The Process
Naturally, we wanted to understand the science behind that—but he said it’s important to understand “how a barrel works” first, which requires a bit of an in-depth explanation. “The reason you put booze in a barrel is because during fermentation, short chain fatty acids [are produced]. Anyone with a chemistry background knows short chain fatty acids in nature are the thing your nose identifies as rotting smells; bacteria produces them as their chemical signatures when they’re eating stuff. Humans evolved gazillions of years ago to sniff food out: I smell the chemical signature of friendly bacteria, ie cheese, or I smell the chemical signature of bacteria that’s going to kill me … So those components, when it goes into a barrel, undergo a catalyzed chemical reaction; they’re bonded to alcohol molecules to form short chain fatty acid esters–a totally different molecule made out of those building blocks. That totally different molecule [combines into] the things in nature that make fruit taste like fruit … so basically, those chemicals bind up with alcohols to turn into fruit flavors and then the wood decomposes over the course of decades into booze and sheds phenols, which taste smoky.”
