Into the Fire: Why We Obsess Over the Char

Something special happens when you first open a cask and run your finger along the inside. If it is a good cask, your hand comes away blackened, stained by the charred oak that will spend years shaping the spirit within.

People often talk about the grain or the water when they discuss whisky. They admire the copper of the stills, the height of the neck and the precise cut of the spirit run, yet they frequently overlook the silent partner waiting in the dark corner of the warehouse: the cask, and specifically what happens to its wood when it meets the flame.

In our small corner of the Highlands, just outside the town of Thurso, we do things a little differently. We embrace long fermentations of at least seven days. We work with Kveik, a characterful yeast more at home in Norwegian farmhouse brewing than in a Scotch whisky distillery. We are chasing depth and character, not just uniformity. And when it comes time to put that spirit to bed, we are obsessed with the char.

A happy accident of the cooperage

Charring was not born from a textbook. It grew out of the practical, and often messy, reality of the cooperage. Coopers have always relied on fire to build a cask: heating the staves makes the oak pliable enough to bend into shape, gently toasting the inside of the wood in the process. Casks were also the workhorses of their day, reused again and again to carry everything from molasses to wine and ale, and a fiercer flame was a practical way to clean out the remnants of a cask's previous life before it was refilled.

Somewhere along the way, whether by happy accident or keen observation, people noticed that the blackened, blistered interior did something remarkable to whatever was stored inside, and to spirits most of all. By the nineteenth century, charring had become common practice in American whiskey-making, and today it shapes the casks in which spirits all over the world, Scotch included, are left to mature.

Toast and char: not quite the same thing

It is worth pausing on the difference. Toasting is a slower, gentler heat that works deep into the staves, coaxing out notes of caramel, toffee and vanilla. Charring is a short, intense burst of open flame that blisters the surface and leaves behind a crackled layer of carbon. Many casks, including the bourbon barrels we favour, have both.

Image from Still In Cask

Where fire becomes flavour

That blackened layer is far more than a by-product of the flame. It acts as a natural filter, drawing out the harsher, sulphurous notes that can mar a young spirit. Beneath it, the heat has been quietly at work on the wood itself: the sugars locked within the oak caramelise, and its deeper structures break down into vanilla and warming spice. We are forcing the wood to surrender its secrets. It is the difference between drinking raw wood juice and sipping on liquid velvet.

Char is a conversation

Many larger producers treat char as a standard specification. They order casks by the thousands with a set char level, seeking a reliable flavour that stays the same from one batch to the next. There is real skill in that kind of consistency, but it is not our way.

We believe char level is a conversation, not a specification. Judging it means getting up close: opening the cask, studying the depth and texture of the char, nosing it, and yes, running your finger along the inside of the cask opening to see what comes away. A heavy char creates a more reactive surface, encouraging the spirit to draw out deep, smoky, coffee-like notes more quickly. A lighter char lets the spirit breathe more gently, so the fruity, tropical esters our Kveik yeast creates during fermentation can shine through without being smothered by oak. If you do not understand your char, you do not fully understand your whisky.

Learning from the best

We look to distilleries that understand this, none more so than the great bourbon houses of Kentucky, where charred virgin oak is the star of the show. Heaven Hill, Buffalo Trace and one of our personal favourites, Willett, do it brilliantly. We like Willett so much that we purchased over 100 of their casks this year.

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  Barrels at the Midwest Barrel Company warehouse

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  Alex and Struan with the guys from Midwest Barrel Company

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  Our Warehouse

"Barrels that have proper char," as our Head Distiller, Greg, eloquently puts it!

The final act

For us, the cask is the final act of whisky-making. When we bring together a long, slow fermentation that builds depth and texture, low-and-slow distillations cut by taste alone, and the charred signature of our hand-selected casks, we are telling a story. We want our whisky to be alive: to grow, to mingle with the echoes of whatever the cask held before, to breathe with the wood, and finally to emerge as something entirely its own.

So the next time you hold a glass of single malt, blended malt, grain whisky, basically anything that has been aged in a cask, I challenge you to think beyond the colour that you see. Think about the fire. Think about the char. Sometimes you have to set something alight to create something beautiful.

Join us on the journey

If you would like to follow along, sign up to our newsletter. To learn more about how we choose our casks, read our earlier post, American Oak and European Oak: What’s the difference and does it matter?

Or, better yet, experience the char for yourself by filling your very own cask of Dalclagie through our Cask Ownership Programme – for more information on that, shoot me an email at alex@northpointdistillery.com 

– Alex

Co-Founder and COO of North Coast Distillers LTD.