Time and Oak Whiskey Elements

A friend of mine got me an interesting gift for Christmas this year.  I saw mention of it on Gizmodo a while back and I was very glad to hear about their enormous Kickstarter success.

Time and Oak is a company that produces, for lack of a better term, charred wooden sticks.  Now I know it is hard to accurately relay tone via text so, before you read any further, be assured that that I have nothing negative to say about the product or the company’s business model.  

Consider that last paragraph your TL;DR.  

[Editors Note: Basically I have been “comparatively taste testing” this whiskey all night so this article might just turn into a TL;DW.  Or TL;POIHOWTB (passed out in hallway on way to bathroom). Only time will tell.]

The idea behind the Time and Oak whiskey sticks (according to the company) is that charred wood imparts a golden color to bottom-shelf alcohol, gives it a multi-tonal flavor, a rich aroma, and even sucks out a couple of toxins known to cause hangovers.  Their claim is that their invention - for which they have six patents - does all this stuff in 48 hours thanks to a process they refer to as “accelerated transpiration through capillary action”.  Boy, howdy, that’s a lot of 50-cent words - but do those words add up to the $6/stick price tag or should the townsfolk just have left these on the evil traveling salesman’s wagon in Passamaquoddy?   Let’s find out.

The sticks I got (a package of two) were five inches long, 1/2-inch wide, and 1/2-inch tall.  Eighteen notches were cut into the oak and four of the six sides were charred, as were the insides of the notches.  If my math is right, the notches increase the surface area of the wood blocks by a little more than 50%.  Also, the notches are important for another reason that I will get to shortly.

The instructions say to plunk one of these in a fifth (757 mL) of whatever and wait 24-48 hours. Turn the bottle occasionally.  Ok.  Can do. What to choose, though?  

I chose Jacob’s Ghost, an affordable clear whiskey I enjoy.  I didn’t want to choose an unknown, and I wanted to choose something clear so I could gauge the color change easily.  The makers say on their site to experiment with different liquids, even beer, but I assume there is a limit there.  I mean, these things ain’t gonna turn, say, a last ditch “I’m snowed in and totally unprepared” grape Pedialyte and Vermouth mixture into a Flaming Moe.  Look, this is all just stream of consciousness writing here. Try to keep up, ok?

Where was I?  Oh, yes.  Also, I didn’t want to drop one into the 95% still full bottle of Laphroaig 10 I have in the pantry.  I think I mentioned before that drinking that stuff was like trying to drink a shot of rubbing alcohol through a burning sofa cushion.  Mainly I was afraid if I were to try and drop the piece of wood into that stuff the wood would react at least 10 times more violently than my cat does when I try to put him in the carrier to take him to the vet.   Alchemy only goes so far, you dig?  So, better to have a mid-quality whiskey I am familiar with to start.

I bought two bottles of the Jacob’s Ghost.  I left the stick in one of the bottles for nearly two days (46 hours).  Here are some pics showing the transformation:

Hour 0: The stick has just been placed in the experimental bottle.

After three hours.  A light golden color is obvious already.

After twelve hours.

After 24 hours.  The wood became waterlogged at the 18-hour mark or so, and that's when it hit me that I was going to have to fish this piece of wood out somehow...

After 10 minutes of playing "Frustrating Claw Game" using a bent piece of wire, I was finally able to snag the oak piece and pull it from the bottle.  Thank goodness for the notches...

After 46 hours.

The pictures say a lot, but how about the smell and taste? My sense of smell is pretty good, but I don’t have as sophisticated of a palate as some but here is my assessment:  

After two days, the charred wood imparted the gorgeous color you see.  The bouquet had a slight sweetness to it in the experimental bottle that was not present in the control.  Unexpectedly, there was not what I would call a “smoky” smell or taste to the whiskey but there was “something" there that added an enjoyable complexity to the beverage.  Let’s call it “woody”.  Not “oaky”… Just “woody”.  Hard to describe.  A taste equivalent of the cool smell that lingers in the garage after table-sawing a piece of pine board, I guess.

I am not sure that I would believe it if someone tried to convince me that what they were handing me was a fine scotch and not a wood-gizmo-treated bottom-tier whiskey, but that really isn’t the point, is it?  The real question is “does the charred wood noticeably change the taste of the alcohol for the better in a short period of time”.  Based on this one experiment, I would have to say “yes”.  “Is it worth the six bucks?”  Again, I would say “yes”, because the new look and taste is noticeable, interesting, and pleasant. 

Thanks for the Christmas gift, bro!  My next experiment will be with three bottles of low end vodka— one control, one with another Time and Oak stick in it, and one with an equally surface-area’d piece of untreated oak. But that won’t be for a while.  After all, I can only handle so much experimenting of this nature before I onfnwoe c nnwoeindosn dmddddddd….sdad qr .