Stripping oak flavor from a barrel

I bought a used 15 gallon bourbon barrel, and it's on its fourth beer. I did two clean beers, then finished a Flemish red that was already 8 months old. It's currently full with a 3 month old blonde sour.

The flavors from the barrel have been outstanding, but it's still a very oaky barrel. I'm concerned that the blonde will get to tannic if I leave it in the barrel to finish. I'm thinking about raking the beer into carboys and trying to strip some oak from the barrel with boiling water.

My other option is to leave the beer in the barrel alone and brew another 5-10 gallons of un oaked sours to blend later.

Thoughts? If I do empty the barrel, is there anything besides hot water that will help to tame the oak flavor? I'd like have some oak flavor, just not so dominate.

Thanks

My thoughts on a barrel are, you paid for the oak flavor so don't waste it. I would have ran enough clean beer through the barrel to have the favor faded out before going sour. Hot water will take the flavor out, but it seems like such a waste!

Blend the beer with a non-oaked beer. Time also helps tremendously.

One of the problems you're facing is that a bourbon barrel typically has a heavy char, which provides a really dominant oak flavor, as opposed to a lighter toast like they use in winemaking. I agree with bknifefight, you want to use the barrell to it's strengths, not try to fight them.

The thought of brewing another 15 gallons of sour to blend with overly oaked sour isn't something i am capable of doing with my current setup (not enough arboys).

I agree that i want to use the barrel for its strengths, not fight them.

What I ended up doing was buying a flat of overripe peaches from the farmers market and racking 5 gallons from the barrel into a carboy with the peaches. I have a keg of the base beer that i was using to top off the angel's share that i then topped the barrel off with.

The original plan was to do a couple of full batch beers before i went the solera route, but the barrel had other plans.

Thanks for the input!

Or....brew a dark base sour. There are a few dark sours out there that use bourbon barrels, it is a nice combo. After that you might be able to do lighter colored beers.