The Badmotivator Bain-Marie and Oak Barrel

[Badmotivator]

badmotivator, perhaps you never brought experimenting with sticks to a quality, which would be fair to compare it with your barrels?

I'm sure that you are right. I believe that sticks can make a fine drink. If my barrel idea was never born, I'm sure that I would have chased down more satisfactory methods of aging in glass such as you have, and I would certainly have achieved much better results than my early attempts. I don't think that I will ever be able to make a claim about the relative success of these barrels vs. the best non-barrel methods, because I just don't want to do the controlled experiment that would be required. Anyway, if that experiment were performed by somebody more neutral than me it would have a lot more power.

Oh, you added red text to my post. I am colorblind, so I can only see that if I look very carefully. In answer to the red stuff: I think I added a medium-toasted no-char spiral to 3 L of UJSSM and left it for a little more than a year in a sealed glass jar. I did not allow any respiration. After that time, my impression was that the spirit had only gained oak flavor but had not really transformed any of the unpleasant new-spirit character. I now have an understanding about why, and many good ideas about how that could be fixed, including your ideas.

[Pikey]

.............Oh, you added red text to my post. I am colorblind, so I can only see that if I look very carefully. ......

No axe to grind on this thread, but I have the same issue with "Red" text - Jes on the "you tube thread" changed the colour of his interjections to dark blue, at my request and I find that much more obvious and much easier to read. It woud be helpful to those of us who have this problem, if that would become a standard colour for this process

[der wo]

Yes. Perhaps I should add, that I don't think the barrels will produce a worse result than sticks. But I am not sure if it is worth the effort. Perhaps you remember, I posted this already earlier in this thread.
I understand, that now since you have worked it out, the tools the processes and everything, you will not go back to sticks. For me, I know I will have to stop the hobby in late summer for a while, and I don't want to start something new like this now.

Ok. I will use dark blue in future.
Edit: Oh, I see, blue looks much less agressive. Perhaps I get much nicer replies in future.

[The Baker]

Fantastic, Bad.
I had the idea the pots were conical (a bit wider at the top) but it looks as though they are truly cylindrical.
Is that right? It is a bit hard to tell from pictures; I have been searching the interweb for conical ones without success.
In fact there are not a lot of cylindrical ones...
Thanks,
Geoff

[Badmotivator]

Fantastic, Bad.
I had the idea the pots were conical (a bit wider at the top) but it looks as though they are truly cylindrical.
Is that right? It is a bit hard to tell from pictures; I have been searching the interweb for conical ones without success.
In fact there are not a lot of cylindrical ones...
Thanks,
Geoff

All of the inexpensive "Bain Marie Inserts" that I have bought have been slightly conical. If I remember correctly the sides are only about 1.5 degrees off of vertical, which might be hard to see in a product photo. I tried searching for a seller in Australia that carries them and failed. Sorry.

[der wo]

I think he can use any stainless steel pot he finds. All of them are slightly conical. They wouldn't get the press out of the pot if it wasn't conical.

[The Baker]

Thanks Bad and der wo.
Geoff

P. S. I guess they are slightly conical so they will stack, too. G.

[hausflicker]

I joined a while ago at the start of a new still build, but have been at a bit of a stand still (money, man!) and haven't had much to share and ended up lurking, but yesterday I bottled some of my first spirit run that I'd put into a homemade version of BadMo's barrels and thought I'd jump in and share some promising results.

Like I said, it was my first spirit run, a bourbon mash, and it was far from perfect. But I put some of it in a BadMo barrel, a 4 qt bain marie that I cut down to hold just over 2 liters (I did some math to precisely match the SA/V ratio of 53 gal barrels, but it was so long ago I don't remember how it worked out), put some of it on toasted and charred oak cubes, and kept some white.

Unfortunately, I had some weeping problems around the stainless spicket that got pretty bad in the 90+ degree heat we've had recently, so I called it after 9 months. But even after such a short period of time, the difference between the BadMo Barrel aged stuff and the cubed age stuff is stark. "Oaked," vs "aged" has real meaning here. The cube infused spirit was definitely oaky, with sweet caramel and vanilla additions, but it still tasted like my poorly cut white dog underneath it all, while the bain marie aged spirit was cleaner, smoother, and more unified. I think it was on the way to being something good.

I think you're definitely onto something BadMotivator, I look forward to seeing more on this experiment.

[vg30e]

That is an awesome build. Badmo, is it possible to take the cover off and put it back on? or does it just swell and become permanent? Reason being, you can easily put different flavor wood chunks inside the Bain-Marie as well and get a really complex flavor profile.

[Badmotivator]

I suppose you could try it. You would need to rig up a way to pull with crazy force on the head. This could be accomplished several different ways: 1) screw-eyes installed in the outer face, used to pull out the head, 2) a T-shaped metal piece inserted through one of the holes, used to pull out the head, or 3) heating the nearly-empty barrel with some water inside, with the tap and the bung closed, to create enough pressure to cause the head to push itself out.

But I ain't gonna do any of that. Any way you do it sounds like a nightmare to me. Barrel heads may be used once or twice, and then I will replace them with new heads.

[yakattack]

So how are you planning to remove the old heads to install new ones when you do? Just curious to that side of it if you don't mind me asking.

[Oldvine Zin]

So how are you planning to remove the old heads to install new ones when you do? Just curious to that side of it if you don't mind me asking.

I think that Bad Mo just described three ways to do so - I'm sure that there are other ways

OVZ

[Badmotivator]

So how are you planning to remove the old heads to install new ones when you do? Just curious to that side of it if you don't mind me asking.

I have done it many times when a head has failed to seal up and needed to be re-headed. It's a mess and it's loud. I remove the bung and the tap and then dig at it with a hand jigsaw. At some point I can bash and break all of the pieces of the head out of the barrel. It's no fun, but it only takes a minute, and no care at all.

[WIski]

I made a bung puller from a 3 pound car body dent puller. I had mangled many bungs while prying them out before trying this. I don't know if this would work as good on the BadMo heads because of the larger size but it may be worth a go.

[Badmotivator]

Here's a fun little head-scratcher! I harvested some bourbon some months back from barrel No. 2. I thought I might reuse the barrel for some rum, and set it aside in the shop and kind of forgot about it. When I finally looked at it again, the head had dried out enough to pull cleanly away from the can. But look how it warped!

[HDNB]

i've built a lot of decks and wood always warps opposite to - if the grain goes like this )) it warps like (

if you get the piece out the middle that looks like )o( , well shit, it just splits.

[OtisT]

i've built a lot of decks and wood always warps opposite to - if the grain goes like this )) it warps like (

if you get the piece out the middle that looks like )o( , well shit, it just splits.

Interesting observation. I have seen as well recently. I just did a lot of toasting experiments with oak sticks 2cm x 2cm x 15 cm and long story short, every piece of oak I toasted that split while toasting had the )0( grain. And also, the split was across the grain.

[Oldvine Zin]

I just emptied my Bad Mo Barrel of Booners corn after 8 months, smells and tastes nice. Maybe that's why the angels took so much

OVZ

[Badmotivator]

I just emptied my Bad Mo Barrel of Booners corn after 8 months, smells and tastes nice. Maybe that's why the angels took so much
OVZ

Cool, OVZ. I'm glad you're happy with the flavor. Did you harvest early because of the loss rate?

[Badmotivator]

Here's a thing I didn't know could happen: I got myself a shop press so I could press in the heads without struggling with a bunch of clamps or mallet work. It works very well; it's stronger, faster, and gives me better control. But...

Damn. It might be that this bucket had a defect (others in the same group are fine) or I pressed it in with unusual force. Anyway I'm not sure how I'm going to prevent this happening again.

[Badmotivator]

Addendum:
What really sucks is that this didn't happen when I was pressing the head in, it didn't happen during the swell test, it didn't happen when it sat dry for a week, it happened spontaneously in the middle of the night after I marked it and affixed the brass badge. Weird.

[Oldvine Zin]

Cool, OVZ. I'm glad you're happy with the flavor. Did you harvest early because of the loss rate?

Yea that was one part of the decision to harvest, the other was that I had just made a batch of worcestershire sauce and wanted to age it on oak. So far the head sealed up nicely, maybe the thicker than bourbon consistency and all the sugars in the sauce sealed the joints??
I hope that you are not too offended by my use of one of your beautiful creations to age something other than alcohol. Rest assured that I take as much pride in my sauces as I do with my beverages.

Sucks about the metal fatigue on your latest experiment, hopefully it was just a faulty tub to begin with.

OVZ

[Badmotivator]

Worcestershire sauce? Awesome! I'm the furthest thing from offended! I hope the barrel brings good results.

[Skipper1953]

I've got a gallon of C.O.B. aging in a gallon size BadMo Barrel and 5 quarts of home made malt vinegar in a 6 quart Badmo. About 5 weeks now. They both went in the same day.

[Oldvine Zin]

Worcestershire sauce? Awesome! I'm the furthest thing from offended! I hope the barrel brings good results.

If it turns out good there will be a jar with your name on it.

OVZ

[Oldvine Zin]

sipping some booners casual corn from that bad mo barrel

OVZ

[rubber duck]

I'm sipping on some rum I aged in mine. It's kinda in between a 10 and 15 gallon barrel as far as taste and abv loss. I haven't actually tested the abv but I know from the bead and taste.

This is a pretty good product for the hobby distiller or a micro distiller that needs to do some r and d. It's not exactly like a barrel but it's so close, and it just works really well for small batches.


Bottom line is I've got some more testing to do but I'm going to buy some more because this idea and this product works.

[rubber duck]

Could you do some custom oak? Like it would be a pain in the ass but but I would pay you for it.

[Mikey-moo]

Are these for sale now then? Where can we buy them from please...

[Badmotivator]

Could you do some custom oak? Like it would be a pain in the ass but but I would pay you for it.

What do you have in mind?