American Oak Infusion Spirals - Medium Plus Toast

Good for infusing "toasted oak" character to a wine or spirit. I really like these sticks to easily split into thirds for gallon jugs. A clear spirit will take color in under a week and full oak flavor in 6 to 8 but I leave mine in for longer. I reuse them a couple times also (soak in grain alcohol if used in wine or in a small amount of same spirit to sanitize before introducing to a larger spirit container)

These did a great job of rapid aging. The only negative is they are too wide to fit in a standard bottle. I had to use a plastic container but, that allowed me to make a larger blend. Each spiral is good for up to 5 gallons.

When I read the instructions, I quickly figured out that I had to cut off the length that I needed to test this out. I bought a 1L bottle of Buffalo Trace Bourbon. I used a small 20cm section of the spiral in 375ml of Bourbon for 5 weeks. The results were a bit over-oaked, in my opinion. I used the original Buffalo Trace as a benchmark to compare. I got better results when I blended about one-third of the "double-oaked" Buffalo Trace with about two-thirds of the original Buffalo Trace. Less tanic and more drinkable. I want to experiment with this some more,, perhaps with less time or less of the spiral. Interesting, to say the least.

Love the mellowing flavor

In case there’s anyone like me hoping to salvage a failed mixture of whiskey, in this case bourbon, this is a great product. I also wanted to share some tips and learnings. First, I was only working with about 700ml of whiskey so I broke off a piece of the spiral, about an inch or 4-5 spirals. Put it in a mason jar and used a syringe to taste daily. Already day 1, there is a noticeable change in flavor. So I left it and went back the next day, and it was great. Toasted marshmallow notes with red fruit flavors underneath. It removed the spikeyness that was at the back end of each sip, which was my original goal. Foolishly, I didn’t dump it out then and there. I left it for another day, and guess what, a bitter oak flavor appeared at the back when I sampled it day 3. I dumped it then, but it’s too tannic now. I’ve added some eagle rare to try to smooth it out, but the lesson I learned is that you should taste daily and dump it as soon as it’s good. It’s not gonna somehow magically get better than good. If you’re working with small quantities, it won’t take much time at all, no matter how small of a piece you break off. Cheers!

I thought this was an interesting product to experiment with. I have a pretty good liquor cabinet stocked with lots of different kinds of liquors. I buy both expensive booze for sipping straight and less expensive for mixing drinks. I have a bottle of $80 whiskey and a bottle of $20 whiskey which I thought would be interesting to try on. So, I picked up these spirals more for the interest of checking the claims and seeing if it really would improve the cheap whiskey or not. While I had these, I thought I would try them on tequila and rum too. So, here is what I did... Rather than ruin a whole bottle of booze, I cut these in half and filled mason jars with cheap whiskey, cheap tequila, and cheap white rum. I then let these sit for about a week before straining the liquids back into bottles for tasting and use. So, the results? 1) Cheap whiskey - This definitely improved the taste of the whiskey. It still wasn't as smooth as my expensive stuff, but it was a lot closer to pretty good than the old. So, this part was successful. 2) White rum - This was not as successful. The white rum turned dark and developed a smoky flavor. I am not big on smoke and this tasted like the jar had sit next to a campfire all day. I did not really like the taste of this and not sure I can drink it. So, my recommendation is to not use these on rum unless you really like the taste of camp fire in your mouth. 3) White Tequila - Forget this! Talk about camp fire. This tasted like the tequila had been filtered through campfire coals and re-bottled. I had to throw it away as it was too disgusting to think about drinking. Good thing it was cheap tequila so I didn't cry too long. Perhaps if I experimented more with smaller pieces of these spirals, I would have found a size that didn't overwhelm the booze it was in. According to the directions, you would use one whole spiral in a 750 ml bottle. Perhaps using half a spiral in a bottle would have worked out better in the tequila or rum. When I cut these in half, I used about a half bottle of booze in each mason jar, so that would be the equivalent. But I am not wasting any more good booze to find out if smaller sizes of these spirals would have worked better. Bottom line - If you want to improve cheap whiskey, this will make it taste better. It will not improve tequila or rum in my opinion. At the cost of these spirals, I would probably just invest the money in buying a better quality whiskey than using devices like this.

I have had success with aging small batches of bourbon with these. When they are used up, I'll buy more.

I bought this to mellow out some mead I made that turned out less amazing than it should have been. The mead I made had fusel alcohols in it and I haven't figured out why since it is the first time I've ever had a brew come out with those flavors. I've oakes wines with chips before but never a spiral. I will never use chips again. This spiral was easy to use and fish out after bottling. Not only that, the spiral did exactly what I'd hoped it would do, which was mellow out my jet fuel flavored mead. Not only did it mellow it out so it was drinkable, it imparted a gorgeous vanilla, smoke, and bourbon flavor. My bad mead became very drinkable and delicious after only six weeks of bulk aging.

Turned out great after about a week in

I love this product by making my own aging wines and whiskey