new barrel leaking

when we 1st got our barrel, our vino compare (read: goombah-ray) had us do the following:

1) get a cheap kiddie pool or large size shallow vessel. stand barrel on end in same 2) pour & soak top of barrel with hot (we boiled) water once a day until the top held the water. 3) turn over barrel & repeat process feel free to drain pool as necesssary 4) set barrel horizontal in pool; pour 2-3 gal boiling h2o into barrel & seal w/ solid bung. roll around if practical. let steam swell staves. drain. 5) when filling, boil 2-3 gals wine & pour into barrel to finalize the deal; don't drain, then fill

this worked for us with 50 gal. barrel. maybe you need to use hotter water... hope this helps...

No!

Possibly.

It would have been better to do this at the outset, but one thing you could try is draining the barrel, setting it on end and tightening the hoops, starting with the bilge (largest) hoops and working your way toward the head. Reposition the hoop nails so the hoops don't slip back, and then turn the barrel on its other head and repeat the process - again starting at the bilge.

Use a chunk of steel bar stock and a small sledge to drive the hoops, working your way around the barrel so as to drive them down evenly.

Fill the barrel with water and see if that does the trick. If not, I'd return the barrel as defective. My guess is that it sat around too long empty and dry after it was made.

Tom S

Tom, We found my grandfathers 'hoop-tool'; it's a piece of rod stock bent with a parallel offset and then flatened on 4 sides on one end. I put it to good use on my barrel. It's my new favorite tool; it;'s got to be close to a hundred years old if it was made on this side. It really works well. (I'm sure it's homemade, he was a miner when he came over here.)

Joe

That's quite excessive leakage, Dan.

The suggestion from TomS will stop pretty much any leak that comes from between the staves, but if it's leaking through the stave, a little more aggressive action is required. Wedging pieces of wood into the leak is a general fix. Mind you, this only works for "through the stave" leaks.

With all that said, I'd call the person who you bought it from. A well coopered barrel will not leak at all. For point of reference, I fill my barrels with wine without *any* presoaking, and have never seen anything more than a slight ooze that stops within a day.

clyde

True enough, Clyde - but this is a really small barrel, and I'd guess it's not a recently coopered one. It probably sat drying out in a homebrew shop for quite awhile as sticker-shocked potential buyers walked by it on the way to the StaVin beans. :^/

Tom S

Thanks for the compliment, Gene, but I was only _slightly_ kidding. Even in

60 gallon sizes, new French barrels are getting close to $15/gallon. Smaller sizes are, as they always have been, increasingly more $$$/gallon than 60s the smaller you go.

Lots of wineries are either switching to Hungarian, Oregonian or other American barrels. Others are very quietly moving toward so called "barrel replacement" systems or foregoing barrels entirely in favor of oak chips and the like.

Tom S

Yeah, this barrel was the floor model and had the plastic wrap partially removed and yes it was expensive, so probably sat there for a long time.

The barrel eventually did stop leaking and I have my wine in it. I've got a second run made with kit juice and my skins in the barrel now. The grape wine is aging in a carbouy and when the second is well oaked, I can put the grape wine in for a longer period.

I'll use this barrel for a while and when I'm ready for another one I'll make sure to get a new cooperage.

My hobby is getting out of control but my wine is getting a lot better.

Dan

Tom S wrote:

Dan, I have a 5 gallon American oak that was unwrapped similar to yours, it took forever to swell. It goes through phases where I see a leak, tighten the hoops, etc; keep an eye on it. It was untoasted so it's just not right for wine. I took it apart and toasted it myself which helped.

Those first batches can get over-oaked very quickly, it's nothing like beans or chips. I grossly over oaked a few batches initially but they came back with time and a bit of work.

Taste it regularly. The next barrel I get will either be PA made or Hungarian; we have a cooperage within 100 miles and they make real wine barrels, not like mine.

Joe

You can use the wedges to stop a leak between the staves by putting the wedge in to the grain of the stave next to the leak. This will expand the stave joint and stop the leak. You can buy wedges and cones to stop leaks

Kentucky Barrels