Barrel suggestions?

[ndrice]

My girlfriend just got this gorgeous barrel for me for my birthday. It's an 8 gallon Black Swan barrel that was originally used to age rye whiskey and was then used to age maple syrup.

I popped open the bung to take a quick peek and there is a great residual whiskey aroma as well as what seems to be a fair amount of maple syrup left coating the sides. It looks to be a honey comb barrel as well. I'm hoping to get at least one or two "clean" beers out of it before it heads over to souring duties, but this is my first barrel and I'm not quite sure how to approach it.

Is there anything special I need to do to sanitize it or pre-treat it before I add the beer? I was going to do the initial fermentation in my carboy and then transfer over once fermentation is finished. I expect to get some secondary fermentation activity from the left over syrup, but hopefully not much.

I was thinking of making an English style barleywine. Something big enough to handle all the barrel flavors. Am I correct in thinking that aging time should be shorter with the smaller barrel since there's more beer in contact with the wood?

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Hopper5000]

That's a good questions. I have done a fair amount of work with barrels but nothing done with something that had maple syrup in it. The barrels that I have used usually have just been dumped and still have a fair amount of hard alcohol fumes in them which would keep any nasties at bay. The fact that this has maple sugar in it may present some potential for bugs to have settled in there and started eating those sugars. However, the whiskey might have kept them at bay. Personally I might do a potassium metabisulfate rinse before I put beer in there. Problem with doing that is it will strip out the maple syrup and some of the whiskey flavors. However, it will prevent you from getting a potentially infected beer.

 

[Hopper5000]

Also remember that these smaller barrels have way more surface area exposed to the beer than the 55s so you don't need to age them as long in the barrel

 

[ndrice]

I know it wouldn't kill everything, but do you think if I sacrificed a bottle of rye whiskey to the barrel and rolled it around in there for a few days it would reduce the chance of any weird infection?

 

[Hopper5000]

Yes that wouldn't hurt anything. I have tried this with barrels that I decided to use a second time and it has had mixed results as far as infections go. I personally would be a bit wary of the maple syrup in your situation but you are probably fine. Especially if u get some hard alcohol in there. I am hoping others can chime in too. I'm sorry if I am freaking you out at all.

 

[Hopper5000]

Do you have anymore questions about this? I was looking into the type of barrel this is and it's a pretty sweet concept with the honeycomb. It is a great present!

 

[Irishpenguin13]

Thanks for askin that question, i have three right now i wanna use but have never been filled except for water to keep them hydrated. I heard something about sulfer sticks that you burn and put in to char the inside to use em over again. Maybe thats something you can look into.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[Hopper5000]

Sulfur sticks are an option but basically do that same thing as metabisulfate sans the liquid stripping flavor out of the wood. The problem with the sticks are that you have to get all of the alcohol fumes out of the barrel or else the sulfur stick might ignite the fumes and blow the barrel up in your face. I know this sounds kinda crazy but I have heard of it happening before.

 

[morticaixavier]

Thanks for askin that question, i have three right now i wanna use but have never been filled except for water to keep them hydrated. I heard something about sulfer sticks that you burn and put in to char the inside to use em over again. Maybe thats something you can look into.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Home Brew mobile app

DO NOT PUT A BURNING SULFUR STICK IN A BARREL THAT RECENTLY HELD HARD LIQUOR!!!!!!
the maple barrel might be okay but fresh dump liquor barrels contain alot of very flammable vapors

 

[Irishpenguin13]

DO NOT PUT A BURNING SULFUR STICK IN A BARREL THAT RECENTLY HELD HARD LIQUOR!!!!!!
the maple barrel might be okay but fresh dump liquor barrels contain alot of very flammable vapors

Good lookin out!

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[Irishpenguin13]

Sulfur sticks are an option but basically do that same thing as metabisulfate sans the liquid stripping flavor out of the wood. The problem with the sticks are that you have to get all of the alcohol fumes out of the barrel or else the sulfur stick might ignite the fumes and blow the barrel up in your face. I know this sounds kinda crazy but I have heard of it happening before.

In your case, yeah....go with the metabisulfate. Good deal

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Home Brew mobile app

 

[BradleyBrew]

Run hot water to remove the maple... use a barolkleen solution for 3 days... sanitize with sodium meta. and citric acid... rinse, rack, age, enjoy

 

[ndrice]

Thanks for all the good advice about this. I'd like to avoid stripping all the character out of the barrel if I can, but I'm also not in a position to fill it right away. It's been "dry" for at least a month or two. I think I'll fill it with hot water and let it swell then probably have to go the barolklee/metabisulfate route and just hope for some oak character. I'm excited about this though.

I would just fill it and see what happens, but if I'm going to eventually use it as a souring barrel, I'd like to be a bit more in control of what bugs go in.

 

[Hopper5000]

Hot water soaking shouldn't take more than an hour or two. I would just throw a bit of MBS in there while you are doing that. You can also spray the outside with some water periodically to get it hydrated again. Any sort of liquid going in there will strip some character out of it. It's best to limit that by not letting it sit in there for too long. You could also hot water soak with MBS, dump, and the spike it with some liquor if you want to keep more of that character. Booze can always be added in later though.

 

[Hopper5000]

so what did you decide to do?

 

[ndrice]

Decided to do a Rye Wine. Due to life and other things I won't get a chance to brew it until mid-april but hopefully it will all work out.

 

[Hopper5000]

Well good luck!

 

[ndrice]

Well, the beer is finally in the barrel. Ended up making a 10% abv rye wine. I hope it's doing good things in there.

 

[sfrisby]

That sounds familiar. Woodinville whiskey barrel out of Washington state? My wife just got me the same thing for a 10th anniversary present. The barrel will be coming later this summer and plan on filling it with our Russian Imperial Stout. I plan on having the beer ready to go right in when the barrel arrives so it doesn't have to be cleaned. I think that particular barrel is so unique with aging both whiskey and then maple syrup, that I want to preserve those flavors. My plan is to buy a bottle of their syrup online to carb with.

 

[ndrice]

Just an update. The beer is out of the barrel and into the bottle.

I ended up not doing anything to prep the barrel. I was going to rinse it and clean it, but when I popped the bung the rye alcohol fumes were still really intense so I thought I'd just fill the barrel and take my chances.

My initial plan was to just let the beer age in the barrel for a couple of days before I started pulling samples to see where the barrel character was at, but I ended up having airlock activity from the yeast eating the residual maple syrup in the barrel. I kept thinking that the airlock activity would subside after a day or two and I'd start pulling samples, but it kept blipping along for 2 weeks! I popped the lock once during that time just to see what was going on and there was a big krausen.

Once the two weeks were up I bottled the beer right away. It tasted and smelled amazing.

I've popped a couple of bottles since then and I like the beer a lot. It's got an amazing rye character from the recipe itself, but also has picked up a lot of great maple syrup and rye whiskey notes. The one concern I have is that it is really boozy. Like warm your chest boozy. I think this is from the residual rye whiskey in the barrel and perhaps to much barrel time. I'm hoping that character mellows with age, but this was a beer I'd already planned on cellaring for quite a while.

Overall, I've been incredibly happy with this barrel and with how the beer turned out.