It’s always a selling point when whisky, wine, or other spirits are aged in oak casks, and there’s a good reason for it: aging alcohol in oak makes it taste better (richer, deeper) than it would otherwise. Oak-aged spirits usually command a premium compared to other varieties, but now you can upgrade your own alcohol by using the Oak Bottle.
The Oak Bottle is the first “for-home-use” barrel-aging vessel. Now anyone can take an average bottle of wine or whiskey to new heights, or bring out new flavors in their favorite wine or beer.
Here’s something I didn’t know until I read the Oak Bottle’s Kickstarter page: aging alcohol in smaller barrels makes it age more quickly.
Downsized barrels (about half the size of the 59-gallon barrels you might find in California) allow wine from the abundant years to be bottled sooner and put on shelves more quickly. That realization led me to begin developing my Chicago-based “Oak Bottle” four years ago. After multiple iterations, Oak Bottle was debuted in March at the International Housewares Show and was awarded the Invention Recognition Award of the entire Show.
The Oak Bottle allows you to infuse your spirits with oak flavors in as little as a few hours or a couple of days.
An Oak Barrel essentially does two things. It allows a very slow introduction of oxygen into the wine or spirit (aka “micro-oxygenation”); and it imparts the character of the wood into the wine through surface contact absorption and extraction. Due to the large surface area to volume ratio of the Oak Bottle, the rate at which the wine or spirit absorbs and extracts from the charred oak surface inside, the quicker the maturation process occurs.
$15 will get you an “aged” cocktail recipe book, and $30 will get you into the early bird smaller sized (355ml) Oak Bottle. The early bird 750ml wine sized bottle is $50. Both could really save you money over time; whether you want to make a $5 bottle of wine taste like a $40 bottle, or if you want to add richness and depth to your favorite spirits, using the Oak Bottle will allow you to do it easily and affordably.
You can learn more about the Oak Bottle and back it by clicking here.