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Just west of downtown Louisville sits Heaven Hill’s Bernheim Distillery—the only heritage distillery to produce every major style and type of American Whiskey, with five signature mashbills.
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Charred to start. Toasted to Finish. This unique expression takes fully aged, award-winning Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon and finishes it in a custom-toasted barrel for even more sweet oak complexity.
Taste: Big, rich, and complex. Delightful spice and pepper notes fade to milk chocolate with just a hint of smoke
Finish: Complexity continues. Nicely warming, with lingering chocolate and baking spices
Tasting Notes
Color: Roasted pecans
Aroma: Lots of toasted oak with rich caramel
Taste: Big, rich, and complex. Delightful spice and pepper notes fade to milk chocolate with just a hint of smoke
Finish: Complexity continues. Nicely warming, with lingering chocolate and baking spices
The Bourbon Connoisseur's Guide to Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel
For Heaven Hill Distillery, Bourbon in the 21st century is all about preserving time-honored methods while pushing the industry towards new levels of creativity and innovation. Barrel finishing is just one of the techniques that allows us to help nurture the future of Bourbon and develop new, nuanced flavor profiles.
In finishing, we place fully-matured American Whiskey in a specialty "finishing" barrel, either one that has been used to hold flavorful goods (other spirits, coffee, etc)... or a new kind of barrel, something altogether different and exciting.
Fully matured Elijah Craig Small Batch Bourbon
Finished in toasted new oak barrels
Left to develop more complex, sweet oak flavors
Bottled at 94 proof
For Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel, we worked with our cooperage partners to craft entirely new barrels that were custom toasted and then flash charred to our exact specifications. These finishing barrels fall squarely under the legal definition of "charred new oak containers," and maintain all the requirements to be a Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.
This Bourbon showcases our ability to innovate. We are one of the world's largest whiskey producers, but we are always looking at how to be nimble and take our products to the next level.
Conor O'Driscoll, Master Distiller
Charring and Toasting, Compared
Toasted oak, just before it is flash charred.
As any American Whiskey fan knows, without a charred oak barrel, there is no Bourbon. But the high-heat charring process does much more than simply creating a blackened surface on a barrel's interior. In fact, the "char layer" has little to no impact on the final flavor, but serves an entirely practical function: filtration. This top layer of black, broken down wood fibers is essentially charcoal, and affects the spirit in the same way as the charcoal water filter in your refridgerator or those used to process other spirits like vodka: it removes off flavors and odors.
Level 3 Charred
The intense heat of charring creates a blackened surface with fissures in the wood. Elijah Craig Bourbon ages in these traditional barrels until it meets peak maturity.
Toasted & Flash Charred
The lower temperature darkens the oak but leaves the surface intact. The aged Bourbon is finished in these barrels, adding depth and complexity.
Instead, the beloved barrel-aged flavors of Bourbon come from the "red layer" that lives just beneath under the char layer. Here, the intense flame from the charring process caramelizes the hemicellulose and breaks down the lignin in the oak, forming the necessary flavor and aromatic compounds that give Bourbon its signature taste and color. Typically, Heaven Hill's barrels are a level 3 char, blasted with heat for about 45 seconds.
Our custom toasting process affects that same red layer, albeit in a different way. By using a lower intensity heat over a longer period of time, toasting creates a thicker red layer, with a unique concentration of flavors that the Bourbon can then absorb. Imagine cooking food over a screaming hot grill vs. the low and slow approach in barbecue. Both delicious, just different.
Crafting the Perfect Barrel
Most importantly, the toasting process gives the cooperage complete control over the flavors that can be developed within the barrel. For Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel, we worked with the Independent Stave Company over a period of several months to find the right toasting profile to complement the signature spice flavors of Elijah Craig Bourbon.
We started with barrels constructed exclusively of premium white oak, air-dried for 18 months. As we began the research and development process, our early experiments taught us that if we heated the oak too quickly, the barrel lent strong, smoky flavors that, while interesting, ultimately overpowered the complex fruit and spice notes that make Elijah Craig so special.
The Right Balance of Flavors
As we continued, we discoverded that starting the barrel over a medium-low flame, but then employing a smooth and steady increase in both time and temperature, we were able to produce the right balance of dark sugar flavors that resonated with the warmth of Elijah Craig.
With this new information in hand, we continued to work with Independent Stave Company's engineers to develop our own a signature toasting profile, exclusive to Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel.
A medium-low heat to start with a slow and steady increase in temperature created the perfect flavor balance to complement Elijah Craig Small Batch.
It's crucial to understand where you can and cannot take barrel finishing. Adding the wrong flavor, or too much of the right flavor, will make the whiskey one-sided or “over oaked." Through several synergy trials, we identified the right toasted oak compounds that paired well with Elijah Craig. We then designed a brand new, custom toast profile that would deliver those flavors in the correct concentrations to complement its signature flavor.
Andrew Wiehebrink, Independent Stave Company
In the Glass
Once poured in the glass, the sweet oak complexity rings forth. The sipping experience is excited by chocolate notes, spice, pepper, and just a hint of smoke.
The finish is exceedingly smooth and conveys the nuance of the toasted oak.
Every time I give it a taste, I just think ‘Wow...there’s a lot going on in that glass.’ This is a seriously rich & complex whiskey.
- Conor O'Driscoll, Master Distiller
See the Entire Process
Play the video to see the making of Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel
