Soured Oak Barrel Second Beer and Cleaning?

[Hopper5000]

Hi All,

I have a 5gal oak barrel that I have had a sour been in for about 18 months. This was the first sour beer to go in it. The current brew has a decent mild sourness level and I am planning on racking it and replacing it with a new beer soon.

My question is about cleaning the barrel. I am doing this with a buddy and we were running through a few scenarios. The easiest would be to rack the beer out and then immediately transfer in the new beer. I am assuming that because it's a first beer there wouldn't be much beer stone worries. However, I am worried that leaving the slurry in there would cause autolysis. I am also thinking that the slurry has a lot of the beneficial bugs in it so leaving it might be good too. Thoughts on this method?

The other method was to rack and then rinse with some water to get the trub out and then transfer the new beer in. With this method we might also put a chain in the barrel and drill it around to expose some more oak. However, I am wondering if we might need to re-culture the barrel if we rinse out the trub and such.

Just curious what people's methods are with oak barrels. Thanks for the help.

 

[Hopper5000]

Really, no one? I have experience with doing clean beers in oak barrels but not much with sours so I am looking for advice.

 

[Agate]

If you have some brett in there, you could just rack out the beer and put the new one in there without dumping the trüb. Autolysis is not a big concern with a mixed ferment like this. Lambics, after all, are left in primary for years without issue.

But you're not going to harm the microbes resident in the barrel by dumping the trüb. It's pretty much impossible to remove resident microbes. If there's a lot of build up in there, probably give it a good rinse, but if you're feeling lazy just transfer the new beer in there. Just don't leave it dry for any length of time.

 

[Hopper5000]

Hi Agate. That is a good point. There are actually a whole lot of different things in the brew in the barrel right now. I fermented the beer with Sacc and then racked it into the barrel with the wyeast roeselare blend. I made another gallon of beer but fermented with brett trios (I know it's not really brett) and lacto. I also threw in some slurry from a sour barrel project that I believe had pedio in it. Thus there is quite a lot going on. If there really isn't much worry about autolysis I prolly will just leave it in there

 

[Agate]

Yeah, you'll be good to go with the roeselare. If only worry about the amount of space the trüb is going to take in your barrel, and if it starts getting excessive then dump it. The bugs will have set up shop in all the nooks and crannies in the barrel.

 

[Hopper5000]

Makes sense to me. I am assuming the chain method to expose more oak won't mess things up either? Prolly won't do this if we leave the trub in there though.

 

[Wahoo]

As I see it, as long as you have beer ready, you have three options.

1- simply rack the next beer in.this maximizes the amount of micro flora you're bringing over into batch 2. Given that your first beer isn't terribly sour, that's what I recommend.

2- cold water rinse. This eliminates a lot of the trub from your first beer, which might be a good thing. You may need to add new yeast and bacteria to get your next beer to sour.

3- hot water rinse and soak. This will kill most of your micro flora and will absolutely need reinoculation not get your next beer to sour.

This idea of using a chain to clean the barrel is unnecessary and I'd be afraid would cause more damage than good. I know this is a technique from Cantillon.... But cantillon doesn't use 5 gallon whiskey barrels either.

 

[Hopper5000]

Thanks for your reply Wahoo. These methods make sense. I didn't think that using hot water would really impact it all that much. I assumed that the microbes are pretty present in the wood so it wouldn't be much of an issue.

The chain idea wasn't for cleaning purposes. The method whips the chain around the the barrel and exposes more fresh oak which can give the beer more oak flavor. I am thinking I probably won't use this mthod though.

 

[Agate]

I started using barrels for sours partially because of some of Wahoo's comments on them and their benefits. I'd take his advice as sound advice.

 

[Hopper5000]

I didn't mean to be doubtful of the advice on here. More thinking out loud kind of situation.

I appreciate the help.

 

[Agate]

Oh, I wasn't implying you were. Just giving him a +1 as great advice!

 

[Gentlemans_Ale]

Just listened to Sour Hour podcast which answered this question. You don't want excessive build up of trub, few are lucky to get Brett to clean up the off flavors. I follow the instructions in American Sour Beers - a good rinse with 160 degree water does the trick. The bugs are in the wood so no worries about killing them off.

 

[Hopper5000]

Well due to time issues with a job that I got sent out of town for we ended up just racking out of the barrel and in with the new beer without doing anything. I guess we shall see what happens...