Expat wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 12:27 pm
Honest_Liberty wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:18 am
All of this is why I want to make 53 gallons and just purchase a new charred oak barrel...
Then I look at the hours involved
It's hard to imagine being able to make enough product to justify such a large barrel. Consider that filling a 5g barrel is roughly 220lb of grains and 110 gallons of ferment. Sooo... The large barrel would be 2400lb of grain and 1200 gallons of ferment. Not to mention countless stripping / Spirit runs. Basically impossible and undesirable at the hobby scale.
Smaller barrels are key
Just adding that the larger the barrel the longer you need to age your product.
There is some math and I know some member(s) have worked it out.
Basically there's a way to work out how much surface area inside the barrel that's in contact with the spirit relates to the volume of spirit in the barrel.
The greater the exposure to the inside of the barrel per unit of volume the faster the barrel effects (ages) the spirit.
There's good reason those large barrels are aged 10 plus years, you can get a very close approximation with a smaller (5 gallon) barrel in 2 to 3 years.
I recall working out that my 8 gallon barrel had the effect (relative to a 55 gallon barrel) of aging the equivalent of 5 to 7 years for every one year inside.
Adding onto the subject of wine staves, for the rum I have now bottled which is a solidly aged 3 year old (really 3.5) I aged it in a once used Bourbon barrel and put in cut down staves from a Columbia winery (bought directly from them, so I know where the wood spent it's life).
The wine staves were added during the 3rd year and left in until I dumped the barrel for bottling.
I wouldn't do it this way if I didn't have a clear knowledge of where the wood had been and what had happened to it.
This imparted a deep color and definitely helped with finishing giving it a more complex flavor.