At your local diner, the toast choices at breakfast are usually white, wheat, or rye. But when it comes to barrels, whiskey makers have hundreds of toast options to choose from. “Toasted is a buzzword now,” says COO and co-founder of Penelope Bourbon Daniel Polise. “But people don’t always know how a barrel is toasted or charred—and that they are two very different things.”
Charring—when a new oak barrel is exposed to an open flame—is the process of burning the wood, while toasting lends a lighter touch. Charring is like putting a marshmallow straight into the flame, while toasting is holding it further away for a longer period of time. Variables like temperature, duration, the cooper who made the barrel, and the toasting’s intensity level create a much broader spectrum than charring, which typically has four levels ranging from 15 to 55 seconds of exposure to the flame.
But the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Many barrels are toasted prior to being charred in order to extract greater flavor from the wood. But unlike charring, toasting is not a requirement for bourbon production. Toasting activates lactones in the oak, producing more vanilla, coconut, and caramel flavors. As whiskey makers look to innovate, specifically with an ingredient central to the process—the influence of the oak barrel—many are turning to toasting not just as a tool for initial maturation, but for finishing as well.
Some have been doing it for quite a while. Michter’s pioneered the toasted barrel finishing genre, introducing its first toasted barrel expression back in 2014 with its US*1 label. Today toasted barrel is among Michter’s signature styles. In 2017 Michter’s added a toasted barrel-finished barrel strength rye, and in 2019, a toasted barrel finished sour mash, a whiskey that was just re-released for the first time this past September.
“It was something born out of the desire to really showcase the influence of the toasted barrel,” says Michter’s master of maturation Andrea Wilson. “The importance of the toasting process is the art of slow heating the wood.”
Wilson focuses on comparing a toasted finish to the original spirit when tasting, and says that with so many options it can take time to find the right match. “Toasting is not an easy thing to figure out,” says Wilson. “It’s difficult to find the right toast profile that will complement your spirit.”
As a result, working with toasted barrels can be a journey and an evolution for whiskey makers. John Rempe, master distiller at Lux Row, points to a specific use of toasted barrels in 2018 as illuminating, when he scraped and toasted barrels that had previously held Rebel (then Rebel Yell) single barrel to create Blood Oath Pact 4. “That turned out phenomenal,” Rempe says. “From that point on, I’ve always been a huge fan of toasted barrel finishes.”
In 2021, Lux Row released Daviess County Double Barrel bourbon, which was finished in Missouri white oak barrels with toasted heads. They followed that up in 2022 with Daviess County Lightly Toasted, a combination of high-rye and wheated bourbon mashbills that was aged for 4-plus years and then finished in lightly toasted American oak barrels. Lightly Toasted is the first in an annual series of toasted barrel finishes by Daviess County.
Rempe says that distillers are always looking to set themselves apart, and working with toasted barrels is a way of accomplishing that while celebrating one of the core tenets of whiskey making. “I’ve been working with different finishes for the last almost nine years,” he says. “Right now, I think it’s just the flavor profile. You’re not bringing in any flavor notes from, say, a cabernet or a port or a sherry [cask]. You’re still dealing strictly with wood, so it has that flavor profile of a bourbon, but with maybe just some enhanced notes that you normally don’t get out of that charred barrel.”
In recent years, bigger players have created their own toasted barrel finishes. In 2021, Jim Beam introduced Basil Hayden Toast, a whiskey made from brown rice, a portion of which was finished in toasted barrels. Heaven Hill, meanwhile, extended its Elijah Craig line in 2020 with its Toasted Barrel release, taking whiskey that had aged between 8 and 12 years and finishing it in barrels from Independent Stave Company that had been lightly charred and toasted.
Like Wilson, Heaven Hill master distiller Conor O’Driscoll compares the finished product to the original Elijah Craig bottling, emphasizing the impact of the toasting process. “It’s like toasting bread,” O’Driscoll says. “I mean, bread is good; you toast it, it’s even better. Sugar is good; as you caramelize it, it’s even better. It adds richness and complexity.” O’Driscoll notes that Toasted Barrel makes a fantastic Manhattan.
As toasted barrels have grown in popularity, whiskey makers are increasingly drawn to working with them. Michael Paladini, CEO and co-founder of Penelope Bourbon, says they purchased four different toasted barrels in 2021. He and Polise couldn’t decide on their favorite, so they blended the barrels together and now offer their Toasted Series year-round and in greater supply, calling the project an ongoing experiment. “Folks were interested in it not just from the flavor profile perspective—they wanted to learn more,” Paladini says. “They wanted to know about the process and how it actually works.”
As a result, Penelope Bourbon lists all the toast specifications on the bottle, and they continue to educate themselves about different toast profiles and the flavors they create. “Some of these flavor profiles I personally have found so interesting, and that’s why we keep doing it,” he says. “It’s a profile folks are enjoying very much right now. I don’t know where it will lead, I just can speak to it over the past 18 months that we’ve really embarked on this, and have seen a pretty steady appetite for it.”
7 Toasted Barrel Finished Whiskeys to Try
Michter’s US*1 Limited Release Toasted Barrel Finish Sour Mash, 43%, $100
Graham cracker, honey, orange peel, strawberry candies, caramel syrup, and espresso
Elijah Craig Toasted Barrel Bourbon, 47%, $50
Roasted nuts, polished oak, mint, peppery spice, dark chocolate, licorice, tobacco ash
Barrell Vantage Bourbon, 57.22%, $90
Rich chocolate, Red Hots, dried leaves, and snickerdoodles
Basil Hayden Toast Bourbon 40%, $50
Toasted herbs, strawberry yogurt, bitter chocolate, custard, and caramel flan
Buzzard’s Roost Toasted Barrel Straight Rye, 52.5%, $70
Lemon oil, fresh grapefruit juice, chocolate, hazelnuts, cinnamon-raisin bagel
Daviess County Lightly Toasted Bourbon, 48%, $50
Black pepper, chile flakes, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, vanilla, coconut cream
Penelope Toasted Barrel Strength Straight Bourbon (Batch 22-01), 56%, $65
Red Hots, Big Red gum, cinnamon powder, and fruit
