Can wood maturation concentrate the alcoholic beverage therein?

Sanjit_Keskar · February 9 2018 at 5:38PM

Is this possible?

When alcohol matures it would be the alcohol that evaporates through the porous wood meaning alcohol is lost and technically the beverage should get diluted...

I can agree that flavours get concentrated but alcohol percentage increasing deserves an explanation, if at all this is possible

Thanks

kroman · February 9 2018 at 6:41PM

@Sanjit_Keskar

Horst (or whomever wrote the article) goes into some detail of maturation's effect on whisky, specifically the last paragraph (angel's share).

https://www.whisky.com/information/knowledge/production/background-knowledge/introduction-to-the-cask-maturation-of-whisky.html

hwchoy · February 9 2018 at 7:09PM

@Sanjit_Keskar

indeed this does happens when conditions causes water to evaporate faster than alcohol. let me look for that article and link it here.

bedlamborn · February 10 2018 at 3:33PM

@Sanjit_Keskar

Yes it can happen that water evaporates faster than the alcohol. But it usually requires special conditions in a warehouse, see this link for some more explanations.

http://www.whiskeyprof.com/how-a-traditional-rackhouse-works-small-batch-single-barrel/

For Bourbon the rules says "Entered into the barrel for ageing at no more than 125 proof (62.5% alcohol by volume)"

Now for example the Blantons straight from the barrel that are being sold have around 66-68% ABV so for these barrels the ABV has increased.