Priming the Barrel

So, here’s what I know about the barrel: you put stuff in it, you wait, you drink. Now, that’s all well and good, but, I do need to know little more than that in order to make something that tastes good. It turns out, there is also some prep work that needs to be done before we can even start. First things first, because this is an authentic oak barrel – possibly made by hand – the holes for the spigot and bunghole are drilled after the barrel is formed, and I believe the ends of the barrel are forced into place after these states have been shaped. This causes they are to be debris inside the barrel. Also because the what is charred there is sediment and carbon that needs to get out of there.

The first thing do is to pick the barrel up and shake it, trying to get as many of the large pieces out as possible. This is a little difficult as the pieces tend to be larger than the hole and it’s tough to see inside. After a few days, an attempt with tweezers, and a flashlight, and vigorous shaking, I gave up trying to get the last few pieces out and moved on to rinsing out the barrel in order to clean out the loose char and sediment from inside. In doing so, I also discovered that this is, in fact, the best way to remove the chunks of wood that are left inside the barrel the barrel making process.

Once the water runs clear, we have to make the barrel watertight. A misconception I was had about wooden barrels was that they were watertight. I mean, they’re a very common storage vessel for various liquids, and they don’t seem to leak. What didn’t occur to me is that a real barrel isn’t sealed. There is no glue between the staves. It’s not like they melt wax and seal all the cracks. The staves are just pieces of wood that are bent into shape and held in place by the metal rings. The reason barrels don’t leak, is because the wood soaked in water, and has swelled. The swelling creates a natural seal.

Doing this at home is actually pretty simple. All we do is insert the spigot, make sure it’s in tightly and closed, then fill the barrel of the way with water. Insert the stopper into the bunghole (no giggling), set the barrel on its stand, and place the whole thing in a bucket of some sort to catch the water that is going to leak out. The bucket is important, because water will sneak out. I quickly learned that it’s best to the funnel for this, because the bunghole (no giggling) isn’t all that large, and it’s more difficult to see the leaks when the rest of the barrel is wet. After about a day, took the bucket in the barrel to see how much, if any, water has leaked out, and if it is still leaking.

It probably will have leaked, and depending on where the leak is the water level was dropped to that point. I still wasn’t comfortable with the cleanness of the inside of the barrel, so I dumped out the rest the water, and refilled it, but it is okay to simply top the barrel off. After a few days, the wood should have swelled and the leaks should have stopped. At this point, we dump out the water, and we’re ready to fill it with booze!

Up next: we fill it with booze!