WILMINGTON – “You probably shouldn’t print this in the paper because people will think I’m crazy, but you have to get the wood thinking in the right direction,” Bob Hockert said with a laugh Tuesday afternoon.

And without context that statement is, well, a little crazy. But Hockert and his team have had quite a bit of success in literally bending pieces of oak to their will.

Hockert is the owner and founder of US Barrel in Wilmington, a small manufacturing business based out of his garage. But this isn’t a rinky-dink operation. The products US Barrel makes are in demand locally and around the country.

Hockert and his wife, Sue, moved to Wilmington after they both witnessed firsthand the events of 9/11. Hockert was in midtown Manhattan and his wife was across the river in New Jersey when the terrorist attacks took place.

Hockert said that he hoped his wife would find a good job and just support him, but that didn’t quite work out.

“We decided to make a change. I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to work and she would support me in the means to which I was accustomed,” Hockert laughed. “But that didn’t happen. She told me I couldn’t just skulk around the house all day. (And since) I was always a carpenter, I started a company called Adirondack Sauna.”

Hockert grew up in Minnesota and said that basically everyone had a sauna back home. Hockert wanted to have one at their house in Wilmington so that it could be enjoyed after a day on the slopes at Whiteface Mountain.

Hockert couldn’t find anyone locally who would make him a barrel sauna, so he ordered one from a company in the Midwest. Hockert then became an affiliate of that company, selling the barrel saunas around the Adirondacks and beyond.

But coming from the Midwest, the saunas didn’t quite hold up to the harsh winters of the Adirondacks, so Hockert decided to start manufacturing his own. The saunas are eight-foot barrels, laid on their side. Hockert said the best thing about the saunas is once they’re built, he just pulls up and drops them off.

“You could be enjoying the sauna 40 minutes after I leave,” he smiled.

But as is often the case, one project led into another. Hockert took one of his wood-fired saunas to a polar plunge event down in the Hudson Valley. While sitting at a red light with the sauna on a trailer just a few blocks from the event, Hockert was hastily approached by a man who was looking for barrels made in New York and was having difficulty finding them. It turns out that the guy was a distiller of fine spirits at Coppersea Distillers in Ulster County.

New York State had changed the laws regarding distilleries, and with the easing of rules, farm distilleries started popping up around the state. The only catch to the relaxed start-up regulations is that all ingredients have to be sourced from within the state.

While barrels don’t count as an ingredient, distillers like Coppersea wanted to make spirits that were entirely from the state they call home.

With Coppersea acting as the catalyst, Hockert went from making huge barrels to handcrafting smaller barrels with Justin Bidelspach as an aide several years ago. Bidelspach’s father Chris joined the operation this past fall.

Once Hockert and Bidelspach decided to make barrels for aging distilled spirits, they jumped into it wholeheartedly. Hockert admits the big barrel saunas don’t often get made anymore, although the shop is set up to accommodate sauna construction if need be.

“Everything is on casters,” Hockert said. “The problem with the saunas is that they take up almost the whole shop.”

Hockert said that the biggest hurdle to making barrels for spirits is that the wood has to be just right, and they had trouble finding a source for white oak in the state.

Most brown liquors are made in the Tennessee and Kentucky areas of the country, and the majority of barrel makers (cooperages) are in the Mississippi River valley. This region is known as the Bourbon Belt. White oak is the number one wood used for distillers, and most of it grows in the middle part of the country.

But Hockert kept at it, and eventually found a logging operation that would meet his specifications, sourcing oak from the Hudson Valley and other parts of the state. Hockert said the logging companies needed to have an experienced forester who knew what he was looking for in a tree.

“It has to be a live tree. There can’t be any knots,” Hockert said. “This isn’t the type of thing you can do with a piece of oak from Lowe’s.”

Once the wood is secured, it then becomes a bit of a waiting game. The wood is cut into boards a little over an inch thick, and then it takes about a year of outside air drying to accomplish a couple of key steps.

The first is that the wood needs to be below 10 percent moisture before it can be used in a barrel,. There is also an encouragement of mold growth on the slabs. The mold, along with charring and the natural sugars and tannins in the wood, are what give brown liquors their flavor.

After the wood has sat out, gotten a bit moldy and dried, then the crew at US Barrel starts cutting away the stuff that can’t be used. Hockert said that only the heartwood, or the very inside of the tree, can be used for the barrels since that’s the only part of the wood that won’t leak.

The bark, knots and any other undesirable parts are cut off and used for a variety of things, from fire wood to decorative barrel ends to little tags that hang from the necks of bottles.

“There’s very little that goes to the dump here,” Hockert said.

A single piece of wood has to pass through several hurdles before being accepted into the shop as part of a barrel, or stave, as they’re known. A stave is one of the long pieces that make up the sides of the barrel.

Once it’s been checked by the US Barrel guys, the stave blank goes into a low heat dehumidifier they have at the shop. Depending on where the wood is from and where it’s going, the staves are kept separate so that a New York distiller doesn’t accidentally get Vermont wood, and vice-versa.

From the dehumidifier, the staves come back down to the main floor of the shop, where they are stacked to allow plenty of air flow. The staves get shaped with compound angles before the assembly begins.

A barrel gets its shape from the way the staves are cut, but the short lengths of oak are extremely stiff. If the angles on the staves are wrong, then the barrel will leak when it’s pulled together (and what good is a leaky barrel?). In more than a decade of manufacturing, Hockert said they’ve only junked one or two barrels for being not up to their standard.

“We’re really selective at every step of the process, and that means that the end product is usually pretty good,” Hockert said.

Shaping and assembling the barrels is a multi-step process, but Chris Bidelspach said that as long as all the materials are in place, they can put together anywhere from four to six barrels a day.

US Barrel manufactures a variety of sizes. From 650 milliliter barrels for St. Bernard dogs to the 30 gallon ones used at places like Coppersea and in Keene at Gristmill Distillers.

Each set of rings that goes on the outside of the barrel during assembly is color coded so that the guys can easily grab what they need from the neatly arranged shop. Once all the staves have been set up around a dummy barrel head, a couple of tension rings are placed at the top end to hold the staves in place.

From there, the barrel, with one end splayed apart, goes into a propane-powered steamer that sits in the corner. As the steam starts to soften the wood, one of the rings will slide down the barrel a little, helping to bring it together. The guys then take the softened staves and winch them tight together with a windlass.

At this point, the barrel has a recognizable shape, but is far from complete. As the wood dries, it holds it’s shape and can be worked a little more easily. Again, a windlass is used to help hold the staves in place as one of the Bidelspachs makes any necessary adjustments.

As the barrel shape and alignment are perfected, metal rings are added to the ends of the barrel on the outside. These are the rings that will be part of the final products, and are made on site.

One key feature of any spirit-aging barrel is the charring that occurs on the inside of the barrel. By burning the inside to varying degrees Hockert can change the flavor palate that comes from the barrel aging. The charring can be one of the most fun and nerve-wracking parts of the production line, even though a level 3 char only requires about 45 seconds of burning.

“You’ve put all this work and energy into making this thing, and then you set it on fire. It’s a 500,000 BTU blow torch,” Hockert said. “It’s really fast.”

US Barrel offer six degrees of charring, from uncharred to what’s called a level 5. Hockert said that most barrels go out with a level 3, but distillers will often order a variety when they’re contemplating using barrels from Wilmington. The idea is that they want to try out each type of barrel to see which one gives them the flavor profile they want.

After charring, the barrel ends have to go in. The staves are pretty much permanently bent into shape, and the rings are slipped off to allow the barrel ends, or heads, in. US Barrel uses a sharp-edged barrel head, which Hockert says makes the barrels a little more sturdy and easy to carry. The security of the barrel head means that the barrels can also be pressurized so that they can be used for both distilled spirits or beer.

Once the heads are in place and rings are back on, it’s a complete barrel. The guys will dump in a couple gallons of water and stand the barrel on end to see if there’s any leaks or seeps, but since the wood is so dry, any escaping moisture tends to expand the wood and seal itself off.

From the shop in Wilmington, a completed barrel is either shipped or hand-delivered to the distiller that ordered it.

While US Barrel takes great pride in their product and the fact that it’s made and sourced in New York, distillers seem to like it as well.

Keith Van Sise, owner and head distiller at Gristmill Distillers in Keene, said the fact that US Barrel is just up the road was a huge factor in Gristmill’s decision to open shop in the Adirondacks.

“It’s convenient and Bob is great. He’s 10 miles up the road. He has a lot of information and it’s great to send a text to the guy and have a barrel a few days later,” Van Sise said. “We got in with him and it was a home run.”

Gristmill operates under a farm distillers license and sources their organic grain from Essex and apples from Rulf’s in Peru.

“There’s a guy down on Long Island (who makes barrels) and I reached out to him and he didn’t even respond to me,” Van Sise added. “He’s (Hockert) right there. He’ll answer any questions you have. It’s almost more like he’s a friend now. You’re not just placing an order to someone in the middle of the country who doesn’t care who you are.

“He wants to see your product do well because he knows that his product plays such a huge roll. He knows that if your product is doing good, so is his.”

For more information on US Barrel, visit www.usbarrel.com. Gristmill Distillers sell at farmers markets and many local shops. A complete list can be found at www.gristmilldistillers.com.