From the Editor
For those of us in the rum industry (as opposed to those making American Whiskey/Bourbon), emptying a barrel of its contents does not mark the end of the barrel’s stay in our cellars. Rum, unlike Whiskey, is typically aged in used, often over-used barrels that impart a milder oak profile than their freshly-coopered counterparts.
Luis Ayala, Editor of "Got Rum?" magazine
Oak barrels, like tea bags, become weaker and milder with each subsequent use. And just as you would not expect the flavor of a second cup of tea to match that of the first one -when reusing the same bag- rum taken out of multi-use barrels does not have the same oak intensity as rum taken out of a new barrel.
How then, do rum companies maintain their flavor profiles, when they keep reusing barrels? Different distilleries have developed their own ways to do this, my favorite one (and the one we employ at Rum Central) works as follows:
Master Blenders have to keep introducing small amounts (proportionally) of new or freshly-emptied Whiskey barrels regularly into their cellars, while also keeping tabs on the oldest barrels in their inventory. Newly-distilled rum is then aged in both the new barrels and the old ones, both accruing age at the same rate but each acquiring different oak intensities. When the rums reach the required age, the Master Blender then combines both in the proportions needed to match the desired target. This proportion will, of course, change as the number of uses of the barrels involved increases. This approach is similar to that of adding new tea bags into a large kettle that also contains used tea bags, in order to maintain the intensity of the tea flavor and aroma.
Why don’t rum producers use only new barrels? Some of them opt to do so, and the resulting rums are, unsurprisingly, very similar in oak intensity as Whiskey/Bourbon. This also increases the retail price of each bottle, because new barrels cost 3-5 times as much as used ones, and this additional expense is passed on to consumers. Those producers then replace the emptied barrels with new ones and repeat the cycle. Ironically, the empty barrels usually end up in the hands of other distillers who are happy to incorporate them into their own “used barrel” aging programs.
Cheers,
Luis Ayala, Editor and Publisher