buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

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Full_moon
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buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by Full_moon »

I wanted 3L barrels, they fitted my needs and ebay was easy so here is my experience. I have purchased three barrels and one clear winner. All from three different Ebay vendors.

#1 from ElGuedo. The barrel arrived promptly and swelled up (cured) in about 30 minutes with no leaking. I have aged three different batches of ujsm with great results.
The barrel has now developed dark stains along portions of the staves and end caps. no leaking but a high rate of evaporation (angels share).
The last aging 3 months I lost one full pint to the angels. The rate of evaporation is too high in my opinion. The barrel is built with thinner wood.

#2 Nopal_Verde AKA Barrels online. The barrel arrived promptly with some free special engraving. I installed the spigot and filled the barrel and it leaked like a sieve around the end cap the spigot side. I waited per instructions for five days of curing. The leaking slowed but still leaked badly. Per instructions I dried the area and applied hot wax to leaking area and it did not stop the leak.
I contacted them for a replacement, and sent them a picture of the barrel leaking, per their instructions and got a reply back that a replacement would be sent.
That's the last time I have heard from them despite two emails on my part requesting a status update on my replacement barrel.
Tomorrow I file an Ebay resolution as the 30 day period is up in a couple days and I think that's what they are delaying for.

#3 Artsandcraftsofmexico. I purchased this barrel shortly after barrel #2. When I opened the package on this barrel I was surprised by the difference in weight, much heavier than the previous two. They advertise they use much thicker wood and its obvious. The barrel is heavier and larger. I installed the spigot and filled it with water and not one leak anywhere.
The stand this comes on has to be assembled, the previous two comes already assembled however its a few minutes job with a drop of wood glue on each end as you insert it in the hole and its done.
The quality of this barrel , built with thicker wood staves and end caps is obvious.
Its filled now with 120P ujsm and the clear winner. Order it non coated, as standard it has a coating on the exterior, unless of course you prefer it that way.

My 1st barrel I think I just lucked out. It looks identical to the 2nd barrel with the thinner wood and a poor choice in my opinion
Hope this saves someone a few bucks, Make the right purchase the 1st time.
I also hear that Gibbs barrels are good
Last edited by Full_moon on Sun Jan 18, 2015 2:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ben stiller
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by ben stiller »

Great real world info. Thanks for posting.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by rager »

thanks for the posting. read that ebay seller on your 3rd barrel. they seemed legit through the listing but its nice to get some real feed back
Full_moon
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by Full_moon »

An update on barrel #2

After filing an ebay resolution I got a quick response back. Apparently some kind of mix up or what ever between their online and ebay store and my request dropped in the cracks or what ever.
To their credit they have quickly shipped me a replacement barrel. I hope it better than the 1st one.
Whats interesting its on its way via Fed ex from Texas, the 1st one from Mexico. Maybe differences between their online and ebay stores.
The 1st barrel now sits on my desk as an ornament.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by varocketry »

I purchased a used 5.3 gal barrel from homebrewing.com last year. They seem to have an exclusive arrangement with BALCONES of ElPaso, TX for their used whiskey barrels. The one I purchased was used twice for four months,each, apparently to age their Blue Corn Whiskey (from end cap markings).

Seems like a good quality barrel and did not leak when water tested or with UJSSM aging in it. Steel bands on outside were not as wide or substantial as those in the pictures above.

I just got an email from them saying another shipment is available so BUY NOW. They've jacked up their prices to $175. plus shipping. I recall you can purchase a new 5g barrel for that cost. Certainly cheaper for a recharred barrel.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by whistlewetter »

I appreciate this post! I have yet to try to age any whiskey yet. Due to this thread I went to Ebay and found the "good" barrel and I think I am going to order two 5 liter barrels and give it a shot...
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by Lazarus Long »

I'm bumping this back up to the top to get some more feedback.

I'm looking for a few 5 gallon barrels, heavily caramelized and a medium char. Going to be gifts to my godson and his father when he turns 21, little fella is only one now. Given my age, this is my one shot as seeing the end result of a 20 year old self-made bourbon so I want to be confident in my barrel selection. Figure there has to be a few more suppliers out there as popular as this hobby is becoming.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by LWTCS »

Lazarus Long wrote:Given my age, this is my one shot as seeing the end result of a 20 year old self-made bourbon so I want to be confident in my barrel selection.
That's awesome.
If bourbon continues on the current path,,,,that will be a very dear gift indeed.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by Lazarus Long »

Got a used Cannon 5D II as a gift that I need to put to use. Thought I would document the process by putting together a digital photo album complete with High Def movies of the entire process from malting the grains to sealing the bung to be given along with the barrels.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by mrhoden2 »

I ordered 2 cask (a 3 liter and 5 liter) from barrels online the other week. They came in quick and I just filled them up with water and put in a 5 gallon bucket then topped it off with more water. After 2 days soaking I refilled with water and put on the counter to monitor any leaking. After a day of none, filled up with some stuff I need to age. After 3 days and no leaks I shake them up but notice a lot of evaporation. I have weighed the 3 liter and want to see how much I am actually losing. I don't know if you lose more at the start and evaporation slows down. All in all, ok for the price.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by 3d0g »

elguedo (Ralph) seals the barrel ends with food-grade wax inside. He also uses a type of oak I find personally revolting. Originally I thought it was the wax that was making the spirits taste so bad and he worked with me to try a couple other barrels with no wax, but no difference. His barrels are now decorations.

I've had much better luck with Artsandcraftsofmexico barrels flavor wise but they're a bear to get sealed up. They will literally fall apart within a week of arrival, due to the massive differences in humidity between Mexico and Colorado, I suspect. I've had the best success with fully submerging them in a bucket of water for a few days before use. Still had a couple chronic leakers that I just have to rotate to get the leaks above liquid level for use.

By far the best small barrels I ever got, flavor and quality wise, were locally from Rocky Mountain Barrel. Sadly, they don't mess with the little ones anymore.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by mrhoden2 »

So after 3 days of measuring, i lost 1oz weight of my 3 liter cask. To me that is not a lot, but if you age for say 90 days, that will be around 30oz weight. I weighed 1oz weight of whiskey and it was a FULL larger shot glass. That just seems like a large amount over time to lose. Is it ok to coat the outside cask in a thick lacquer to prevent huge losses? I keep them is my pantry inside my house, constant 72 degrees, no draft blowing on them. I want to put some product in a couple more to age till Christmas for my dad and brothers, but with this rate i wouldn't have anything left in it after 10 months.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by DFitz »

I just use Gibbs Bros. Never have a bad barrel.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by aquavita »

Dfitz -

Have you taken a look at how much you are donating to the angels? Gibbs seems to be "the" - if not one of the highest rated here and elsewhere.

Very curious as I would like to invest in a barrel soon.

Thank you to the OP for initiating the thread. I have read the prior threads regarding barrels and folks give either a positive or negative on the barrel - not many have gone into detail on their experience.

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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by bellybuster »

my first barrel is a barrels online 10 litre and I have no complaints at all. Sealed up just fine and has produced some fine likker. Has been filled and emptied 3 times in 1.5 years. The present fill is over 8 months and tastes wonderful.
I have 2 others made locally, twice the price but also twice as nice to look at. Is that worth paying for?? Dunno
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by ShineRunnah »

A friend of mine purchased a barrel from 1000oaksbarrel.com, and for what he paid for it, I'm pretty impressed with it, especially for the price. He purchased a 3-liter with brass bands and a little wooden stand for something like $75. It had some weight to it too, and seemed pretty well made. He had me "polish" the wood and buff it with pure carnauba wax (used a Beall buffing kit) and it looks awesome. As it will be used as a dispenser and sit on his home bar, he had me wax it in hopes of slowing evaporation some, and to make it more of a show-piece. I haven't asked how the evaporation rate was, and I'm not sure he even knows. But I'll ask anyway and see if he ever paid attention to that.

It's obviously not my barrel, but I supplied the spirit to fill it and it came out pretty nice after 3 months of aging. As far as I know, it never leaked after the initial swelling period either. He's still working on drinking the contents about 5 months after the initial fill, and the whisky is still getting better.

For the price, I thought it was a pretty nice barrel.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by ben stiller »

Has anyone tried a stillcraft barrel? Just received a one liter as a gift and will be testing it soon. I will post a review to this thread.
She did tell me that the customer service was awful and the shipping really slow.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by DFitz »

aquavita wrote:Dfitz -

Have you taken a look at how much you are donating to the angels? Gibbs seems to be "the" - if not one of the highest rated here and elsewhere.

Very curious as I would like to invest in a barrel soon.

Aqua
I pull a little better than 4 gallons on a five gallon aged a year and I pulled 9 on a 10 gallon barrel aged two years. I have several 5 gallon barrels (used) so I'll be aging in 10s for future runs and maybe store longer term in 5 gallon barrels. My first 10 was only toasted (no char) for rum use. Most of my 5 gallon barrels were for whiskey. I don't worry so much about the Angels share as I don't consider it a loss. It's not like I'm losing profit cuz I don't sell. These barrels make me some pretty fine whiskey and rum. I imagine brandy would be great as well. I go to Hot Springs every now & then so it's worth buying them then as far as I'm concerned. I get a couple of good usage from each barrel.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by varocketry »

There are other threads on barrel sources and prices.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by ben stiller »

The Stillcraft barrel seems to be of reasonable quality. Filled it with water and had several seeps
Which dried pretty quick except it stayed wet around the top fill hole for almost two days. Seems
That after I tried putting in the plug it dried right up. It is now filled with UJ and doing well. Over
All for a low end barrel it seems good except for their customer service.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by cali sunshine »

Lazarus Long wrote:I'm bumping this back up to the top to get some more feedback.

I'm looking for a few 5 gallon barrels, heavily caramelized and a medium char. Going to be gifts to my godson and his father when he turns 21, little fella is only one now. Given my age, this is my one shot as seeing the end result of a 20 year old self-made bourbon so I want to be confident in my barrel selection. Figure there has to be a few more suppliers out there as popular as this hobby is becoming.
I am wanting to do the same thing for my son he is currently he is 2, so I would need to age it for about 18-19 years, but it seams in these small barrels with that amount of time that it needs to age, the angels would take almost if not all of the product. Also as we loose product the barrels would start to dry out, Do you have any ideas on what we can do to slow this, other than buying good barrels? or maybe as we lose some to the angels we could down size into a new smaller barrel? If anyone has any ideas on that I would love to hear them. Another thought I have would the drink be to woody and undrinkable with storing that long in these small barrels?
Happy Stilling,
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by bellybuster »

Only way to avoid the Angels share is to bottle it.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by slow trickle »

Age in a barrel to get the flavor profile you want. Then put it in a sealed glass or stainless container to age off oak. It will continue to make gradual changes. Take a pint of freshly run white dog hearts and taste it. Put it away for six months and taste it again. It will be much different.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by DukeBoxer »

I'll share my experience here also. I bought a barrel from barrels online, 3L size. It leaked pretty good for a few days but finally did seal up. There were 2 pin size holes on the top stave that I sealed up with bees wax. I first put an ujsm in for a few months that came out pretty good and then a panela rum which I also liked. After the rum came out I filled it with water because I wasn't going to use it for a while and also hoped it would pull out most of the oak flavor left. In the summer I visited a distillery and bought a used 5 gallon straight stave black swan barrel from them. It had been used twice already. I tried their whiskey aged in it and wasn't a big fan. It tasted like wood and char, not much of anything else. I hoped what I read was true about the barrels, the more you use them the less wood flavor comes over. I filled it over time, from July to September with 3.5 gallons total of an all grain, 66% corn and 33% white wheat malt. I just started tasting it and I think I was right, there's not that strong wood and char flavor, just a nice, well rounded bourbon/corn whiskey (the barrel wasn't new....) I'm definitely sold on the larger barrel size, especially for the taste. It's different from the smaller barrels, better and more like the commercial stuff. Just be careful of you're buying one of these new. If you get a high toast and char the first few times you use it might be a little woody. Now for the small barrel, I took a bottle of French chardonnay and soaked it in the barrel for a week or 2 then dumped it out and filled it with my 5 gallon barrel stuff and threw in a charred stick of chokecherry. I'll leave it for a month and then bottle. I think the small barrels can be used for experimenting after they've lost most of their taste.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by whistlewetter »

Hopefully I will be using mine soon. Trying to decide if I want to age a corn/malted barley/sugar blend or a straight sugar brew. I have built up enough of each. I changed my mind and only purchased 1 2.6 gallon barrel. I am thinking of aging in the barrel for about 6 months. This will be my first attempt ever at aging.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by ilostmykeys »

I just purchased 3 of the 3L barrels from barrelsonline.com and the inside of the barrels stink like glue. Actually the entire package smells like glue. I thought maybe it was the varnish but the smell is only within the bung hole and not along the staves themselves. I am a little thrown back and sent them an email to verify if they use glue or not. I am extremely reluctant in placing anything inside these barrels as for they really smell badly of a strong glue and I do not doubt for a second it will ruin the batch I had planned for it. I will update this post with what they say.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by cranky »

ilostmykeys wrote:I just purchased 3 of the 3L barrels from barrelsonline.com and the inside of the barrels stink like glue. Actually the entire package smells like glue. I thought maybe it was the varnish but the smell is only within the bung hole and not along the staves themselves. I am a little thrown back and sent them an email to verify if they use glue or not. I am extremely reluctant in placing anything inside these barrels as for they really smell badly of a strong glue and I do not doubt for a second it will ruin the batch I had planned for it. I will update this post with what they say.
I had the same thing happen. Even though they assured me it was OK and would go away I couldn't bring myself to trust them and sent them back. Barrels should breath and so, in my opinion, shouldn't be varnished unless it is just for display.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by okie »

I have used three barrels so far in the 5L size. Stay away from Thousand Oaks barrels. After it finally sealed, filled with water and sunk in a bucket of water, I used it once but it leaked and Iost a lot to leaking and evaporation. I put it away and in a week the hoops fell off it shrunk so much. I tossed that POS.

I have one now that was a gift and it's thick and holds well but the ends do turn black at the staves. I think that is normal.

My next will be a used whiskey barrel because I age single malt and I have to put whiskey in a new barrel to season it anyway.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by ilostmykeys »

cranky wrote:
ilostmykeys wrote:I just purchased 3 of the 3L barrels from barrelsonline.com and the inside of the barrels stink like glue. Actually the entire package smells like glue. I thought maybe it was the varnish but the smell is only within the bung hole and not along the staves themselves. I am a little thrown back and sent them an email to verify if they use glue or not. I am extremely reluctant in placing anything inside these barrels as for they really smell badly of a strong glue and I do not doubt for a second it will ruin the batch I had planned for it. I will update this post with what they say.
I had the same thing happen. Even though they assured me it was OK and would go away I couldn't bring myself to trust them and sent them back. Barrels should breath and so, in my opinion, shouldn't be varnished unless it is just for display.
I unfortunately did not want to send the barrels back as for I am in Canada and that seemed like a hassle. So I did some experimenting. Accidentally ordered with varnish and although it smells more like what I thought was glue vs. varnish I sealed the holes and lightly sanded off the varnish. I also let air, I assume they recently made them and they are quickly stored in a box. Completely got rid of the smell. I even had someone really critical of what I was doing smell it after sanding and they said they could no longer smell the 'glue' smell and would use it. Starting with using one and will see how it goes.
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Re: buying a barrel?, My adventure and advice

Post by Swedish Pride »

anyone got a good source of barrels for europe?
I contacted Gibbs about sendign here, they did not get back to me yet, they might not be too keen on it?
thinking arts of mexico but 3dogs comment put me off a bit
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