I make whiskey professionally and am mostly interested in traditional alcoholic beverages. I know that corn whiskey was a big deal not just as a beverage but as a means as a currency in what counted as the “west” at the time, leading to why the Whiskey Rebellion was not just about boozing up but about commerce in regions where American currency was not widely available. There’s a great amount of romanticism about traditional American spirits being aged in oak but historically there isn’t A) an idea of corn whiskey being aged on charred oak until the the 19th century when it was an attempt to counterfeit French spirits, and B) oak would have been much more valuable in building ships.
So, is it reasonable to assume revolution era corn whiskey was more likely to be aged in clay or glass than wood?
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