I have been looking for an excuse to try coopering. Apparently, there are some vermouths that are barrel aged. That vague statement is good enough for me, but before I actually start coopering barrels, a serious undertaking, I am trying an experiment to see if it's really worth it. I am starting with white oak and cherry. I also want to test charred and uncharred wood.

I cut a dozen or so pieces of each, about 3/4 inch square by about 5 inches long. Next, I charred half of them. Finally, I placed my oak, charred oak, cherry, and charred cherry into 4 jars, and filled them up with batch #20 of my sweet vermouth (exact same recipe as batch #19, no dedicated blog post necessary) along with a fifth wood-free jar as a control. Naturally, things didn't go entirely to plan, I had to quickly make up batch #20a in order to fill all of the jars.

I plan to do my first taste test in 1 week.