Sherry Barrel for Brewing

[briancope]

Hi,

I recently bought a nice Cadoza sherry barrel with the best intentions of pouring my homebrew bitter in and allow it to perform the secondary fermentation and ultimate ageing process.

The barrel is wood (there is no glass lining) and watertight and I have filled it with water for three days with no leaks.

There is a genuine sherry sludge at the bottom of the barrel which smells OK but the previous owner does not know anything about the barrels recent history.

Do you think it is safe to mature and drink my beer from this vessel?

Any comments would be most welcome.

Regards,

Brian

 

[Wolverine]

how would you clean / sanitise the barrel? I would love to try this but I wouldn't know where to start an the idea of putting a good beer into a dirty old barrel just seems like madness . Keep us posted on what you come up with.
I have got some bourbon barrel chunks I want to use to mature a beer with and I think I'm going to soak them in more bourbon to try and sanitise them a bit before I add them.
Don't know if you coukd do that with sherry though at its not a spirit.
I don't know though
Good luck

 

[briancope]

Thanks Wolverine,

I totally agree that sanitising was probably impossible and/or insane, hence the question.

As you may have noticed, I am totally new to home brew beer but I wanted to put the finished product in an authentic looking dispenser.

I have since bought a pair of Stowells glass lined 10 litre barrels that I can sterilise properly.

I have my very first brew on the go, a John Bull bitter kit that I have made it to half recipe at 10 litres and I used only spray malt for sugar. I have frozen the other half of the malt extract for later use.

I will go light on the second fermentation sugar in case the sherry barrel decides to let go.

Next on the agenda is an Old Speckled Hen recipe using grain and hops and all the other good stuff tht you put in the boil.

Regards,

Brian

 

[screamlead]

The CJJ Berry book has a section on cleaning out and sanitising barrels, but dont think he was going to store beer in them?
Maybe worth a try though??

 

[Aleman]

I suppose if you want to go to the trouble of the traditional approach serving beer from 'the wood'

Except that beer barrels were lined with brewers pitch, which kept the beer away from the wood . . . and being smoother meant that it could be sanitised properly (usually by burning a sulphur candle inside :shock:)

 

[BarnsleyBrewer]

Save on the hastle, buy a corny keg off Norm. :thumb:

BB

 

[pritchardbrown]

Save on the hastle, buy a corny keg off Norm. :thumb:

BB

Is Norm still around? I could not find anything under the list of members and had tried to email him at the weekend through his eBay account but no reply as yet (I am looking for a double corny keg set up).

 

[WelshPaul]

You could always use it to try to make a lambic beer! It would be a challenge but could yield some interesting results, especially as lambic-making season is just beginning.