Small cask

[tonyhibbett]

For many years I've considered oak barrels for maturing wine. Last year I picked a 10 gallon barrel for a few quid, but it needed a lot of work and some money to make it fit for storing wine. This size is considered small, but when full, it's a 2 man job to handle safely. This year, there wasn't enough wine from the grape harvest to fill it, so I had to top it up with other wine to avoid air space.
I have found a UK supplier of new oak barrels, starting from 5 litre capacity, so I bought one this size. At £64 including delivery, bung, tap and stand, this is relatively expensive, considering a 20 litre one would cost a mere extra £10, but a very small cask has the advantage of maturing the wine much faster, due to the higher proportion of oak in contact with the wine. Weeks rather than months.
The only instructions supplied were: soak overnight with water before use. The tiny wooden tap supplied leaked both at the barrel joint and the body. I consulted the bible (C J J Berry): Avoid taps, they always leak and drip. After soaking with water for at least 2 days, a new cask should be filled with a hot soda solution, rinsed with sulphite solution plus citric acid and again with water before use.
Soda crystals were suprisingly easy to find and when I poured the solution out of the cask, it was a dirty brown liquid with bits of debris. By the time I had finished, the tap no longer leaked.

 

[Stone Cold]

who makes these casks? i would love to have some cooperd pins and firkins. any pics ?
ollie

 

[tonyhibbett]

http://www.oak-barrel.com
http://www.thebarrelmakers.co.uk/small_barrels/index.html

 

[Stone Cold]

are these the casks you have got and cleaned out?

 

[Stone Cold]

have you seen anymore places to get them,? i can only find these in search

http://www.barrelsrus.co.uk/
http://www.andythornton.com/en-UK/p...ak-barrels/atvmrstd080/9-gallon-firkin-barrel

this is a good one http://www.oakbarrelcreations.co.uk/oak cask barrels.html

 

[tonyhibbett]

Yes, I got the smallest in the small range, 5 litres. There's another range from 30 litres upwards, supplied with bung only, with a tap option extra, no stand. These are untreated and available in both chestnut and oak. As far as I know, they are not toasted.
Mostly I make 30 bottle kits, (23 litres), but there is no size between 20 and 30 litres, 20 being the closest, at £89.

 

[Friday]

The bad thing about a very small barrels is the oak to wine ratio. Yes it will oak up faster but you can't get any ageing out of them, all your doing is flavoring the wine. If you leave your wine in a toasted 5l barrel for longer then a few weeks it's not going to be very good.

Personally I like a 20l med toast barrel, the first time I use it the wine tastes a little young but on the second and 3rd use you can leave it sit for a year and it turns out great.

Faster does not mean better. Less oak more time = better wine.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Would that same principal still apply to cider or even, at the other extreme, something considerably stronger?

 

[Stone Cold]

i would like it for beer

 

[Friday]

Would that same principal still apply to cider or even, at the other extreme, something considerably stronger?

Yes, the same principal applies. On a barrel smaller the 5 gallons you will get the flavor from the wood, but you can't leave it in the barrel for long enough to mature. On a small barrel you get oak flavor but you won't be able to leave it in the barrel for long enough, and you can't get the complexity. If you do leave it for to long your wine, beer, cider, or spirit will just taste like a wet stick.

 

[tonyhibbett]

Thanks for that. By your location, I assume that's 5 US gallons, (smaller than UK size). This may account for the fact that the small barrel was internally coated with wax, as I discovered. Also, not toasted, I believe. So not terribly useful piece of kit. Might just as well stick to oak chips and bottle ageing!
However, I did read that oak chips for brandy should be used at the rate of 15 g per litre. I use 10 g per 20 litres of white wine, 30 for red. This suggests that brandy can happily absorb a hell of a lot of oak, compared to wine.
Was the wine you used red or white? It is the given wisdom that northern European white wine should only spend a short time in oak and continue ageing in bottles. Northern European reds is something of a contradiction in terms, but the climate is definitely changing. Last year I put 10 gallons of white in a barrel for a month and then bottled it. I just tasted this year's vintage from the barrel and after only 3 weeks it tastes good. So maybe I should make 10 gallons of red and put that in the barrel, once emptied, rather than make 5 gallons and buy a 5 gallon barrel, but I have red that is not wise to use a barrel for both red and white wine, so I suspect I'll need extra barrels anyway!

 

[tonyhibbett]

It would seem that a 20 litre barrel is ok for reds, but rather too small for whites. As for the 5 litre, probably a rash purchase, but we will see. Apparantly, I have to ferment some wine in it first before using it for storage and replace the tap with a rubber bung, to reduce evaporation. The tap no longer seeps or drips, but is certainly not dry.

 

[hedgerow pete]

a beautiful purchase and one i wished i could make but 5 litres is very small to age, why not consider coating some of the insides with a food grade resin so restricting the oak to wine ratio.

 

[tonyhibbett]

I may have blown my bridges on that. The Iinstructions simply said 'Fill with water and soak for 24 hours'. However, following instructions from 2 well respected, if old, books, I filled it with a very hot solution of washing soda. When cool, out came murky brown liquid and small spongy lumps. The supplier said these may be due to the internal wax coating, but I suspect they were excess sealant which had been applied to the bung and tap holes. The hot soda soak would have removed much, if not all the wax. Next was a rinse with a solution of sulphite and citric acid, and finally water. I later learned that the next step should be to pour in bottle of wine with extra tannin and roll this around to impregnate the wood, discarding the wine after. I didn't know this at the time. Instead I filled it with a rather poor wine which I had fortified with low grade white rum, resulting in a poor wine with a crude rum flavour. After a week, this wine is showing promising signs of improvement in flavour and colour. The next step is to ferment a gallon of wine in the barrel. Finally the tap should be replaced with a bung to reduce evaporation and is then ready for proper use. I have plenty of cider almost ready, and as this is usually aged in oak for a short time, might be suitable for starters.
I have no idea how I would coat the insides with resin, but it doesn't seem a good idea, except for making Retsina, which only tastes good in Greece!

 

[shocker]

Hmmm, retsina....I never understood the "varnish in beverage" thing . I mean , I can see the drunken logic - "How are we going to stop this wine going off ?" ...... " I know ! Lets varnish it !"

....but doing it AGAIN ? And keeping on doing it ? :hmm:

 

[tonyhibbett]

Talking of varnish, the barrel has thin outer coat of the stuff, thus preventing it breathing, an important function of maturing in cask. Yet another instance of style over substance, a modern disease, typified by the whole Apple sales concept. Formally it could be said that if Microsoft ran an airline company, you'd have to build the plane yourself, whereas with Apple it's a case of pay extra and sit back and enjoy the movie while the plane nosedives. I repeat my quote about most people actually enjoying wine more if it has a fancy label and a high price tag.
Unsurprisingly I have few friends left!