I just bought a reconditioned 30 gallon barrel today. I looks and smells great. It smells like french oak.
I seem to be having some problems with reductive ferments this year. So far, I have been able to control by racking off gross lees a day or two after pressing and using a lot of areation on racking. I would like to wait several months before transferring wine from glass carboys to barrel so hopefully I can rack the carboys as necessary and put relatively clean wine in the new barrel.
I would appreciate suggestions on what to do with the barrel until I fill it. I was thinking of filling with water to expand and then draining and storing dry and burn a sulphur disk each month until I am ready to fill it with wine at which time I would again fill with water to expand and drain the water and then fill it with wine. Anyone else have any other recommendations?