In case you missed it, there’s a cottage trade on the market of devices and doohickeys that allow you to age your personal whiskey, rum, or whatnot, all with out the effort of getting to construct a warehouse and fill it stuffed with hooch. These gadgets tackle many kinds: tiny barrels that look cool in your bar high, items of wooden you drop into your bottle, and different forms of gizmos that every one revolve round quickly exposing a spirit to oak.
Now you may add one other, higher-tech choice to the combination. Fashionable Barrel Firm’s Moba Smart Barrel is a plug-in, Wi-Fi-enabled urn that ingests a bottle of booze and spits out a barrel-aged model after every week.
How does it work? If you happen to’re acquainted with the sorcery of commercial-scale accelerated growing old operations like Lost Spirits, you’re heading in the right direction. Moba retains a few of its tech near its vest, however one among its founders—it is a facet hustle for him and one other skilled chemist—says it includes warmth, oxygen, and wooden, “similar to in an actual barrel.”
I’ll attempt to describe it as a cross between a strain cooker and a pint-size water heater. A small block of wooden known as an M-Stack (extra on this in a second) attaches to the tip of a slim metallic pole, which dangles into the middle of a metallic flask that you simply fill together with your chosen spirit. You seal it up and hit the ability button, then the unit gently heats the wooden and, apparently, agitates the spirit with vibration or another kind of motion.
Fashionable Barrel presents 5 forms of M-Stacks ($13 every, single-use), all constructed from American white oak however handled otherwise earlier than they’re prepared to be used. Candy, Easy, Baking Spice, Oak, and Smoke aren’t probably the most intuitive names, however Fashionable Barrel supplies some concepts on how every is greatest used and a beneficial kind of spirit for every. The corporate despatched me two wooden tiles to make use of for testing together with the Moba itself.
Curiously, the Moba was initially designed for growing old blanco tequila, although the founders say they’ve tried it on every little thing from baijiu to Southern Consolation and have had good outcomes growing old mezcal, Everclear, and “barreled” cocktails just like the Manhattan.
For my testing, I began with the OG: a reasonable however 100% agave blanco tequila, paired with the Baking Spices tile. After one week within the Moba, what emerged from the canister was certainly a big shade of brown, in line color-wise with a reposado or añejo tequila. I tasted the earlier than and after spirits facet by facet. The unique, unaged tequila was clear and frivolously lemony, with touches of white pepper and a recent end that helped it punch effectively above its price ticket. After the Moba growing old, I discovered all the character had modified, and never for the higher. The nostril had turn out to be decidedly smoky, virtually like a forest fireplace was burning within the distance. The identical went for the palate: Tannic wooden and burning underbrush dominated, and the sweetness one expects to seek out in a reposado tequila was wholly absent. I had a powerful desire for the blanco right here, and I didn’t discover the aged model fulfilling by itself or as a mixer.
For spherical two, I reached for a traditional: a bottle of Outdated Crow bourbon, as an experiment in “further growing old” one thing that’s already frolicked within the barrel. Out of the bottle, Outdated Crow is pushed by its cereal origins, with dominant notes of peanuts and popcorn. It’s a innocent sufficient whiskey, however may or not it’s improved by every week within the Moba with the Candy M-Stack? This time I skilled totally different outcomes: The aged Outdated Crow—I wish to name it Older Crow—was decidedly darker in coloration and featured a way more aggressive wooden affect on each nostril and palate. This was a very good factor and a foul factor. Whereas the whiskey wasn’t smoky the best way the tequila was, the wooden components have been fairly heavy: drying and tannic, stripping away a few of the pure sweetness of the bourbon. Then again, the aged whiskey discovered its nuttiness amped up, and even generated some thrilling notes of cinnamon and clove—traditional components you’d discover in an actual whiskey barrel. The catch was that I didn’t actually benefit from the aged model extra, discovering it a bit unbalanced and too targeted on considerably harsh, uncooked wooden components. Whereas I appreciated the added complexity, I might say quality-wise the 2 whiskeys resulted in a tie.
