By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com This article is about a fascinating mechanical engineering discovery. We can line up which people will be upset about this article and which people will be happy about it. Women, generally speaking, will be happy about it. Men will be upset with it. Rabbis will be happy about it. Kashrus agencies will be happy about it. Jewish liquor stores will probably be upset with it. The essence of the article is that we have perhaps been making a huge and incorrect assumption in regard to the sherry casks in which many hard alcohols are aged. There is much more non-kosher wine in the barrels than we had previously thought. THREE CATEGORIES But let’s go back to the beginning. There are three categories of scotch whiskeys from the perspective of Kashrus: CERTIFIED, NOT RECOMMENDED, AND APPROVED. Some hard alcohols are certified kosher. Some are “not recommended” and some are “approved.” The OU and the Star K, believe it or not, have some different rulings as to which scotch whiskeys are not recommended and which ones are approved. No kashrus agency makes money off of the latter two categories. They do print the list as a public service. This author believes that after the mechanical engineering discovery is discussed, many in the kashrus industry might re-think the approved category. THE BARRELS The mechanical engineering issue is that in each 220-225 litre barrel that is used to produce scotch whiskeys, there is an average of 12 liters of non-kosher wine that has been absorbed into the barrel itself. The American standard barrel is approximately 53 gallons. The Sherry casks come from Spain and are generally 225-250 liters. By international law and agreement, Sherry and Port may only be produced in Spain. Barrels are produced in something called “cooperages.” The Macallan distillery in Scotland is considered the Rolls Royce of Scotch whiskey – with whiskeys that range up to $30,000 a bottle. Yes, gulp. (but don’t gulp too much because that averages to $1500 per half ounce gulp.) Macallan is the only distillery that is licensed to purchase significant numbers of barrels from cooperages. They use wood from the Northern Galicia area of Spain and no one else is licensed to make it. Regardless, the Scottish distilleries take apart the barrels and rebuild them to standard sizes. Many, if not most, of the other distilleries also use sherry cask barrels to produce their whiskeys. This is actually significantly more than the “less than shishim” amount that past poskim have previously assumed was in the barrels. The penetration of liquid into the porous structure of the oak wooden casks is known as impregnation. This author has pictures of 3 entire gallons of wine, taken this morning. These gallons were taken out of “legally empty” 53 gallon barrels. SOME HALACHIC BACKGROUND There is a fascinating debate between the Shach (98:13) and the Taz (105:1) regarding the halachic concept of marination or Kavush. If something is marinated in a non-kosher vessel – what is the formula for how much nullification is needed? Do we need 60 times the amount of the kosher food to the entire vessel or do we need sixty times the amount of the “peel of the vessel?” The Shach rules that it is against the entire vessel […]
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