Real vs Fake
Yes, in barrels made of solid wood, not wood shavings.
That is real. If you want it fake you add wood shavings activated by either flash-microwaving them for 30seconds or running a gas lamp over them and leave the maturing "cask" at ~ 30+C for two months.
The technology differs depending on the volume - up to 3l vessels need nothing more but to be forgotten for 2 months on a Southern European latitude balcony in mid-summer. More than 3l requires active steering of the wood shavings in the spirit. This is the same technology as used by some distilleries to produce a rather authentic looking whiskey, brandy, slivovica, etc at low cost. Just they use actively mixed autoclaves at 60C+ for up to 3-6 months instead.
The end result if done right is achieving the taste equivalent of 3-7 years of maturation in 2-3 months. I have done that plenty of times with home made brandy in the days when I used to "advise" my dad on how to do it.
However, as a professional chemist by trade (which has long surrendered to the dark side of IT), I can tell you that the experiment was pointless outright. YOU CANNOT MATURE A SPIRIT IN ZERO G. It is the same problem as using larger than 3l vessels in fake maturation. You need convection for the activated wood to pick up the "crap" out of the spirit and for the spirit to pick up the flavour and colour out of the wood. No convection will result in a fraction of the process happening in the boundary layer. Everything beyond that will remain unmatured crap.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
