The Art of Cooperage at Nephin Whiskey

Join the Leonard brothers at Nephin Whiskey for a behind-the-scenes experience of a real Cooperage in action.
Each Nephin cask is crafted by hand by their Coopers from carefully sourced wood and exclusively traditional, natural methods such as using rush grass for sealing.

[@abcstardust]

Excellent video! I really enjoy watching these barrels come together under your skillful hands!

[@umami0247]

That is some serious craftsmanship. It was fun watching you build these barrels.

[@paulfarley454]

Reconditioning old American Bourbon barrels as they can only be used once, by law, and are fully useful. Added..to the demise of the cooper trade in Ireland ,Scotland and England.

[@barrypurves4524]

Not a micrometer or other precision measuring device in site honned skill and experience, Grat video

[@yujinny1999]

Thanks for uploading. I really enjoyed this.

[@flaviopaulopereira2731]

Belíssimo trabalho. Gratidão por compartilhar. Estas fitas de vedação nas tampas são naturais ?

[@Eggosj]

Love it

[@MrSoarman]

I like the railroad rail Anvil

[@Serasphiel]

Cool

[@craigberube9890]

Awesome! Where do I get the rivets?

[@fredrickpinckney1092]

I don't get it. How come the staves are already bent and charred and the hoops rusty? They don't make new barrels?

[@foggy7595]

Stock from steel supplier is often rusty when you buy it, they probably buy dimensional flat stock.

[@fredrickpinckney1092]

@@foggy7595 I worked nearly thirty years in a cooperage where we made new barrels. Trust me, they are only recycling old stuff.

[@foggy7595]

@@fredrickpinckney1092 Okay so let me get this straight. You're saying these guys take old hoops, cut off the rivet and punched ends (making the bar shorter and final hoop smaller), straighten the hoop out (which makes the stock thinner because of the "slant" needing to be corrected), whew we got a bar! Then they bend it again, punch holes and install rivet, and put the slant back in again, leaving you with a smaller and thinner hoop than the original. Yeah, I don't think so... sounds like it would be easier and much cheaper (labor alone) to just skip that first part and buy cheap 1/8" x 1" mild steel flat stock from a supplier for maybe 0.50 $/ft (that's what I pay, they are probably a large business and make big orders). Unless you mean they don't make new hoops at all and just reuse old ones, which I doubt. In my experience as a blacksmith, recycling is fun and I'm always throwing steel I find in the trunk, but if you're trying to sell something it is going to be cheaper 99% percent of the time to buy proper stock materials than to try and scrounge up what you can find (which usually means scrapyard unless you just make one-offs, so you pay something anyway), unless you value your "shop time" at slave pay lol. It also costs actual money (fuel, abrasives, power, etc) to prep the materials...

[@fredrickpinckney1092]

@@foggy7595 wow you have a big imagination, all you have to do is watch the video and see what's going on. There's not one single new or unused component shown in this entire video. By the way, you had me laughing out loud at your suggestion that this could be a large operation. I suggest you visit a modern cooperage and see the mass production methods used nowadays. No way is this outfit making any money unless they are charging outrageous prices to "craft" distillers for custom size barrels.

[@foggy7595]

@@fredrickpinckney1092 So you're saying they don't make any new hoops? If they just reuse the same hoops over and over again fair enough, but there was a time when they needed to make those lol... so at that time, when they made them, they probably went out and bought flat stock.

[@cooper68ns]

Thank you for giving credit to the celtic people and not roman.

[@nerkaperkadoniz]

they just recycled old barrels.. to produce new one is far bigger chalenge...

[@Billy-in7rl]

At a first glance they using old staves from larger barrels they just cutting them shorter this would be missing out real stave production how can this be a master cooper

[@jafojafo5412]

Unless they can do it all with hand tools alone I wouldn’t call them a true cooper.

[@anthonysillett6678]

The young lad knocking the end hoop down with his hammer near the end of the video needs a bit more practise.

[@Euan96]

He needs to use a bar mate. The surface area of the hammer isn’t great enough will just bend when trying to get a tight end hoop down

[@anthonysillett6678]

We used to use a tool called a big hitter or coopers maul but I have seen old car suspension springs welded together used.@@Euan96