Kilchoman Single Octave Cask 566/2010 for Drinks by the Dram
Cask No.: 566/2010
Cask type: Bourbon Octave (recte: Quarter) Cask
Date Filled: 7.10.2010
Date Bottled: 10.10.2016
Age: 6 yo
Strength: 58,0 % abv
Phenol level: 50 ppm
Bottle volume: 0,7 l / 0,03 l
Market: UK
.
In October 2010, Kilchoman filled a good 100 so-called Quarter Casks for the first time, which had been made for the distillery by a cooperage from bourbon cask staves.
Quarter casks, as the name suggests, are only about a quarter of the size of a 500-litre cask. The much larger surface area of the cask compared to its volume leads to more intensive contact with the wood of the maturing distillate. For this reason, some distilleries like to use quarter casks for finishing whisky.
On 26 September 2016, the “Original Cask Strength – Quarter Cask Matured Release” was released, for which 95 of the casks were bottled with an edition of 12,000 bottles.
Before and after that, a few Quarter Cask single cask bottlings were released, including the release listed here at the end of 2016 for Drinks by the Dram, the whisky sampling service of whisky shop and independent bottler Master of Malt, which was both sold as a 0,7 l bottle and included as a 3 cl sample in the company’s well-known Christmas calendar The Single Cask Whisky Advent Calendar.
The bottling confusingly bears the cask designation Octave Cask, the terms Quarter Cask and Octave Cask are handled very inconsistently not only by Kilchoman. Normally, a cask with a capacity of about 50 litres is called an Octave. So it should be noted that all of the casks used by Kilchoman had a capacity of about 100 litres, regardless of whether Quarter Cask or Octave Cask is written on the label.
.
.