Joseph Burkett at Old State Farms in Emlenton, Pennsylvania, is among a growing number of food producers experimenting with barrel aging. For three years, heâs been aging his small-batch syrup in barrels that once gave color, flavor and character to spirits made in Pennsylvania and Jamaica.
Specific whiskeys like bourbon and rye are required to be aged in charred new oak barrels. When empty, most of those barrels were then sent to wholesalers and repurposed into furniture or sent overseas for Scotch whisky. Many are finding a second life with brewers, wine makers and sugarmakers like Burkett looking to add a kiss of smoke and whiskey flavor to their products.
Joseph Burkett knew nothing about maple syrup when he and his wife-to-be, Alethea, decided to try making it on his fatherâs gravel driveway 20 years ago.
Tired of being cooped up inside all winter, the couple thought it might be fun to get out in the March sunshine to collect some sap from his dadâs grove of 20 sugar maple trees in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and try their hand at cooking it down into syrup.
âWe had no idea what we were doing,â Burkett recalls, âjust that, if you drill a hole in a tree and put a bucket under it, something would come out.â
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