G'day Enthusiasts,
It has been sometime since my last confession, woops wrong place
It's been sometime since I posted here
but I'm still here!!
I too have to disagree with Chuck. The reason being is I do my own experiments with rebarrelling and I can totally assure all of you the weather plays a vital part in the maturation of whisk(e)y.
If you live in a timber house or a house that has a lot of timber(not steel framed, brick veneer!!) just listen to all the creaking that goes on...It's the timber expanding and contracting.
Now for a reference to Casks/Barrels...the hotter the barrel gets the more spirit is allowed into the grain of the timber, thus extracting more sugars, etc. As the average temp. in Scotland is a lot lower than that of Kentucky the barrels don't expand as much and so the sugars are not allowed to dissolve into the whisk(e)y as much or for as long.
Australia is a fantastic place!! LOL meaning weather wise...we have both the weather of Kentucky and Scotland...when it gets hot here(Melb), it gets bloody hot!! and when it's cold, it's bloody cold!!!!!
While conducting my experiments I found that over summer the whisk(e)y can change almost from day to day, yet in winter there was only few changes in the taste of my Whisk(e)y experiments.
Chuck I'm rather suprised that you think the weather plays no role...in essence the whisk(e)y is the same...distilled from cereal grain, matured in Oak.
Granted the experiment 'bourbonv' mentions doesn't make allowances for the ABV in each barrel but I can assure you that if the experiment was conducted properly, the difference in climate would show a massive difference!!
Here is what should be done for the experiment...
Take 2 barrels(freshly filled) of Bourbon and set them aside, send one to Scotland...
Same with Scotch...
For the experiment to give a true result, each barrel of Scotch and Bourbon must be sitting next to each other, so they are affected by the same climate. No point in having each barrel in four different places maturing.
I would give everything I own if I am wrong!!(Mind you I don't own much, but on the contrary it's more valuable to me!!)
Cheers and great to be back again amongst the enthusiasts!!
Troy.