My Country Living: ‘When it comes to coopering you’re so connected to history’

Myself, the wife and the small fella, we’ve a small holding, just a couple of acres in Dungourney, only about 15 minutes from Midleton in Co Cork.

I’m from Blarney originally, total opposite side like. I grew up in an estate. Jesus, the wife’s a city girl, so it’s a bit of a strange mix for us. The last few years we’ve been rearing sheep, we’ve chickens laying eggs and we’ve a few goats.

Arrah, I love it. I do love the job as well – I’m a cooper - the passion that’s there for it, that’s always been there. But I found you have to have something you’re equally as passionate about outside of work as well, to keep that balance. So being connected to the land and the animals provides that balance for me.

A cooper is someone who makes and repairs barrels and casks. It’s a traditional craft. To be honest, I didn’t even know what a cooper was before I went for the interview with Irish Distillers. When I’m talking to people these days, they’d say, ‘Oh you’re a cooper, what’s that?’ That was me eight years ago.

Passion project

It started with a passion for woodworking from a very young age. Working with wood was something that would occupy my brain and body for hours on end. When you find what you love to do, it makes the most sense to follow it.

After school I went into woodworking then. I did a couple of FÁS courses and I ended up in furniture making and design inside in Stiofáin Naofa in Cork. Through that, and just following what I wanted to do, an opportunity came up that was sent out to the colleges from Irish Distillers – they make Irish whiskeys including Jameson.

It was literally hands on from day one. It was over to Scotland for the first year

It was top secret at the time. I didn’t even know what I was interviewing for. I kept going with it anyway and got the apprenticeship back in 2013, I think it was. I served four years. I was the first cooper hired at Midleton Distillery in 40-plus years.

Back in the 1800s, there were over 11,000 coopers working in Ireland. Today there’s less than five and three of us are in Midleton. We hired an apprentice the middle of last year as well.

I travelled all over the world with the apprenticeship. It was literally hands on from day one. It was over to Scotland for the first year. I was put into an apprentice school over there and I had the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the world, really like.

It went from there to Spain for about nine months, working in a cooperage making 500l sherry butts. I then spent about three or four months in the US, in Kentucky in the bourbon industry, before I came back and landed myself in Dungourney on a small holding.

Labour intensive

Coopering, it’s very labour intensive. The thing with coopering is, there’s only so much you can automate and take the labour from. The only difference between coopering now and years ago would be a hoop driver. So you’d have bigger machinery to put the hoops on the barrel that last little bit. But you still are doing 80% of the hammering yourself.

We don’t make any barrels in Ireland at the moment. We use second-fill American oak barrels, mainly. The mainstay of the job for me day-to-day would be inspection.

You could grab an old picture of any cooper, stick him on my bench and he’d be using the same tools, same techniques and doing the same repair

So every barrel or cask that comes into Midleton Distillery, I or another cooper would inspect to make sure that it’s up to scratch and there’s no signs it would leak when it goes for filling. If we reject any of those, they would then come up to the cooperage and we would repair them.

All the tools are still the same. You could grab an old picture of any cooper, stick him on my bench and he’d be using the same tools, same techniques and doing the same repair.

I’ve a serious interest in what the barrel actually does, the different compounds and the connection between wood types and imparting their characteristics onto the whiskey itself. It’s such a lengthy indebt process that starts from day one – growing the tree to cutting the tree and charring the timber, all that goes into the final product in the bottles.

Passing the flame

I’m more of a traditional person alright. When it comes even to shearing the sheep I’d go for the hand sheers. Not that it makes everything harder, but it makes everything more traditional in respect of those who came before us and keeping traditions alive.

I found out after I got the job inside in the distillery that the great-great-grandfather used to work there.

I actually ended up moving back to the ancestral homeland. It’s like the synchronisation of the universe and following where you’re supposed to go

He was chief blacksmith there back in the 1880s. He actually passed on the trade to his son who took up the anvil after him.

My cousin told me they were living out in Dungourney before. So I actually ended up moving back to the ancestral homeland. It’s like the synchronisation of the universe and following where you’re supposed to go. Staying connected to the ground around you, it finds you eventually.

When it comes to coopering you’re so connected to history. You’re directly connected to everybody who swung a hammer on a barrel in this country over the past couple of hundred years. It’s that connection and that feeling that drives the passion of keeping the tradition alive.

It’s kind of daunting in that way, but it’s also kind of invigorating that it got down to its last breath and Irish Distillers are investing in the realness that you can’t have the quality of the whiskey without the quality of the coopers looking after the barrels.

More from Killian on the barrel making process here.

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My Country Living part II: the barrel-making process

‘We are open to everybody, regardless of their ability level’