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Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging

Oak barrels have been used by humans for thousands of years to store and transport valuable materials. Early settlers of the United States in Kentucky began charring the interior of new white oak barrels prior to aging distillate to create the distinctively flavored spirit we know as bourbon whiskey...

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Autores principales: Gollihue, Jarrad, Richmond, Mitchell, Wheatley, Harlen, Pook, Victoria G., Nair, Meera, Kagan, Isabelle A., DeBolt, Seth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6203734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30367085
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34204-1
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author Gollihue, Jarrad
Richmond, Mitchell
Wheatley, Harlen
Pook, Victoria G.
Nair, Meera
Kagan, Isabelle A.
DeBolt, Seth
author_facet Gollihue, Jarrad
Richmond, Mitchell
Wheatley, Harlen
Pook, Victoria G.
Nair, Meera
Kagan, Isabelle A.
DeBolt, Seth
author_sort Gollihue, Jarrad
collection PubMed
description Oak barrels have been used by humans for thousands of years to store and transport valuable materials. Early settlers of the United States in Kentucky began charring the interior of new white oak barrels prior to aging distillate to create the distinctively flavored spirit we know as bourbon whiskey. Despite the unique flavor and cultural significance of “America’s Spirit”, little is known about the wood-distillate interaction that shapes bourbon whiskey. Here, we employed an inverse method to measure the loss of specific wood polysaccharides in the oak cask during aging for up to ten years. We found that the structural cell wall wood biopolymer, cellulose, was partially decrystallized by the charring process. This pyrolytic fracturing and subsequent exposure to the distillate was accompanied by a steady loss of sugars from the cellulose and hemicellulose fractions of the oak cask. Distinct layers of structural degradation and product release from within the barrel stave are formed over time as the distillate expands into and contracts from the barrel staves. This complex, wood-sugar release process is likely associated with the time-dependent generation of the unique palate of bourbon whiskey.
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spelling pubmed-62037342018-10-31 Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging Gollihue, Jarrad Richmond, Mitchell Wheatley, Harlen Pook, Victoria G. Nair, Meera Kagan, Isabelle A. DeBolt, Seth Sci Rep Article Oak barrels have been used by humans for thousands of years to store and transport valuable materials. Early settlers of the United States in Kentucky began charring the interior of new white oak barrels prior to aging distillate to create the distinctively flavored spirit we know as bourbon whiskey. Despite the unique flavor and cultural significance of “America’s Spirit”, little is known about the wood-distillate interaction that shapes bourbon whiskey. Here, we employed an inverse method to measure the loss of specific wood polysaccharides in the oak cask during aging for up to ten years. We found that the structural cell wall wood biopolymer, cellulose, was partially decrystallized by the charring process. This pyrolytic fracturing and subsequent exposure to the distillate was accompanied by a steady loss of sugars from the cellulose and hemicellulose fractions of the oak cask. Distinct layers of structural degradation and product release from within the barrel stave are formed over time as the distillate expands into and contracts from the barrel staves. This complex, wood-sugar release process is likely associated with the time-dependent generation of the unique palate of bourbon whiskey. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-10-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6203734/ /pubmed/30367085 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34204-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Gollihue, Jarrad
Richmond, Mitchell
Wheatley, Harlen
Pook, Victoria G.
Nair, Meera
Kagan, Isabelle A.
DeBolt, Seth
Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
title Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
title_full Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
title_fullStr Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
title_full_unstemmed Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
title_short Liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
title_sort liberation of recalcitrant cell wall sugars from oak barrels into bourbon whiskey during aging
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6203734/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30367085
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-34204-1
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