Many private whisky cask owners are searching for a way to properly assess their options. This article is meant to inform these individuals about the options they hold regarding to the bottling of whisky casks. It’s best to bottle whisky at the maximum strength of the cask as this will maximize your potential output, be overall cheaper to produce and require less room for storage purposes.
To produce a malt presentation, one must have the following materials: varnished stopper cork made from wood, clean and clear whisky bottle, white plan outer cases and a pure gold tin capsule. Some private owners choose to use black and white labeling on their whisky bottles. On the label, essential information to include is your name, original cask distillery, cask details, fill date, cask number and cask strength.
If one plans on developing and printing their own labels, using a regular computer ink jet printer, any spilled whisky will most likely run down the bottle and smear the ink. It’s best to substitute with a laser printer for small business label production. With a standard hogshead cask, expect to produce approximately 280 whisky bottles at a 60 percent alcohol strength. If one wanted to produce only a 40 percent bottle, this would entail an additional 171 whisky bottles and 120 liters of extra water to properly contain the high bulk volume.
Also, when you decrease the alcohol percent in whisky, the fluid typically becomes cloudy. To reduce the risk of this occurring, one must chill filter the whisky to maintain its clear, bright color. However, chill filtering can impair the taste of the whisky. This is why many malt scotch industries avoid this approach and maintain their bottles to be of a high strength, such as 46 percent alcohol or more. As a private owner, you may want to develop ways to defer or defray a percentage of the costs in producing the whisky.
One option is to create a syndicate with close friends or family. A major downfall of this option is that you will not be able to keep as much of the whisky. This method is normally not an issue as it will be approximately five years to use a cask when managing one bottle a week. Private syndicates who do not buy or sell have similar rights to a private owner but does not need to register with Customs and Excise. Another option is bonded storage as much as the bottling expense occurs from VAT and levied duty.
One may choose to keep all bottles of whisky in a bonded warehouse. When locating a warehouse in your local area, you can set up your whisky bottles under bond and only pay the VAT and duty when the bottles are picked up. In the majority of cases, each case stored under bond will cost mere pennies a week. This of course will depend on your chosen warehouse so it’s best to speak to representative of your chosen location.
