Ideas for tiny oak barrel

[gSully]

Hi all - I was recently given a small 5 liter new oak barrel as a gift. Its a medium charred new american oak barrel from Deep South Barrels.

I am curious to ideas and input on what to do with this thing? I realize its quite small with a lot of surface area. Also, given that its roughly 1.5 gallons, I probably need to do a split batch and age 1.5 gallons in it while the other 3.5 gallons or so sits in a carboy, then blend the two.

Given that it's new oak, should I make sure to fill it with spirits or wine? I have a lot of Cabernet and Chardonnay on hand that I would be willing to fill with it as well. I'm up for dedicating it to a sour barrel as well.

What would you do with it?

 

[acidrain]

I'm partial to bourbon barrel aged beers.
Look up Denny Conn's vanilla porter... really good when oaked with Bourbon!

 

[gSully]

Thanks. So does that mean I should store 1.5 gallons of Bourbon into my barrel until its ready to be filled with beer?

On a similar note, the barrel only has a stopper and the opening is not large enough for an airlock. Do you need an airlock, or since its just conditioning, I can go ahead and plug it?

 

[solbes]

Sounds very cool. I would try to get as many uses out of it as I could before switching to sour duty. Each usage will diminish the amount of oak flavor, so it may be a 1.5 weeks --> 5 weeks --> 3 months type of thing. Here's a couple of possible ideas:

Cabernet --> Belgian Quad --> Barleywine --> Sour (giving bugs a place to live)
Bourbon --> RIS --> Barleywine --> Sour

You'd want to have all beers/wines ready to go so that as soon as the barrel is emptied it is filled with the next. Or you will have to deal with barrel sanitizing (sulfur and such).

 

[DarthCitra]

make an airlock hole in the bung that came with it. If you're fermenting the beer out before transferring then treat the barrel as a secondary, still need an airlock though. If i was you, I would put bourbon in it until the beer is finished. You dont want the barrel drying out and the bourbon soaks wood will give amazing flavor to the beer you put inside.

 

[Weezy]

I have a one gallon. You'll find it will thoroughly oak your beer in 3-4 weeks. I use mine as an innoculation vessel. I keep it full with diluted wine and it has commercial brett and sour beer dregs in it. I'll put a beer in there for a couple weeks after primary and rack it to glass for aging. As far as oaking beers, I find using cubes more accurate and controllable and not as much of a pain. I'd like to pick up a 15 gallon barrel for more traditional oak aging.

 

[gSully]

Thanks everyone, great ideas! I look forward to using it

 

[TheBarrelGuru]

They also sale air locks for those barrels

 

[bronzdragon]

One thing I will say, because I learned it the hard way with some 3 gallon barrels that I have...1) prepare the barrel for use by swelling it. And 2) don't let the barrel sit empty and dry out after use, there is a solution that you can make up and fill the barrel up, so that it doesn't dry out and/or grow mold etc. The specifics can be found by searching for Oak Barrel Care.
/cheers