but the pile of junk those guys slopped together for Tim's whiskey left me with little confidence that they knew wtf they were doing.
All that said using sound instead of current would still be safer and likely work faster by putting the wood into resonance.
I wondered why they tested it with a whole barrel of liquor instead of a much smaller amount such as a jar that they could watch darken and do so faster. Use a beverage dispenser with a tap and you could periodically take samples to see how it tastes & smells. I also wonder how they intend to get a consistent color and taste. Are they going to process the liquor, which needs to have a consistent chemical makeup to begin with, in the same volume for the same amount of time using identical pieces wood?
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We're on the same page but I think it was all just crap the producers scripted and Tim didn't even contact these guys, the producers set it up. You never dump $10K of product into an untested technology particularly when it comes to electricity and a flammable liquid.
I don't even believe this is anything knew it's such a simple idea anyone with an engineering background would think of. My first thought was use current then I thought screw it just resonating the wood while submerged in the alcohol would work much faster and likely much better.
This is likely something liquor companies have done for decades and the writers behind the show took advantage of our ignorance.
I wonder why they didn't put oak pieces in the liquor then repeatedly freeze and heat it to replicate the changing seasons that forces whiskey in and out of the barrels like Mark/Jeff/Lance did that supposed rapidly aged their liquor. Of course, I also wonder why any moonshiner would want to make their liquor look and taste like genuinely aged whiskey. What makes moonshine so desirable is that it's so fresh and high-proof that it's hard-to-impossible to find it legally sold in stores.
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They could go a step much much further that would be far more effective and absurdly faster.
Grind the lumber into shavings that are fine but not too fine, heat the liquor, run it in an all in an agitator then unload it through some mesh filters that will remove 100% of the wood.
That would take a couple hours to do an entire barrel and you'd get 10x the potency of results to such extremes it would probably take longer than Tim claimed to have to figure out how many pounds of fine wood chips per 50 gallon barrel.
With a huge system chiiiiit!
You could do $100,000 in liquor in a day.
In fact I'll wager you could run it through some saw dust filters, rather than carbon, as steam before putting it into the condenser and you'd have your "aged" whiskey straight out of your still.
The older boys with their innovations probably know all of these tricks which is why their stills, cars etc. are the most sophisticated on the show.