Wine barrel fermentation - to rinse or not to rinse?

[ambiguator]

I'm getting a freshly used wine 15-gallon barrel soon, from a friend who is bottling his wine. I've been planning to rack over a wit beer for secondary fermentation directly into the barrel. I want to capture a healthy amount of the wine flavors in the beer (think DFH Red+White).

I had recommendations to rinse the barrel and even sanitize it before racking over for secondary. My gut tells me this will get rid of a lot of the wine-y stuff that I want in my beer.

Thoughts?

 

[dcp27]

If its freshly dumped then you won;t need to do anything. Maybe rinse, but otherwise it should be good to go