Hi,
So my employers bought a new establishment where they'll open another tasting room. One of them had the luminous idea of making a wall of barrels (say, 20 of about 200 liter each) as a kind of exhibition in the tasting room. Some of the barrels would be filled with jenever which - fun fact - is distilled from our expired beer. Other barrels we could fill with beer and let age. Their idea would be that's be fun to have some work happening around the barrels and that it'd be nice to be able to sometimes taste what's in the barrels. There's architects who now want to know what'd be necessary to put in the plans for these barrels to be able to stand there. There's plans of making an alcove with a glass wall so the barrels would be in an area that could be climate controlled and ventilated. Load bearing capacity of the floor is being researched.
I've been asked to think along to see how this all can be realized, but am at the moment quite sceptic about the venture. Also, I am but a humble brewer who has never even touched a barrel, so I've been scouring this forum and other resources to learn as much as I can about barrel aging but am at the moment inexperienced.
The way I see it, there's a few ways to realize this plan, all with pro's and cons:
Cheers,
Allard
So my employers bought a new establishment where they'll open another tasting room. One of them had the luminous idea of making a wall of barrels (say, 20 of about 200 liter each) as a kind of exhibition in the tasting room. Some of the barrels would be filled with jenever which - fun fact - is distilled from our expired beer. Other barrels we could fill with beer and let age. Their idea would be that's be fun to have some work happening around the barrels and that it'd be nice to be able to sometimes taste what's in the barrels. There's architects who now want to know what'd be necessary to put in the plans for these barrels to be able to stand there. There's plans of making an alcove with a glass wall so the barrels would be in an area that could be climate controlled and ventilated. Load bearing capacity of the floor is being researched.
I've been asked to think along to see how this all can be realized, but am at the moment quite sceptic about the venture. Also, I am but a humble brewer who has never even touched a barrel, so I've been scouring this forum and other resources to learn as much as I can about barrel aging but am at the moment inexperienced.
The way I see it, there's a few ways to realize this plan, all with pro's and cons:
- We fill and empty the barrels at the brewery, then transport those barrels to the tasting room where we'll find a way to move them to their correct places, probably by manual stacker.
- We fill at the brewery and empty in the tasting room. That would mean getting a BBT so we'd be able to carbonate and chill, after which we'd need to fill bottles there, too. So, a small bottle line. And CO2. And drainage. Am I missing something?
- We fill and empty at the tasting room. Upside is that we won't have to move full barrels around. Downside, apart from all the stuff in mentioned in the point before, is that we'd need to fill the barrels from kegs which might make a mess and is just... harder to do than directly from a BBT/CCT.
- Once in barrels, we need to sometimes top up the volume in the barrel. Are there other things that would need to be done on site if we'd choose to fill and empty at the brewery?
- Would angels' share be a problem in a public tap room if there would not be proper ventilation of the barrel area?
- Would there be any other form of safety hazard? Exploding barrels because of infection?
- Anything I'm missing?
Cheers,
Allard
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