Whiskey Elements Ages Your $10 Bottle of Bourbon in Just 24 Hours

Have you ever wished there was some way to take your cheap, bottom-shelf whiskey and make it taste more like a finely-aged whiskey overnight? David Jackson and the team at Time and Oak have created a product that claims to do just that. Called Whiskey Elements, the product takes your average $10 bottle of whiskey and accelerates the aging process, in the hopes of turning cheap hooch into something that tastes more refined.

“It is as elegant and simple as placing the Element into the bottle, waiting a day or two, and then enjoying the taste and quality you normally would have waited years to create,” says Jackson.

He had long wondered what exactly the difference between high end and low end whiskey was. A lot of expensive whiskey is aged for several years or more in high quality barrels in perfect conditions. Jackson and his team wanted the high quality of aged whiskey without having to wait.

The Element itself consists of a stick of wood that is placed into the whiskey. “We designed a product that provided shorter distance for whiskey to travel through repetitive exposure to the capillaries by cutting it horizontally,” says Jackson.

Insert the Whiskey Element into your bottle of whiskey, and the wood naturally takes in the spirit and filters it out through capillaries while holding in chemicals and other toxins that create foul tasting, harsh whiskies. After 24 hours of waiting and few stirs, your whiskey will be transformed into something new.

The process is referred to as “accelerated transpiration through capillary action”. This means that the whiskey will work with the wood in an ultra-efficient manner. In traditional aging, whiskey penetrates only about 1/6th of an inch of the cask. The Whiskey Elements’ process allows the whiskey to make contact with more surface area.

The science behind the product is roughly the same science in barrel aging. “We are looking to deliver the same results – just faster.” Jackson says. “We allow the whiskey greater access to the oak.”

Oak naturally filters spirits as harsh toxins created in the distilling process bind to the wood. “The wood also releases natural sugars and flavor to the spirits.” With Whiskey Elements, the process just happens faster. “We could get much more technical but that is the premise.” 

Whiskey Elements are sold in packs of two for $14 at Time and Oak. Those two sticks are enough to treat two bottles of whiskey, scotch or rye.