As to speed aging through the use of wood chips, another Virginia whiskey uses a similar technique. Kopper Kettle, a corn whiskey made in Culpeper, Virginia, uses apple and oak wood chips for flavor enhancement, although Kopper is aged for 24 months instead of the 4 months used by.Wasmund’s. Agitating aging barrels could speed the process.

Apparently, oak chips are in use at many wineries to speed up time to market in lieu of slow barrel aging processes. The European Union has permitted the use of oak chips for wine-making since 2006. If technology works, I’m all for it (like screw caps or plastic composite corks for wine bottles).

As noted, Wasmund’s uses fruit and oak wood to smoke its malt as an alternative to the traditional peat used in Scottish single malts. A very nice single malt made by Saint George’s in Alameda, California, uses malt smoked over beach and alder, rather than peat. But then, many single malts made in Scotland are not peated; malts are dried in electric kilns without peat. Some un-peated malts purportedly pick up peat flavors from the water they use that at some time ran through indigenous ground peat.