Selecting barrels - Second use

[goodwood]

Hello,

This will be my second time making wine this year. A friend offered to buy a barrel or too. I think I will be able to make 20 gallons with grapes in the backyard, a wild vine, and possibly more from finding vines on FallingFruit.

So he said this would be a good idea with the intentions to have a sour barrel with local grape wine. It got me thinking. With a new barrel for wine, there will be a lot of oak. We are thinking of getting two 8 or 10 gallon barrels. Do you think we could start souring off the first batch of wine?

Wine --> Sour beer
Or

Wine --> Berry wine --> Sour beer

Or

Wine --> Berry wine --> Belgian Single -- Sour beer

Wine --> carboy brett/carboy sour beer to grab barrel character

With the size of the barrel, I want a sour I can leave leave in for an extended time so a more neutral barrel would be better. Do you guys think I will have to do a few batches before I start adding beer in for an extended time?

Do you guys have any suggestions? It seems since we will most likely have two barrels, I can experiment. Maybe it will be better if we find a 30 gallon since the final use of these will be for souring.

 

[MileHighBrewer]

I'd personally go option 3 but skip the berry

Wine > clean beer > clean or brett > full on sour beer

A saison would be a good choice, or a Belgian blonde/golden strong/tripple to really shine the wine, then the single. I say clean or brett only to still get wine character, plus establish brett in the wood before adding bacteria. If the character is too subtle by that point simply age some of those grapes in the beer!

 

[goodwood]

Yeah, I think a clean beer directly after will pull some oak and have something nice. I already have a wine barrel saison so I will probably try a a tripple in like 6 months, haha.

 

[MollyHatchet]

I was looking at barrelsonline.com at new 20L oak barrels, I just need to get a game plan on succession of brews to run through it.


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[MileHighBrewer]

A BDSA would be really nice, too.

 

[goodwood]

A BDSA would be really nice, too.

That is a pretty good idea. I have yet to brew that style so I will practice a few batches. I have plenty of time. Roughly a year or so.