Thoughts on filling a full bourbon barrel...

I assume youll wanna fill it up to minimize headspace over the aging time.

 

1+ to what OddNotion stated; it is my understanding that you need to have the barrel fully occupied to mitigate oxidation.

Given that the barrel has been 'used up' by the BCBS batch, do you really want to brew 55 gallons on something that may not 'work'?

Cheers!

 

Its also my understanding that youll likely want to top it off over the aging period as well.

Jack - I have not had King Henry but it was aged in the used BCBS Rare barrels and I think people would consider that to be a beer that "worked" in second use barrels.

 

Thanks for that input.

A couple of years ago I had a long conversation with John Laffler who at that time was the Goose Island Barrel guy. During that conversation he mentioned that the barrels were only ‘good’ for one iteration of beer oaking. This was an ‘issue’ for him since he was having difficulty in obtaining the proper barrels; they solely like to use Heaven Hills Bourbon barrels and they were not readily available at that time (and the costs were drastically rising). If Goose Island could reuse barrels, that would have been a big cost savings (and a less headache) for them.

Based upon the above conversation with John Laffler, I personally would not reuse one the Goose Island barrels. Of course, these barrels may be OK for others.

The beauty of homebrewing: brew the beers you like and brew them the way you like!

Cheers!

 

If you are part of a club, have everyone brew the same recipe and all of ya'll fill the barrel up. Brew another 10 gallons to top it up with over time, and taste it each month and all agree on when it's done.

You have 2 choices.. Fill it up all the way, or chop it up.

 

Half barrels make excellent planters:

 

There is a lot of info in this thread to think about for a homebrewer to use an old barrel.
http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/procured-a-whisky-barrel-now-what.102179/

 

I thought that this was an excellent concept and it's what I'd do with a barrel with access:

 

John is both smart and also quite the gentleman. I peppered him with lots of questions; I knew next to nothing about barrel aging and I was curious about the process. John answered every one of my questions at length (he did not dodge a single question). When I ran out of questions we just chatted about things in general. He is a great guy!

Cheers to John Laffler and best of luck to his new brewery!

 

You're only out to luck if you want to fill the barrel. You can cut it up. Somebody smart can probably figure out the volume of beer to barrel surface area comparison in a 55 gallon barrel versus a 5 gallon batch in a plastic fermenter.

Admittedly, cutting up a nice new (to you) bourbon barrel is a hard thing to do.