The Badmotivator Bain-Marie and Oak Barrel

[yakattack]

So curious. Not including time. What's your material cost to make these now?

[Hillbilly Popstar]

Bruh....

Screw DIY. You got the hang of this. I'd just pay you to build and ship me a couple if the price is right.

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[Badmotivator]

So curious. Not including time. What's your material cost to make these now?

4 qt Bain Marie insert: $12.41
Seasoned white oak: $4
Oak leaf SS spigot: $10.69
————————————————
$27.10

Edit:sorry, I guess I'm implying I bought the white oak pre-seasoned. I didn't. I bought the board, chopped and ripped it, and seasoned it myself.

[Badmotivator]

Bruh....

Screw DIY. You got the hang of this. I'd just pay you to build and ship me a couple if the price is right.

Something like this?

Materials: $27
Labor: $25?
Shipping: $10?
—————
$62

That's still better than a small oak barrel (Mile Hi: $130 no spigot!) and obvs I think it'll perform better but at that cost I'm not sure how compelling the Badmotivator Barrel is.

If I were doing a bunch of these for other people I'd buy a band saw and find some other efficiencies like jigs to get the price a little lower. But I'd also have to find a source for thick white oak, preferably pre-seasoned. Anyone know how to order wood from Tronçais or Vosges? Der Wo is the closest, I propose he take a train over there to work out the details.

[Hillbilly Popstar]

Bruh....

Screw DIY. You got the hang of this. I'd just pay you to build and ship me a couple if the price is right.

Something like this?

Materials: $27
Labor: $25?
Shipping: $10?
—————
$62

That's still better than a small oak barrel (Mile Hi: $130 no spigot!) and obvs I think it'll perform better but at that cost I'm not sure how compelling the Badmotivator Barrel is.

If I were doing a bunch of these for other people I'd buy a band saw and find some other efficiencies like jigs to get the price a little lower. But I'd also have to find a source for thick white oak, preferably pre-seasoned. Anyone know how to order wood from Tronçais or Vosges? Der Wo is the closest, I propose he take a train over there to work out the details.

That's a steal! We may be talking business as soon as I get some product together.

How do you think it would do if you were to lay in a 2 or 3" strip of cherry with the oak?

Or would it be easier to just throw a stick in the barrel when you fill it up?

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[Badmotivator]

That's a steal! We may be talking business as soon as I get some product together.

How do you think it would do if you were to lay in a 2 or 3" strip of cherry with the oak?

Or would it be easier to just throw a stick in the barrel when you fill it up?

Nice. I'm glad those numbers make sense on your end. There are things we could do to get that price lower, and still make us both happy we did it. Let's keep in touch on this.

You could go either way with the cherry (included in the head or inserted in the barrel) and there are pluses and minuses to each. I think it'd look sweet out in front. You could do some other really interesting wood blends. I'm going to go see my specialty wood guys tomorrow to see what other "ingredient" woods they carry.

Here's an interesting possibility I've been chewing on: making a battery of barrels for traditional balsamic vinegar! Oak, acacia, chestnut, juniper, cherry, mulberry, ash. I live in Oregon wine country so it's not too hard to buy grapes. Wouldn't that be a truly weird and wonderful thing to do?

[der wo]

But I'd also have to find a source for thick white oak, preferably pre-seasoned. Anyone know how to order wood from Tronçais or Vosges? Der Wo is the closest, I propose he take a train over there to work out the details.

White oak? In Europe? Where? No. Tronçais and Vosges is european oak. Good for wine and sherry barrels. Or second fill single malt of course.
BTW that's one point, that I don't think about, making a barrel like this: The only white oak I get is from whiskey barrels, bent and cut in pieces, no chance to build a leakproof lid with it.

[Badmotivator]

White oak? In Europe? Where? No. Tronçais and Vosges is european oak. Good for wine and sherry barrels. Or second fill single malt of course.
BTW that's one point, that I don't think about, making a barrel like this: The only white oak I get is from whiskey barrels, bent and cut in pieces, no chance to build a leakproof lid with it.

Oh, of course. Ich bin ein großer Quatschkopf. I should be sending YOU oak.

[Badmotivator]

To get a lower loss rate I am going to try 1 ¼ inch white oak. (32mm). Got a board all chopped:

And ripped:

And stacked outside for seasoning/weathering:

[der wo]

White oak? In Europe? Where? No. Tronçais and Vosges is european oak. Good for wine and sherry barrels. Or second fill single malt of course.
BTW that's one point, that I don't think about, making a barrel like this: The only white oak I get is from whiskey barrels, bent and cut in pieces, no chance to build a leakproof lid with it.

Oh, of course. Ich bin ein großer Quatschkopf. I should be sending YOU oak.

Good idea!
Respectively you had much better ideas in this thread than ordering white oak from France.

[WIski]

BadMo are those boards your sawing big enough to use as a one piece barrel end? I have some 1.5" stock that would be wide enough to do a barrel end in one piece. Any reason why you think this might not work?

[Badmotivator]

BadMo are those boards your sawing big enough to use as a one piece barrel end? I have some 1.5" stock that would be wide enough to do a barrel end in one piece. Any reason why you think this might not work?

They totally were wide enough to use as one piece. Maybe I should have saved myself some work and tried it.

Reasons to make staves:
- I can remove defects (knots, splits, live edge/bark) if on the very edge of staves, or omit a really bad stave
- I can omit the staves with the wrong grain orientation
- at toasting, staves will "cup" less than one wide board, helping me give it an even toast
- I have a slight preference for the appearance. No idea why.

[MichiganCornhusker]

I remember when reading up on barrel making that they deliberately use 1/4 sawn wood to reduce the loss of liquid through the staves.
Looks like what you cut up is plain sawn. I have no real experience in this, but would be curious to know how much difference that would make.
1/4 sawn would also reduce the tendency for the wood to cup, but for pieces that small I don't think I'd sweat that either.

I didn't use a spigot, only a hole with an oak peg pounded in. I did notice that a 3/4" hole is about right for a wine cork. I'm going to try that on my next one.

[Badmotivator]

I remember when reading up on barrel making that they deliberately use 1/4 sawn wood to reduce the loss of liquid through the staves.
Looks like what you cut up is plain sawn. I have no real experience in this, but would be curious to know how much difference that would make.

Yup. No excuses, I messed up. I got to talking with the lumber guys and I lost my focus. I bought the wrong board. I'll be able to omit the ones with flat grain and still use the diagonal grain ones though, so I won't lose out too badly. The flat grain ones could be used to make bungs or stands or something.

[Badmotivator]

Full of booze and sealed up my barrel is clocking in at 1.860 Kg. I'll keep you posted as the angels come and go.

I'd be interested to hear how you did in your first month.

[MichiganCornhusker]

Yup. No excuses, I messed up.

Hey, I wasn't trying to give you a hard time, just passing on what I'd read about the 1/4 sawn staves.
I don't even know what difference it would make. A few percent difference for a full size barrel for a large producer would matter, but would probably be negligible for us hobby folk.
Then again, maybe the effect is substantial. Perhaps a test!

After a month, my BadMo weighed in at 1820 g, so lost about 40g. I didn't take a tare weight for the pot and oak, so I can't really say what percent that would work out to.

[Badmotivator]

Lately the thing that's bugging me is the seasoning of the wood. I have come to believe that it will be absolutely necessary to prepare the wood if I want to match the behavior of a large barrel.

Coopers leave their wood outside to season for between 4 and 36 months. The stated purpose of this is to remove or modify tannins (everyone seems to agree on this) and then some hand-waving about how microorganisms and fungi break down the wood a little and make flavors available to the barrel contents. My hunch is that 97.3% of the value of seasoning is the reduction of sap and tannin due to the repeated washing of the wood by rain. Much has been written about the black stain that develops on the ground under the stacks of oak, so we know that a lot of tannin is removed. In fact, one Spanish "tonnelería" sprays down their stacks of wood to ensure that this function is accomplished. (I lost the source on this, sorry.)


So I am running an experiment on tannin removal! I will be taking five pieces of the same white oak board, and seasoning them differently. Then they will all be toasted identically and identical masses will be placed in identical volumes of neutral spirits.
1) raw wood
2) soaked for one day
3) soaked for one week, water changed daily
4) soaked for one month, water changed daily
5) soaked for one month, water not changed

Hopefully this experiment will give me some good information about how soaking rather than stacking can help me get the results we're looking for. I don't want to stock up enough oak to season it for years, unless I am only going to use a couple a month. But I have hopes of getting them into other people's hands as well, so I need to figure out a more economical way of preparing the oak.

If any of you have seen any information that might be helpful on this question, I would be very grateful to have it pointed out.

[der wo]

I think you are on the right way. Before I had JD-wood for my sticks, I used penblank white oak, cut them in sticks and watered them (untoasted) a few weeks in a jar and of course changed the water regulary. The "first fill" of water was yellow-brown after a day and was smelling bad (sorry I didn't taste it), it got better and better with the time. JD-wood is already seasoned, so I don't have to do this anymore.

Perhaps you could accelerate the seasoning by using warm water?

[Badmotivator]

I just read that oak wood contains about 6-7% tannin. Wow. I think I'll try another little test to see how the dry weight of the wood decreases with soaking time. If I notice that it takes one week to reduce the dry weight to 93% of the original dry weight, and that a month of soaking only brings the wood down to 92%, then I can be pretty satisfied that a week is sufficient. After all, the goal probably isn't zero. But if I notice a more linear reduction in dry weight after soaking, then I'll have a different decision about what constitutes enough seasoning.

Again, any solid information about tannin reduction would be greatly appreciated.

[WIski]

Its the cycle of being wet then drying that works the tannins to the surface and then rinsed off by the next watering. Takes time and cycles.

[Badmotivator]

This oak was stacked outside through one wet Western Oregon winter, about four months. When I picked these sticks today, much of the lower and interior sticks were pretty much dry. Notice how tannins etc. from the upper layers just dried and stained lower layers.

My hunch tells me that soaking is a surer way to season the wood. Time will tell.

[Badmotivator]

Its the cycle of being wet then drying that works the tannins to the surface and then rinsed off by the next watering. Takes time and cycles.

This is an interesting idea! It deserves its own test. I have four samples each of two boards to test it on (eight samples). After thoroughly drying them and weighing them, I will compare the dry weight loss percentage after a month for four different strategies (two samples per group): soaking without water changes, soaking with water changes, soaking with changes and every other day is a drying day, soaking with changes and every fourth day is a drying day.

Thanks for the suggestion, WIski!

[WIski]

A wise guy said " The hardest ingredient to get in a good bottle of whiskey is patience".

Her is a aging barrel I'm working on. Totally motivated by the BadMo project.

[Badmotivator]

A wise guy said " The hardest ingredient to get in a good bottle of whiskey is patience".

Her is a aging barrel I'm working on. Totally motivated by the BadMo project.

Far out! I'm going to love seeing this when it's all put together!

What can you tell us about it? Capacity? What wood how when? SA/V ?

[Hillbilly Popstar]

I just read that oak wood contains about 6-7% tannin. Wow. I think I'll try another little test to see how the dry weight of the wood decreases with soaking time. If I notice that it takes one week to reduce the dry weight to 93% of the original dry weight, and that a month of soaking only brings the wood down to 92%, then I can be pretty satisfied that a week is sufficient. After all, the goal probably isn't zero. But if I notice a more linear reduction in dry weight after soaking, then I'll have a different decision about what constitutes enough seasoning.

Again, any solid information about tannin reduction would be greatly appreciated.

This would be very hard with respect to the varying degrees of moisture content in the wood.

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[Badmotivator]

This would be very hard with respect to the varying degrees of moisture content in the wood.

Right. Got a plan for that. The initial dry weight will only be recorded after it is unchanged for 24 hours in a dehydrator.

[Hillbilly Popstar]

Hmmm...

I wonder at which point you're reaching diminishing returns here?

From what little I know of coopering, it's as much and art as it is a craft. I don't think they ever took it to such a science and I don't think barrels were ever that consistent. This is why master distillers blend the barrels to create a consistent product and cask strength bottle can vary a lot from barrel to barrel.

I do applaud your venture for the spirit of education and discovery however.

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[Badmotivator]

I totally agree with everything you wrote. My goal is to make a plausible alternative to an actual barrel, uncertainties included. I know from experience with my first barrels that the tannins are far too high. I am sure that I need some seasoning, so I need to get a handle on how I can season the wood sufficiently as quickly as possible. That is the sole purpose of these experiments. I have no illusion that I will be able to control everything. Far from it. But I don't have access to seasoned white oak and I would rather not wait 12 months to make my next barrel.


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[Badmotivator]

Here's a peek at the process of seasoning used by Seguin Moreau, a California cooperage. For the hasty, skip to about halfway down the page, to a section called "Proactive maturation in the wood yard"

http://seguinmoreaunapa.com/resources/c ... g-process/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Damn, I gotta up my game.

[Kegg_jam]

Informative read.

How about using wood from a used half barrel sold as planters... Already seasoned.