels the big guys use. It's the surface area to liquid thing. That would be very oak and possibly nasty in that many years. Then there is the angel's share. You always lose some in barrels. I bought a 2L barrel and put some scotch in it thinking I would further the age of the 3 year old to 15. Well, when I went to drink from it, the scotch was thick and just over 1/2 left. It tasted so bad my wife wouldn't touch it and I blended it so I could drink it. It was a charred oak barrel from a barrel maker that claimed to have heavy duty barrels.

I say, age it and when you get the taste you like, bottle it. You won't lose any from a glass bottle. My old barrel? It's a conversation piece now.

That would probably be the best method. Keeping UV off the whiskey is the best idea. That's why most bottles are dark colored that have top tier likker.

A few insights...My daughters are 40 and 24, respectively..At 18 or 20, neither wanted anything to do with 'old farts', much less drink with them..Whisky?..I'd rather neither of mine drank, but they are both asses when they do, so I personally wouldnt want to drink with them, much less introduce them to hard likker young..I think after you've grown one or two of them out, you might have a different insight into what may or may not get them into trouble....just a thought....

It's always the trend of the day with girls that young. My daughter turned 40 before she would drink whiskey.

"chooch,


LOL ... that is a problem! There was a member that used to be more active ... I believe it was LWTCS ... he used to say something like ""you have to get you drinking stock built up."" I was never quite sure what he meant. But it makes perfect sense in this regard! Maybe it's time to get a few more fermenting buckets going???

Regards,
--JB"

"Hambone,

It's a very cool idea ... and I think it's the kind of thing that the ladies would appreciate more than men ... go for it. Anybody can save a copy of the NY Times, but a bottle (or two) of decade's old custom spirit ... well that definitely has class.

--JB"

Thank you gentlemen. Well the hooch I planned on using has been produced and cut down to 60% for barreling.

Consider the storage conditions and the "angl's share". Barrels loose up to 1.5% through leakage and evaporation. Over 18 years you could loose up to 27%.