Bourbon barrel aging research

Hoakay. So I can easily get my hands on a bourbon barrel. Believe it is 55 gals. So my concerns are;
1) Would it mix well with the mead flavour and has anyone done this?

2) my carboys are only one 5 and one 6 gal. Meaning aging in a burboun barrel would leave a crap load of head space. ( what some people do is put a few gals of water in the barrel on warm days and roll it around a couple of times to get the last bit of bourbon out of it) would this work at all? Concerned about it getting oxigenated with so much room and then having to roll it around a bit.

3) would a couple of weeks do the trick?

Any ideas or input would be helpful.

11 gallons of mead in a 55gal barrel is a bad idea. Make more mead or find a smaller barrel, or you're going to oxygenate the hell out of that mead - topping it off with ~40 gallons of water would be an even worse outcome.

Also as the wood in the barrel dries out, in the head space, the splines gap and leak. That is why you have to fill them full of water to get them to swell before you add any mead/liquor/beer. You will also have to have some spare mead as you lose some volume to the wood you will need to keep it topped off.
You could take apart the barrel, just remove the rings, and use 1 spline in a batch of mead?

cinderbike said:

11 gallons of mead in a 55gal barrel is a bad idea. Make more mead or find a smaller barrel, or you're going to oxygenate the hell out of that mead - topping it off with ~40 gallons of water would be an even worse outcome.

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That's what I was thinking. Just wondering if it was feasable. Might do the taking apart thing and add chunks for a short time.

all concerns aside, I think the bourbon flavour would definitely go well with mead. I just finished a fortified mead done with bourbon and it tastes pretty awesome so far, if not a little raw.

Wild Blossom Meadery, here in Chicago, does a dessert mead aged in a Kentucky barrel for a year. I have a bottle sitting around that I keep meaning to open up, but at the same time want to hold on to.

If you are going to just take apart the barrel and add chunks of it, would it not possibly be more cost/time/labor efficient to buy some staves or cubes and soak them in the same bourbon as whatever barrel you would get and then age? It wouldn't have the uniqueness, or perhaps the authentic feel, as the barrel, but I personally don't know what I would do with the rest of the remaining pieces. Build a smoker and get some ribs and brisket, I suppose.

I'd also be worried about my mead contacting the outside portion of the spline(s). I can only imagine what the outside has dealt with for the 2 years or more it has been aging.

Being a carpenter messing with wood is no big deal. I'm going to try to see if they have any smaller barrels. And soaking chips in a barrel isn't a bad idea either. That way I could get some chips with the flavour and some not so good bourbon