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

Hi folks, this is a project I just completed & I call it my "Barrel rotisserie" utilizing a 1-liter customized Oak Whisky barrel.  the barrel rides on bogie wheels riding on 2 axles suspended in roller ball bearings. the pine plinth has copper side shields.

Very creative Bruce.

Will be a hit at any show!

Your projects just keep getting better and better Bruce - really well done!

Nice workmanship!

Thanks Jim, I have a larger one coming soon

Very nice, Bruce - and it makes me thirsty to see the barrels spinning.
By the way, these whiskey barrels are very common
in the Swiss Alps - if you get lost
a St. Bernard dog rescues you and supplies you with whiskey
Arnold



[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

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.

Thanks Bruce. That's an interesting reply but still don't quite understand why they did this, but MM and others are nearby so will have to ask next time I visit.

My guess would be that since the charred oak barrel infuses the bourbon/whiskey with its flavor, a certain "outage" would be normal and thus rotating the barrel occasionally would expose more of the blend to more of the inside of the charred barrel. Of course rotating continuously like I'm doing would not be done. I saw something similar to this (only it flipped end over end) at Cabin fever and thought it was a neat display...but I didn't want to copy him exactly 😊.

Well that's incredibly unique and impressive to say the least Bruce!

Thanks Jim 😊