June 10, 2021

Whiskey aged to Metal

Metal giant Metallica has been playing it songs to aging whiskey to created BLACKENED, a whiskey aged to the low hertz frequencies of The Black Album, the highest selling album of any genre in the last 30-years.

The Metallica BLACKENED The Black Album Whiskey Pack features a 750ml bottle of Batch 114, a fine mix of straight bourbons and ryes that have been aged for an average of 8 or more years and finished in black brandy casks subjected to low hertz frequencies of songs from The Black Album.

This is not the first time Metallica’s songs have been used to age whiskey. The first time was with Blackened Whiskey distillery’s late master distiller, Dave Pickerell, who used a playlist using music from Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony S&M2 album.

In an interview with Forbes, master distiller Rob Dietrich told the business journal that the idea of using music to enhance whiskey during maturation has been around for many years, however, by collaborating with a sound company and truly studying the effects of low frequency sonic enhancement during the maturation process, Blackened Whiskey has begun perfecting the process.

“I feel like the concept has been used in the wine industry for some time before it had been applied to the world of whiskey. A ‘romantic’ view of playing music to the barrels of wine seemed to bring another element of elegance, so to speak, to the wine, however I don’t believe it has ever been with the intention of sonically enhancing or speed up maturation.

“I first heard about other whiskey brands playing music to their whiskey barrels around 2007 or so, assuming it was in order to experiment with vibration and aging techniques. As a whiskey distiller, I am always interested in new and unusual possibilities, and was absolutely intrigued by the process that Dave Pickerell – the founding master distiller of Blackened Whiskey – created with the sonic enhancement of our already-aged whiskey blend. It worked so well, we have trademarked the process as ‘Black Noise’.”

For the full interview, go here.