New (virgin) barrel recipe advice

[maxspencer]

I picked up a new barrel, 20 liter european oak medium toast. It has not held anything before, so looking for suggestions on a good recipe schedule. I know the oak will be intense on the first brews and sample frequently. I've read suggestions ranging from starting with a big RIS to getting some bourbon and sticking in the barrel first. Seems more often we are dealing with old whisky barrels rather than new barrels.

 

[Pappers_]

Yes, I've never used a virgin barrel, always one that has had some distilled spirit in it first - either bourbon or gin. You have a small barrel, so if you wanted to age some bourbon in it, it wouldn't take forever, maybe leave it in for a year? I would think you would need to fill the barrel, though, just as distillers do, so we're talking a little bit of money here. I'm not expert, though.

If you wanted to use the barrel as is, a RIS is certainly a tried and true approach. I've also made barrel-aged American Barleywine, Vanilla Chocolate Imperial Porter, and Biere de Garde. Whatever style you decide to go with, I would only age it for a month or two, with that small of a barrel. For comparision purposes, a barrel-aged RIS that won a gold medal this autumn was aged in a 15 gallon (three times the size of your barrel) for six months.