Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

Those barrels are works of art Bruce. Were whiskey barrels rotated in real life? I should know this living in Bourbon land.

I tried to research this a little bit Brent & here's what I came up with...

Q. Which distilleries rotate their barrels throughout the aging process? I took a tour of Maker's Mark not too long ago, and the guide explained that MM has to keep one-third of each rack house (?) open in order to shift the stock around over time. My understanding is that some distilleries, like Jim Beam, take stock from several parts of the warehouse in order to achieve the same effect as rotation in each batch.

A. It used to be that all barrels were rotated. Now it's a rare occurrence at all distilleries. The need to rotate is primarily determined by the size of your production. A smaller producer (like Maker's or Labrot and Graham) has to do some rotation, because they don't have enough stock to always "fix it in the mix." A company like Beam or Heaven Hill can make good use of whiskey that has aged too quickly or too slowly and still hit their flavor profiles. Rotation, as you can imagine, is very labor intensive, hence costly.