by afisher » Sun May 13, 2007 3:56 pm
On first principles, you would think that the rate of aging would be proportional to the ratio between the surface area and the volume of the barrel, hence proportional to the 1/3 power of the volume. So a 10-gallon barrel would age 1.7 times faster than a 53-gallon barrel, and 4 years in the 10 gallon would be about like 7 in the larger barrel. I don't know if this matches experience, though.
I'm actually aging some 100pf vodka in a 1-liter barrel to get a more or less pure barrel taste; theoretically this should develop almost 6 times faster than in a full-size barrel, modulo variations in char, wood, temperature, etc.