Barrel Advice.

[Bowow0708]

I live in the Philippines home of Tanduay rum and since im not a big spirit drinker but i still want to use the barrel for aging and or fermenting. I might plan on buying one of their freshly emptied barrels, is there anything i need to do with the barrel? can i just rack the beer/mead straight into it? do i need to rinse with hot water to remove the boozyness from the barrel? do i still need to sanitize it even thought was freshly emptied? are all spirit barrels the same? because i know that rum is made from molasses then aged and is mixed with sugar and other stuff and then blended to get the right flavor before being bottles and sold. but aren't they all aged in charred oak barrels? how will this affect my beer/mead?

 

[FarmBoy530]

The flavor of the rum itself will directly effect the beer. If the barrel has a bit of rum in it and its not musky and nasty you can save that and infuse your beer with it. It does need to be rinsed and you'll probably see char bits coming out. It should smell pleasant and of rum when its clean. It also needs to be filled to make sure you don't have any leaks or beetle holes (we get em in cali). Once its rinsed with lots of very very hot water and leak free your good to go. Can your beer get contaminated? Sure it can but it doesn't mean it will. Also don't forget you need to keep your barrel topped off to keep oxidation down. If that's a 50ish gal barrel that's a lot of brewing!

 

[Bowow0708]

The flavor of the rum itself will directly effect the beer. If the barrel has a bit of rum in it and its not musky and nasty you can save that and infuse your beer with it. It does need to be rinsed and you'll probably see char bits coming out. It should smell pleasant and of rum when its clean. It also needs to be filled to make sure you don't have any leaks or beetle holes (we get em in cali). Once its rinsed with lots of very very hot water and leak free your good to go. Can your beer get contaminated? Sure it can but it doesn't mean it will. Also don't forget you need to keep your barrel topped off to keep oxidation down. If that's a 50ish gal barrel that's a lot of brewing!

hmm that sounds like great advice, but im thinking of going to their plant to pick up a barrel i might be able to ask them to rinse the barrel for me. i sent them an email if i could buy from them or simply give it away free, for an freshly emptied to be thrown out barrel because i want to avoid contamination thats why in thinking of using a spirit barrel and not a wine barrel that was imported and will take 2+ months to get here and most likely already filled with the nasty bugs, and i don't want to get into belgians yet maybe in my later years and when i get to taste some good examples of the style. and that's the whole point of getting a to be thrown out freshly emptied barrel. also how long does the spirit flavor keep in the barrel? im thinking for once if most of the flavor of the rum is out if it lasts that long without getting contaminated. i will use that for my dream of the ultimate mead that will be passed down to my great-great-great-grandkids when they turn 21 and it has a abv of 25 or greater like Utopias

 

[FarmBoy530]

The flavor should last some time. You can always charge the barrel with a cheap bottle of rum. If your that interested in wood aging you could save time and a headache by buying different level char wood chips. If you want rum, or scotch then you soak the chips in a mason jar filled with the booze of choice for a few weeks or months. Add the chips to the carboy and age. Also the wood makes some pretty good booze. This is the way I would do it, though it would be cool to fill full barrels. You would need a 2 barrel nano brewery to keep up...