Holy crap! I just got a Jack Daniels whiskey barrel!

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explosivebeer

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My brother and a friend just bought me a 53-gallon Jack Daniels whiskey barrel as an early birthday present! I am unbelievably excited. Now I just need to figure out how to properly utilize it.

I'm planning on doing a few test batches for imperial stouts and barleywines, see what I like best, and then scale it way up, do primaries in carboys, transfer to secondaries to crash cool and then transfer to the barrel. Does that sound right?

I have no experience with using oak barrels so any help or information would be much appreciated. I've searched this site and browsed a few others but have yet to find a definitive how-to on using oak barrels.

Regardless, I can't wait to put it to use, much less taste the finished product!
 
You are probably going to need to fill it to see best results. Great opportunity to brew with a bunch of friends or a club.
 
First you fill it with about 3 gallons of distilled water. Put a bung in it and set outside in the sun. Be sure to turn it over and roll it around every few days. After about 2 weeks, empty out the whiskey into jugs and now you can use it for beer. :D
 
EdWort said:
First you fill it with about 3 gallons of distilled water. Put a bung in it and set outside in the sun. Be sure to turn it over and roll it around every few days. After about 2 weeks, empty out the whiskey into jugs and now you can use it for beer. :D

Is that how you clean it? And is that extracted whiskey drinkable? ;)

I hardly know anything about using barrels so I'm trying to figure things out. By extracting the whiskey, are you opening up pathways for the beer to get into? Or is the whiskey flavor just too harsh to start off?

Regardless, thanks for the info EdWort.
 
EdWort said:
First you fill it with about 3 gallons of distilled water. Put a bung in it and set outside in the sun. Be sure to turn it over and roll it around every few days. After about 2 weeks, empty out the whiskey into jugs and now you can use it for beer. :D

Beer? What about apfelwein? Considerably easier to come up with 50 gallons.
 
I thought I had heard of people using the barrels straight from the distillery. This is one of the only ways to add a distilled product to beer and still sell it as beer.
 
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