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 filled with hooch. These units tackle many types: tiny barrels that look cool in your bar prime, items of wooden you drop into your bottle, and different forms of gizmos that each one revolve round quickly exposing a spirit to oak.
Now you may add one other, higher-tech choice to the combo. 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 per week.
How does it work? In the event you’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 referred to as an M-Stack (extra on this in a second) attaches to the top of a slim steel pole, which dangles into the middle of a steel flask that you simply fill along 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 sort of motion.
Fashionable Barrel presents 5 forms of M-Stacks ($13 every, single-use), all made out of American white oak however handled in a different way 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 really useful sort 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 the whole lot 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 one hundred pc 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 properly 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 into decidedly smoky, nearly 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 robust choice for the blanco right here, and I didn’t discover the aged model pleasing by itself or as a mixer.
For spherical two, I reached for a basic: a bottle of Outdated Crow bourbon, as an experiment in “further growing old” one thing that’s already hung out 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 might it’s improved by per week within the Moba with the Candy M-Stack? This time I skilled completely different outcomes: The aged Outdated Crow—I wish to name it Older Crow—was decidedly darker in colour and featured a way more aggressive wooden affect on each nostril and palate. This was a great factor and a foul factor. Whereas the whiskey wasn’t smoky the way in which the tequila was, the wooden components had been fairly heavy: drying and tannic, stripping away among the pure sweetness of the bourbon. However, the aged whiskey discovered its nuttiness amped up, and even generated some thrilling notes of cinnamon and clove—basic 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 centered on considerably harsh, uncooked wooden components. Whereas I appreciated the added complexity, I’d say quality-wise the 2 whiskeys led to a tie.
