ever heard of "Cleaning" a wine barrel with gravel

[gnarles]

Recently I picked up a few carboys from an older gentleman who was every much into wine making. He had a couple dozen oak barrels aging in his basement and we got to talking about sour beers and so forth...In our conversation he told me that when one of his barrels get a little older and goes neutral on him (no more oak flavor) or he is experiencing some microbes he doesn't want in his wine. He fills the barrel with gravel setup it up on this table he has that slowly turns it (i assume either over night or even longer). The gravel acts as an abrasive and "resurfaces" the interior of the barrel.

Now in the near future I'm going to be looking for a barrel or two to start some wild ales but it all my reading/research I have never heard about this process. Anyone else ever heard of it? Tried it?

 

[tagz]

I've heard about planing staves down, so this is probably a rudimentary version of that.

 

[WI_Wino]

I've heard of using a chain to knock out wine crystals in barrels but never gravel. I wonder if his technique removes the char?

 

[gnarles]

Yeah I'm wondering the same thing. But an older barrel that has been used a couple times probably doesn't get much if any flavor from whatever char is left. The guy who told me this was telling me to help keep down unwanted microbes too. Now everyone knows whatever's living in a barrel is pretty much there to stay know matter what you do and he acknowledged this. But he made a point that by removing the top couple millimeters of wood you are able to knock there population way down giving your yeast/beerbugs/winebugs to do there thing...

Not sure if I entirely believe this and I have never worked with barrels. But the guy had a friggin barn full of wine and dozens of barrels aging. First hand experience goes along way in my book.

 

[Siberian]

It sounds a lot like the chain method talked about in the Wood & Beer book.

I suspect that combined with a fill of boiling water afterwards would do a lot to knock down the microbe population.

You'd lose some of the char, but not all oak barrels are charred. I'm not sure if wine ones are, might just be a spirit barrel thing.