Barrel Aged Aroma and Character Without the Risk | Aroma Sciences Oak Extracts | MoreBeer!

In this exclusive conversation, we sit down with Ian and Marc from Aroma Sciences to discuss their unique product line of naturally evaporated oak extracts. We discuss how the product is made, and how it can be used by homebrewers and professionals to add oak aroma and character to beer, wine, and spirits, without the traditional risk and cost associated with barrels.
Learn more about Aroma Sciences at MoreBeer! 👇

French Oak 🇫🇷 🪵
➡️ https://www.morebeer.com/products/oak-barrel-extract-american.html

American Oak 🇺🇸🪵
➡️ https://www.morebeer.com/products/american-medium-toast-oak-chips.html

Bourbon Barrel 🥃
➡️ https://www.morebeer.com/products/aroma-sciences-american-bourbon-barrel-liquid-extract-medium-toast-natural-evaporated-oak-1-oz-30ml.html

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All right hey everyone veto from morer here I’m sitting with Mark and Ian of Aroma Sciences they’ve got an awesome new product that I’ve been wanting to try but we’re going to sit down talk about it let you guys know about it uh so let’s go ahead and dig In tell me a little bit about it so basically what it is is an aromatic extract of Oak we’re taking Oak barrels and we’re taking all the aroma out of that Oak and putting it into a format that you can use post fermentation so you can add this even after it’s been

Filtered to get Oak character in beer and in wine and spirits without any of the risk associated with barrels and indeed the cost and time this invention is a is a really new means of extracting there’s only a few means of extracting one of them solvents and the other one

Is steam distillation but what this is new why this is new is because it it uses is the the process by which we smell things so if you think about a rose in a garden when you smell that Rose you’re not literally smelling the rose you’re smelling the volatile

Compounds that evaporate from the rose they enter your nose and through the airspace and you smell a rose and you can walk in a garden and you can smell from one Bush to the next they all smell different and the reason is because there’s so many compounds that

Evaporating off well that’s not how conven extraction works there you employ a solvent and the solvent is very specific and it an extract will smell of a rose but it won’t have exactly the character of that Rose but when you evaporate those molecules that’s where you get a true extraction and that’s

What we’re doing so we’re taking wood from from uh barrels and we’re this is a wine barrel Cask we’re we’re we’re taking this inner layer off we’re toasting ing it to develop those flavors we’re grinding it up and we’re putting it into our machine and the Machine evaporates all of the aroma compounds

From the Oak and we capture them into into alcohol such that they can be used in in beer and in wine and in distilled beverages so the the oak uh what what type of Oak are you guys using is American French uh that’s a French Oak

Uh Wine Barrel and this is a Stave from a American Oak spirit barel so you can see the Char inside and of course where it leaks with these little diamonds on the outside awesome so we’re talking about the barrels so where exactly do you guys Source these barrels cuz it

Sounds like they they’ve been used once yeah yeah the this this whole sort of sustainability aim that we’re trying to do here is because these barrels typically after they’ve been used in in a winery say three or four times they they end up as a planter in Home Depot

So so you know we’ve got a real good sustainability story here and these come from typically California wineries we’re here so we we Source them from from Winery the the spirits barrels that marks got there they they coming from typically in Kentucky Kentucky yeah the ram is brought in from Barbados at distillery

In Barbados yeah so so the Char that’s on there currently you guys are scraping that off and then then adding another level of toast to it is that correct yeah we do we we we brush it off here we do try to on the spirit barrels we try

To retain some of this in layer because uh it does have some some uh input to the to the final Aroma but on the wine barrels we really do plain off all of it because we don’t want to if there’s any yeast or anyo lactic bacteria things like that they don’t taste particularly

Great when you cook them so so that’s some awesome technology I mean is there anything else that that process um so it’s it’s not you’re not using a solvent so that’s great no we’re not so we’ve got a diagram that we can refer to that you can see what the

Process works by we take hot air so we’ve got a a a blower that produces high pressure air and we heat that air very precisely and into that Airstream we put particles of of wood we take these staves and granulate them and so that as a sawdust it flows into into the

Uh into a chamber and then there’s a set of tubes of varying diameter and it’s incredibly uh turbulent in there it’s hot and that causes all of the aroma molecules to evaporate from the wood particles we then Cyclone out the solids so that we’ve now got Vapor Laden air

And into that we spray cold ethanol and that causes all of the aroma molecules to condense into the alcohol we then return the air to get more wood and um and that that’s basically how our product is made it’s it’s a very elegant simple process but it creates just an

Extraordinary Aroma and it allows you to to as I say use it in in beer where putting Oak into beer is pretty difficult you’ve got to yeah that that’s a great let’s talk about that like with the application of this product and that’s what excited me uh to try it CU

You know as a as a brewer for many years and and you know home Brewer uh Oak is a you know it’s it’s a living organism putting your beer in there and letting it stay in there I mean takes a while right color changes because you have

Micro oxidation so uh let’s talk through some of the benefits of of your product yeah it offers a lot of control I think first first of all there’s a you can control the amount of time it’s fairly instant you can make sure it’s consistent depending on how much oak or

Barrel character you want to impart into your beer wine spirit whatever you’re working with um it’s also it’s uh very coste effective because you get a lot of from one used barrel uh that we can uh extract you can do a lot more than what

Uh than what you can age in that Barrel right about 100 about 100 times more yeah so uh it’s it’s fairly cost-effective way of of working and uh like I said it’s repeatable um there’s no uh chance of adding uh cont anything that would contaminate because there are contamination risks obviously with

Barrel aging with this being in an ethanol base there’s no bacteria in there that’s going to that’s going to things it’s sterile you’ve got no oxidation risk and no infection risk right I would recommend using it uh post fermentation so if you are in the process of racking from a car booy into

A keg um you could put it straight into the into the keg and then rack on top of it all it’ll it’s fully missable in the liquid it’s not an Emulsion it’s not an oil it’s nothing that that’s going to be difficult to mix in it’ll be fully

Integrated by the time the keg is is full so say I was going to Let’s uh we’ll do Homebrew calculations but say I was going to uh you know I’ve got a five gallon keg about how much of this would I need to to decent Barrel you know it

Really depends on the style of beer that you’re doing and the amount of Oak that you want how assertive the ba the beer based beer is but um these uh that you guys carry are a 1 oz uh 1 oz bottles in a 1 oz bottle if you use the entire

Thing in a 5 gallon batch it would give about 1,500 parts per million which is a good he sound aggressive so yeah so you could use probably a third of that in your typical beer uh and even if you use just uh maybe 5 milliliters in a in a uh

In a 5 gallon beer I think you’d get a couple hundred 250 parts per million at that point you can start tasting the oak that’s I love you got the little droppers in there so you could actually do some bench trials to see what You’ do

A 12 O glass of whatever yeah they’re graduated droppers so you know exactly have one mill that’s exactly how you do it and and I love we were talking about before you know different different styles that we could use this in you know obviously like bared Stouts and

Come to mind but we were talking about loggers um you know there’s a lot of breweries turning out these these Barrel aged loggers that I’ve just been loving um and and but you know Barrel aged logger you got color all these different things that are going to apply to that

So I love uh being able to use that product for this yeah it it really does at a lot of complexity even when you’re putting it in at I would say like under threshold level so in the 200 PPM range it just adds a complexity to a a fairly

Clean tasting beer that that just makes it a little bit more interesting I think when I was home brewing I would always you brew 10 gallon batches and then do five gallons traditional and then five gallons split batch and you know be you dry hop the other one or try different

Yeast but now you can do a barrel character right in the keg right just kind of add this on in absolutely um if you’re a competition Brewer get you another competition entry things like that um so I love that and and then getting that classic those are really

Starting to come back in style too like the pivo gresy and things like that that have that like Barrel kind of quality to them and if you do have a barrel HB and then the barrel didn’t quite give up what you were hoping for maybe it’s a

Little bit muted flavor this is a nice way of just bumping up what’s already there too so you don’t have to use it to replace the barrel necessarily it can be used yeah I love that that’s a great one and one of the things how I was

Introduced to it is Chris Chris Graham had the spray and we just kind of sprayed it right into a beer and I loved doing that that was kind of neat yep absolutely spray it right in you can get a good idea you can spray it on top of uh oh man that is

Amazing yeah huge vanilla on this what what that’s that’s the French Oak one French joke okay um but we’ve we’ve um so so we have a French and American which is just the the wine barrels where we’ve we’ve taken the really just to get the oak character but as Mark hinted

Earlier we we can take Spirit bar we leave the the outer layer or the inner layer I should say intact and then that exhibits if we take a new new cup here that exhibits the the the real essence of that Barrel so you’ve got a bourbon thing going on there yeah this

I’m getting like those caramel those those toffee bourbon notes exact with the vanilla with the vanilla and the and the clove black tone so you have the input from the wood but also some from the spirit that was in the wow that’s amazing and check that out this is a new

Product that we’re we’re uh we’re just about to launch and that’s that’s made of well Botanical like kind of yeah yeah I mean that’s so that’s from a Rum Barrel so it’s American Oak um typically they they age bourbon in a Rum Barrel and it goes off to the Caribbean and

Then they they use it to wage yeah I’m getting those like molasses kind of notes and stuff too yeah exactly man that’s amazing so we’ve got French Oak we got American Oak Rum Barrel Bourbon Barrel what other offerings you got so we’ve got a uh the ttb have just

Approved a brandy Barrel so all these are uh approved by the FDA and the ttb they’re all generally regarded as safe and uh We’ve we’ve got this uh this new one that um is not Oak um we noticed that the whiskey guys are going crazy for this Brazilian Wood called amarana

Ah okay so Amber’s I think it’s an a the family yeah yeah so so this is a a Brazilian hardwood and we’re taking um barrels and we’re we’re making this extract and it’s so different so this is it’s got a lot of um cinnamon vanilla butterscotch but it’s just spiced

Incredibly potent and and you can now actually use that in beer um you can use it in spirits I wouldn’t recommend it for wine but you can certainly uh it works well in beer it works well in in spirits and it even works well in ice

Cream you know oh that’s a great idea I love that one it reminds me of walking into the mall when the Cinnabon is cranking up it smells kind of like big cinnamon in there so let’s talk about some of the different applications um you know so beer we’ve talked about a

Lot um uh what other things we put this in he said so it can be used in in wine um to to I mean most most wine doesn’t even see a barrel um it’s not cost effective but you can adjust uh dose rates of or Oak in in wine we’ve had

Some some really s some interesting success in the wine industry where we can we can just add a little of this to adjust Barrel character it can be used in spirits not all Spirits I mean so you can’t use it in Bourbon for instance but but you can use it in brandy

Legally get the get the classification but if you’re a home if you’re you know dabbling in distillation at home uh you can use it as you would but um it does help to kind of give an accelerated aging type of effect and so you’re getting nice Barrel notes uh you know immediately

Really where I could see this too is uh you know I love beer um but I do a lot of mix drinks at home and just you know a little spray r on the top to add some like aromatic garnish garnish there we go yeah or even you know at at going out

To drinks do you guys sell this uh to mixologists and plac like that we’re working on it you know and another interesting application is in non-alcohol because this has such a very pronounced Spirit character if you were to mix it into to say like a a cola or

Something like that you can really make a convincing uh whiskey and Coke or whiskey and whatever uh and it’s still under keep it under a half a percent alcohol so for like rtds or non-alcohol applications you can make a really nice sort of mock uh alcohol B I’ve been lean

Like I do a lot of hot water now at home and things like that um and just you know I’m not trying to drink as much alcohol so I love that just to add a little Spritz in there or drop one mil in a 200 mil coke with ice pretty good

Yeah I’m hanging out and then I I have the the aroma that I’m having a drink but don’t need to make just a half a shot of uh make a feel like it’s a full I love that that’s great all right so how does aroma scientist compared to

Other tannins that are on the market liquid and powder and Etc yeah the they’re really complimentary uh a lot of the tannins on the market are focused just on that they’re water extracts um and they’re loaded with with tanic acid and and and the big sort of molecules that that create blockiness

And and rounded tannins in your mouth so they’re really about mouth feel this is about flavor and aroma so what we’re doing is capturing the aroma we’re leaving a lot of those tannins behind and so and in beer that’s really important because if you introduce tannins you’ve got now a protein tannin

Complex and you’ve got a haze on your hand that’s unstable and it settles and it doesn’t settle and it’s really unpredictable this it’s we’re focusing on the aroma we’re capturing the aroma those other products they’re capturing the the tannins and so so they really are they do different things so beer

Making I this is is great uh wine making I could use this to to supplement or augment my tanon additions after I’ve hit the mouth feel that I want now I want to add a little more yeah you want to get that that aromatic that that that

Flavor that that’s on your tongue and in your nose as opposed to around the sides of your mouth so we talked about commercial applications so let’s talk about the legal use uh you know home Brewers can go crazy with this stuff uh commercial SES what is the legal use uh

For for all our commercial Brewers that are watching us uh it’s permitted in beer okay um we’ve got something called a FID sheet that commercial Brewers would know about um it’s permitted in in non-standard wines currently and it’s permitted in spirits but there are specific rules around straight Spirits

Bourbon bourbon’s a protected so you can’t use it in that but pretty much anything else you can use it and in fact in some Spirits you don’t even need to put it on the label you can you can just use it Brandy is a good example of that

Where you you can just just as traditionally use but even if there is labeling required there it’s it’s completely natural right so it’s just a hot air wood and the ethanol that scrubs the air so it’s a it’s a natural Oak Barrel flavor so uh for the commercial

Side since we’re talking about I mean this is a smaller application um like if I use this whole bottle what would it do and do you guys have a bigger sized product for that side of the house yeah absolutely uh we start on the for the

Commercial sales uh we start at a one liter bottle have a 5 l 10 L 20 at 40 we can go up to 55 gallon drums or the big 275 gallon totes uh so yeah really any format we can we can comfortably uh accommodate yeah it’s all made here it’s

Made in in Colorado and bould of Colorado so okay us and on The Homebrew uh side with through more be we have the American Oak we have the French Oak and then also I think you guys just brought in some Bourbon Barrel extracts so I’m not sure if it’s available yet but what

Are some of the best examples of beers you guys have had using your products right I your favorites I think you know it really I think the go-to for a lot of people is in a big heavy dark beer Imperial Stout Imperial Porter so those are you know the the a lot of

Experimentation that Ian and I have done on benchtop have been with uh beers like that like a Speedway Stout from alith or the black be Porter do that um so really these flavors play well in those types of beers but I wouldn’t you know discount like we said before about the

Uh the light loggers things like that can also be enhanced nicely anything that has a nice malt character Red Ale sort of thing um I don’t necessarily go in IPA so much I think the pops are you know but it works great in a helis Mion hel sty you know works really well

Exactly which we drinking right here yeah yeah shall we shall we D these and try them let do what do you think all right so we’ve got this munic logger that we’ve been enjoying we have another can here so we’re I’m going to top us all off and then we’re going to

Douse it with uh this Aroma science a barrel age and see the difference why don’t we put a few drops in first this we mix mix in yeah love it go for it so let’s we’ll get yours first I’ll probably just it’s probably going to take a couple drops really you want to

See how that goes yeah so four drops in there we’ll get that all mixed in and then depending on what you think we can uh we can go either way with Ours yeah definitely I like that it’s it’s present but not overpowering with that that amount yeah and I think that’s probably consistent with that particular style of beer and it definitely you know changed yeah like I almost feel like I got a different kind of mouth feel to it

You know and it’s probably just from the aroma kind of you know tricking me into the you know we found that in wine it it softens wine it seems to reduce the it seems to to reduce the acidity a little bit I mean it doesn’t we measure the pH

But it but it it gives that a sort of a smoothness and and I think getting that little vanilla character just kind of tricks your mind into like wow there’s more body here try yeah yeah let see what we got here that’s be I me I can

Smell it from here right when you open it too okay I’ll top you off thanks to our friends at Oakland United for this delicious moger more or less what do you think no that’s about right okay there we go I think in a dark beer you you you’d

Want more but in a light beer yeah so like I said one of these uh one of these 1 o bottles will do five gallons yeah exactly so 15 Gallons if you want to kind of go on the Lighter Side here yeah I love what it does the aroma

It’s like we have you know a whole different beer now you know or a different iteration of the beer style which I love just a nice touch of Oak yeah it’s very good so you know Barrel aging inherent risks you know i’ I’ve I’ve ran Barrel projects and you put

Your beer in you hopefully you you taste them summer great you get micro oxidation especially for home Brewers that are using the smaller barrels that surface area uh so being able to consistently I’ll say consistently um always add that Aroma is very intriguing

To me me uh um you had a story of uh how you kind of saved the day yeah absolutely there are inherent risks with Barrel aging uh especially kind of lower alcohol uh product like beer uh so I had one customer who had a big uh beer and

Cigar tasting event that they were going to be doing and they went to rack off the beer from the barrels and they realized it was just spoiled sour not no good not appropriate to serve so I had been at the brewery just a week or so earlier left him with some samples and

He took everything I had put it into a keg and was able to to make a really nice uh I think it was a kind of a oak Porter let’s say and it went along well with these cigars everybody loved it the sales guys from the brewery loved it

They put it in the Tap Room people loved it it was just a kind of save the day situation so yeah it’s uh it’s big Brewery yeah big Brewery too it’s nice to it’s a nice tool to have in the toolbox yeah definitely to be able to

Consistently offer that and and not have to take up space Etc um and and and change the beer greatly in some you know Oak Aging in some cases so I love being able to just introduce that any any Arrow you could add into a Brewer’s quiver uh is really cool

Exactly all right Mark Ian thanks for joining us uh looking forward to brewing with this product I’m brewing this weekend I might introduce it into the batch thanks for joining us Cheers Cheers Cheers Cheers M