LET'S DO SOME BARREL AGING

[Music] well welcome everybody I'm George this is barley and hops the channel that dares to unlock the mysteries a home distiller we will share with you anything and everything that we possibly can now today's video is very very good very important we have an announcement on our live stream our live stream will take place and I will keep folks notified will be next Friday the 13th of March at 6 p.m. Central time that is 7:00 Eastern yes and we'll have some definite good times there we'll do some questions and answers I've got some topics and most of that is from the subscriber population that we've been communicating with that I send out on the the channel notification and if you're a subscriber and you've hit the notification bell you should have been getting these these emails or these notifications requesting some of your topics and suggested topics and we're going to cover a bunch of those yes and we also got some great giveaways that are going on so please tune in next Friday 13 March 6:00 p.m. Central Time that's Texas time or 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time more and more and more to follow now we're going to get right into what we're here for besides that that is a very very important date for us it'll be our very first one and I must say that yep a little bit nervous about that because you can't edit those not that I do a lot of editing anyway but every once in a while it's necessary ok I'm filling the barrels and I needed to share this with you I've got one full already complete it but fill in barrels this should be a simple process I've had questions about it and they're valuable questions um I know it's not the act of just pouring it in filling the barrels that you need to know about because that's the simple thing I mean it's just sort of like pouring from one container into another but there are some aspects about the barrel itself that we do need to be aware of and that is if you've had it sent for quite a while like some of my barrels that have been empty they leak and they will leak perfuse Li so remember there there are no glue joints in here this is totally held together by these bands and it's the act of the wood swelling that seals those so you put them in the sink just like it is take the top off fill it with hot water put the top back on now that's gonna cause a slight vacuum on the inside where so it even if it's got cracks in it it won't leak a lot and leak a little bit and that will allow that water to sit in there and soak into the wood and the wood will spread it will start to soak up and it will seal all of those cracks now you'll know it's sealed when you take the top off and allow the atmosphere in and just let it sit there and you see no leaking then you know the barrel is sealed because remember that ethanol is a lot thinner and lighter than water so if water will leak through this ethanol will shoot through it like something through a goose you know I'm talking about so just make sure you get it nice and sealed now now before using it though you know once you get it sealed turn it over and pee it out and now if you haven't used it for a while let's do a real quick clean a simple mixture of warm water about halfway with some potassium metabisulfite and what's that that's a sterilizer for your yeast you know you've got that laying around probably why are we doing that in here it's just in the off chance that you've got a yeast that snuck in there somewhere and you've got some of those flavors and maybe a residual sugar molecule or something that they'll attach themselves to and start to populate and eat you so you don't that to happen that in citric acid you want to lower the pH dramatically so about a half an ounce of citric acid sloshed that around let it sit for a couple of minutes dump it out about three times you're ready okay and that's just cleaning now there's no need to clean a barrel each and every time if I take if I'm running my my shine this which has already been pre aged remember about three days with oak chips up and I'm running it through here and it starts to get low nowhere to refill it just refill it there's no need to empty it and clean it just keep refilling it and refilling it refill if it goes dry or you get the last out of it just refill it but I after several months of going through that process it might not be a bad idea to open up and clean it out now how long will a barrel last you ask yes a barrel will last for quite a while if you take care of it now um you know one of those you know those very thick barrels and I'm talking about the ones you know that are like almost an inch thick is huge casks those can last anywhere from eight to nine years with use you know continuous use before you have to start doing something to them these barrels which are more I don't want to call them novelty barrels and I'm just transferring this so it's easier to move but but they're on a smaller scale these are really great for having around this a three liter barrel these are a lot thinner so and with being a little bit thinner they are also a bit less expensive these ones anywhere into the forty to sixty dollar range and they will last you before you have to even consider retiring them from start to finish about six iterations before you've kind of depleted everything that it's got to offer you know from the char and then you can bust it open and reach are it clean it scrape it reach are it and go through it again but at that point I'd offer look make man make a clock out of it let make a paperweight get you another one they're not that expensive now if you're talking if you've got one there's really huge ones you know a 20 liter or 20 gallon barrel it's made from a Cooper up in the Northeast is gonna run you like 300 bucks and that's a pretty substantial investment so yeah you may want to open that up and reach our that and get as much use out of as you possibly can plus the thickness of the wood is such that there's a whole lot there so I'd say after about all five six runs through this thing I've got barrels sitting aside now that yeah I'm gonna make a couple of clocks out of them up put a clock face on them yes other people have different ideas every once in a while I toss one now this thing holds three liters and the way a barrel is the way barrels are measured is what they displace because that the barrel sizes were designed for shipping in a shipping space is based on displacement so these will displace three litres of water so that'll hold a little bit less than three litres of liquid which is still going to be a full half gallon plus some and we're just gonna get right into it here once I get this full we'll come back and talk a little more well we've now got I've got two of these barrels completely full I've got one more to work or I'll get to that with just a little while at this point they're the only thing left to do is just to let it sit for Oh 10 or 15 minutes you'll get a very clear indication on whether it is completely sealed or not and if it's not don't fret all you have to do is watch underneath the bottom of it and this one had a dropper to show off but I think that's because it's spilled across the top I'll let that finish but the one back here you'll knows I have no drops underneath it so I know that one's sealed completely this one I have pretty much confidence in but if it if it leaks that's okay you can get you a little bit of candle wax or your finger you know norm can Black's not hot or as liquid it's worth like it's like a paste so you have to dance with it back and forth to get it right and then just kind of rub it across wherever you feel the leak and that will usually arrest that leak so candle wax just not scented just the regular stuff okay and that will that will do that so I'll leave that set yeah I still see the no drop so I'll just leave that set for a few minutes you'll notice my fermenters back here they're just about ready so you know what that means yeah we're gonna do another run we may be able to do another run before the live stream yes on March the 13th at 6 p.m. Central 7 p.m. Eastern we'll be right here and answering your questions and covering topics that the community has already asked for ah I've got my mini brew 8 gallon fermenter and you'll notice that's still firming slowly it sits on the back in it's on a very very end I checked the gravity of sporting I'm at one point zero one five which brings me right down there close to the edge of success all right I've got the other two sitting next to it they're at the same level so we're waiting on that now a quick story I came in here probably five days ago and that's after I did the video and we did that that was George's favorite sugar rush and I came in the next morning and I smelled ass now I didn't smell two asses but I did smell a little bit of ass you know what's that tell me but you know yeah it was a little bit warm yeah my farmers were just a little bit too warm as a matter of fact it was one and that was the one that I put that new element that new heater in the calibration on that is evidently off so it was fermenting it too high of a temperature and it was starting to put off that odor so what I did was I reduced the temperature and allowed it to set and all of that was all of that disappeared and it's been a sweet aroma and a wonderful a wonderful thing ever since then so make sure you're paying attention to that if you get that off older it's like I said it's more than likely you're fermenting it too high of a temperature so let's address that as soon as we possibly can that will not ruin your batch oh by the way that if you leave it for too many days it's kind of hard to get that odor and smell out of the base product itself but if you arrest it early you can recover from that okay let's see we've got no leaks so yes that brings us to a close I've got to you've got one more left to do Oh notice there are some viewers that please don't be confused you don't have to I know I always say please subscribe share us with your friends once you've subscribed you're done you've subscribed yeah because if you go to the next video and hit subscribe that actually you unsubscribe yeah and then you go to the next video and subscribe then now you're resub scribed you follow me so your your dancing back and forth and it's not necessary subscribe once when you do subscribe the icon clicks up the notification it's a bell if you click that it'll ask you for your information your email address and things like that so we can notify you when a video comes out now please don't hold me responsible if youtube fails to notify you there are some issues with that evidently but it is a free service offered by YouTube and it's kind of hard to complain about a free service and oh by the way there's no one at YouTube you can talk to so work with me alright until next time happy distilling

Channel: Barley and Hops Brewing

Views: 37,444

Keywords: neutral spirit, sugar wash, barlerandhops, hops, home, Sugar (Ingredient), sugar mash, distilling, barley, corn sugar vs cane sugar, corn sugar mash recipe, making a wash for distilling, running a still for the first time, first distillation, using yeast, mooshine, whiskey, making rum, making vodka, bourbon, baby step bourbon, making bourbon at home

Id: AyC5KXhbsfA

Length: 12min 43sec (763 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020