Reusing a barrel for aging

[Guest]

Hello all,

We have a 55 gallon barrel that we used to age a beer a few months ago. We emptied it from the barrel about 4 months ago, put the bung back in it and have not touched it since.

We would like to use it again if we can but this is our first foray into using and reusing barrels.

We pulled the bung the other day and looked in it, some yeast/sludge residue but it mostly just looked like a charred barrel inside and still smelled good. I have heard just slosh some 160+ degree water around in it and we should be good to put beer in it again.

Any suggestions, experiences and tips for us on making sure the barrel is good to go again?

Much thanks!

[atomeyes]

what was in there:

brett or clean beer?

[MikeS]

Go for it

Is 55 gallons of beer too much for you to waste? If you are a nano or something and can't really afford to gamble with ~2bbl of beer you may want to think twice about it, but if not, I say go for it!

The worst thing that can happen is that you have to dump the beer in a few months and cut up the barrel for a planter. The best thing is that you may just make the best beer ever. Even at huge operations, barrel aging is an inexact science. Start collecting more barrels and get a blending program going.

If it were my brewery, and we could spare the potential losses, I'd just rinse it out with hot water and see what happens.

Cheers- Mike

[Guest]

what was in there:

brett or clean beer?

It was clean beer...an Imperial Brown ale.

[atomeyes]

It was clean beer...an Imperial Brown ale.

you can slosh it with hot water, or you can take more astringent steps.
like the above poster said: depends if 55 gallons lost is a lot to you.

read this.

http://morebeer.com/public/pdf/wbarrel.pdf