Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

Aging Spirits: 7 Ways to Enhance Your Alcohol at Home

J. Fergus
By and

When it comes to putting a spirit that tastes good down your gullet, you have a number of options. If you’ve got the money, you can obviously buy a nice bottle of whisky — or you can take it into your own hands by using an at-home aging product.

Now, we know what you’re thinking: “But an at-home aging product won’t reproduce a $10,000 Scotch, will it?”

Recommended Videos

No, of course it won’t (there’s a reason for the price tag on the bottle). But what it will do is elevate a product that you perhaps viewed as sub-par before. If the product wasn’t sub-par (and not all of the ones you’ll be aging are, of course), an at-home aging product allows you to play mad scientist by experimenting with different finishes and different woods, imparting new or enhanced flavors to a spirit you already enjoy.

Related

Love a specific bourbon, but want to see what it would be like with a little time spent on cherry wood? Boom, done. Have a favorite Negroni recipe and want to see how it would change when you age it in wood for a bit? Easy peasy with an at-home product. This DIY approach to flavor enhancement is a great way to learn more about the booze you’re putting in your belly. With a little bit of time and the will to experiment, who knows what you’ll come up with.

The different products fall into a few basic areas. Most at-home alcohol aging products can be categorized as:

  • Bottles.
  • Barrels.
  • Staves.
  • Chips.

Sensing a pattern?

Below, you’ll find a variety of products that all, in some way, will aid in the aging or flavoring process. We encourage you to look through them all and find the one that’ll work best for you. If you’ve only got a little bit of spirit you want to play around with, an oak stave might be the best. If you’re looking to do a larger amount, you’ll definitely want to explore oak barrel options.

Bottles and Barrels

oak bottle whiskey
Oak Bottle/Facebook

Oak Bottle

Oak Bottle’s aging canisters offer the most bang for your buck. Available in capacities of 150 mL, 355 mL, and 750 mL, each container can age any alcohol for as little as two hours or as long as three months. Essentially operating as tiny barrels, the bottle optimizes alcohol by exposing smaller quantities of it to relatively more wood.

Unlike the other wooden options, you can use Oak Bottle indefinitely, provided that you care for it properly between uses. With an array of flavors to choose from and customize, this is ideal for someone with craft brew sensibilities. Those with a little less patience can also invest in tumblers that age alcohol within five minutes.

Oak Barrels

Miniature oak barrels are perhaps the most popular at-home aging device. Not only do they look great on the shelf behind your bar, but you can do a gallon of spirit (or cocktail!) at a time. There are plenty of companies out there now offering up oak barrels, so poke around the internet and you’re bound to find one you like. Heck, most companies also offer custom inscriptions if you really want to take your home bar game to the next level.

Staves and Chips

time and oak whiskey elements
Time & Oak

Beyond Barrels

The simplest option here, Beyond Barrels does a lot with a little. By providing a slightly striated, flavored stave, the lack of manipulation produces a wealth of quality. These are best for improving whiskey, rum, and tequila. The company also offers up different types of wood, allowing you to customize your booze how you see fit.

Time & Oak Whiskey Elements

By creating slits in the oak stave, Whiskey Elements increases the surface area through which alcohol can be aged. Though they work on all liquor and beer, using them in wine is ill-advised. Each stave only needs a day or two in the bottle to see results, but it loses its potency after about a week’s worth of use.

Oak Infusion Spiral

Putting a literal twist on Time & Oak’s product, Oak Infusion Spiral creates toasted and charred staves in a spiral formation. These staves age alcohol in its bottle for two weeks for the fullest flavor and should not be used again.

Oak Chips

Oak chips are another way to add an aging element to your liquid. With an increased surface area, oak chips impart flavor and color in a fairly expedient fashion. Other types of chips are also available, so it again comes down to what flavors you are looking to add to your spirit.

Patches

elevie wine maturing patch
Elevie/Facebook

Elevie

Elevie uses infrared technology to mature wine in just five minutes. This adhesive badge is placed directly on the glass so it can “cook” your wine to perfection. The technology never fades, but the silicone stickiness eventually does (after about 100 uses). You won’t have a direct influence on the flavor outcome with this product, but it allows the wine to speak for itself. Also, the patch comes with a sleeve that slips easily into your wallet, so you can elevate that Two-Buck Chuck at your friends’ parties.

Article originally published by J Fergus on April 13, 2017. Last updated by Sam Slaughter on August 21, 2018.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
J. Fergus
J. Fergus
J. loves writing about the vices of life — decadent food, strong drinks, potent cannabis, and increasingly invasive…
3 Infusions Worth Trying to Upgrade Your Spirits at Home
3 easy liquor infusions jia shum fn8f byxvqs unsplash

At the liquor store, there are only so many ingredients to choose from. When you want to add a flavor to a cocktail that doesn't exist as a pre-packaged product, sometimes you're left to your own devices and need to put your DIY skills to the test. While these components can sometimes be included in the form of a syrup, an infused spirit is another way enhance the texture and flavor of a cocktail. Whether you favor using a fruit, herb, spice, or fat (i.e milk, nuts, meat fat, and so on), infusions are a way to customize your drinking experience.

They are fairly simple to make, and you can use any spirit as the base. When it comes to choosing a base spirit for the infusion, make sure it is something that you enjoy on its own. You'll never be able to cover-up a lack of quality with other infused flavors. Another thing to keep in mind has to do with safety and making sure the infusion is potable. Alcohol is a solvent. It extracts high concentrations of the characteristics of whatever it is mixed with, which can be hazardous in some cases. For example, the pits of peaches, and other stone fruit, contain a compound called amygdalin which breaks down into hydrogen cyanide when ingested. If this ingredient were to find its way into a spirit, the consequences could be lethal. Refer to cocktailsafe.org before you go infusing away with various ingredients, and make sure to do your homework.

Read more
The 4 Best Cocktail Bitters for Your Home Bar
Best Cocktail Bitters

Smell is a major aspect of taste, so it's time to start paying more attention to cocktail bitters. These fragrant additions can make your favorite mixed drink bloom out of the glass, and every home bartender should have a small but reliable arsenal at their disposal.

For the record, bitters are what they claim to be: Bitter-flavored concoctions typically made with wildly aromatic botanicals. They have a long history of use, initially with medicinal purposes before becoming digestifs and cocktail enhancers. In addition to high proof alcohol, bitters are made with a witches' brew of seemingly exotic ingredients like cassia, cinchona bark, and gentian peel -- and countless others, depending on the overall flavor of the product. Behind the bar, cocktail bitters have been used to lift the flavors of famed drinks since the 1860s.

Read more
How to Make Your Own Cinnamon Whiskey at Home
cinnamon whiskey

Getting bored at home? Need something to do? Have some lower quality whiskey on hand and need something to do with it that doesn't involve simply chugging it straight from the bottle? Well, why not try infusing it? Specifically, we mean infusing it with cinnamon. It's easy, only takes a little bit of time, and at the end of the day you're left with a spirit that tastes delicious on it's own or in cocktails.

The thing about cinnamon-flavored spirits, though, is that they are not all great. Chances are you've had a night or two that ended with shots of Fireball, which was then followed by a morning-after from hell (don't worry, we've been there, too). That's because many cinnamon liquors use a variety of additives; it's also because a good many of those cinnamon-infused spirits just plain suck.

Read more