Acquiring a bourbon barrel for aging homebrews?

yeah if you google it you'll come up with a lot of results. They are like $150-250. You could also use cubes or staves or chips in conjunction with your favorite bourbon. Ebay usually has some. I'd recommend cubes or staves for a beginner.

 

Being new to the hobby you may want to look at using wood chips. Brewing 50 gallons of beer to fill a barrel is not something most home brewers can easily accomplish with a standard five gallon kit.

 

Learn to walk before you get into the running part.

 

Here ya go, 8 gallon bourbon barrel. http://www.woodinvillewhiskeycostore.com/8-gallon-used-whiskey-barrels/

Whether you crawl, walk, run, stumble, trip is at your own discretion if you don't know what you're doing.

 

If you search this forum you'll find similar threads, and many of the posts will discourage you from doing this at this point in your brewing efforts. You'll need to brew a lot of beer in a short period of time to fill a barrel, and then you take a chance of infecting the entire barrel with results that may cause you to dump it all. ($$$'s) Take some time to learn about this hobby and about the pitfalls that you can find when trying to barrel age a beer.

 

does the barrel need to be completely filled? brewing 5 gallons and putting it in one of those 8 gallons should work right? i've often thought of this same question but don't know enough about it yet to take the leap.

great discussion..

 

It's one thing to lose a 5 gallon batch to infection with some plastic pieces of equipment that are about 20$ to replace all said and done with an additional 50 - 75 on the brew bill. Tack about another 50 - 100 on that with a barrel, and depending on the size.
Keep that tab running cos a full size barrel would need that brew bill times 11 to make it all pop. And, also: if you are not clean during every step in the various stages leading up to racking and bung sealing. You are dekcuf. If you want a full on bummer. This'll do it. Cos, that's now all of that, and 6 mos to a year of patience and effort you just blew, and it'll eat you alive trying to isolate that off flavor to the moment in the process where you prematurely blew your wad.
Get brewing first, and then...
Stick with wood chips and the like until you are comfortable with the rest of the steps and got your cleaning habits in full check.

 

A few of us filled a 53 gallon barrel. Fun experience, but not cheap. Two of us spent nearly $800 between cost of barrel and cost of 50 gallons of 12% imperial stout. That does not factor in the cost of the 10 gallons of the same recipe that was brewed by a friend. I'm sure we are hovering around $950 when you factor everything in.

Not cheap, pretty stressful, and definitely something I'd recommend for very experienced brewers only. If recent samples are any indication of where the beer will end up, it was well worth the effort (and the cost).

 

Many in my club have 5 gallon barrels from Balcones. This is manageable for most of them.

One guy has his own Bourbon barrel, and can do two 1 barrel brews to fill it.

The club has 3 or 4 of the Bourbon and wine barrels for different club projects.

 

I would not recommend only partially filling unless you don't plan on aging it very long. Head space and oxygen are the enemy when it comes to barrel aging. Brew another batch and use the extra for top off when you get evaporation (angels share).

 

If you want to go big... do it as a group. We did one a little over a year ago and there were 8 of us who contributed. We are getting ready to do it again with 4. Its very dooable. We intend to drive to Kentucky to get a barrel.

 

very cool information, my buddies brew club did a barleywine that they're aging in a merlot wine barrel right now. It's got another month or so to go but should be interesting. They where sitting at around 11%

I believe it took 8-10 ppl to fill the wine barrel.

 

I have two 5 gallon barrels from Balcones Distilling, they work great. Though you do have to cycle them fairly frequently because they pick up so much so fast. Now that Im on to making sours in them its a breeze. I sent 3 to 4 beers through them rinsing with hot water and then letting them soak in whiskey before deciding it was time to sour them.

 

Here's some options getting barrels. You can also use oak chips instead of barrels.
For my experience chips are the simplest way to age beer.
Happy testing