O'so Collaboration

Over the weekend I went up to start the preparation work for what will become a collaborative O'so/Funk Factory lambic project.

(click picture to visit the O'so website)

I arrived Friday evening to 14, French Oak, used wine barrels delivered and waiting for me.

While I had the barrels on end, I decided to quick apply a stencil I made up for them.  Its a simplified version of the FF logo, and creates 4 spaces to record the fill date.  With that done, it was time to line up the barrels and fill them with water.

Soaking the barrel overnight was done for two reasons.  First, it will swell the barrel ensuring there are no leaks when it comes time to fill it with lambic wort.  Secondly, it will extract some of the wine flavor from the barrel.  In brewing lambic, you want as neutral of a barrel as possible.  When I arrived to the very last barrel and filled it up, I noticed it wasn't holding water.  On the barrel head opposite to me, it was gushing out water along the bottom croze.  I left the hose valve 1/3 of the way open, and it was losing water faster than the hose filled it.  Unfortunately, I think that barrel will need to be replaced even though it did swell up overnight.  I just don't have any confidence in a barrel that struggles that much to hold water that it will limit O2 permeation sufficiently.

The next morning I had to empty the barrels.  Moving around a 60 gallon filled barrel is no easy task, and in fact took me most the morning to empty all 14 barrels.  It wasn't until nearly noon that I started steaming the barrels.

This is the same steamer I used before.  Behind the barrel in the picture being steamed are 4 that I had already completed.  You can see the bung is in and seals the barrel.  As the steam cools down, it creates a vacuum that will extract more wine from the wood.  Once I finished with all the barrels, I gave them a final hot water rinse and sealed them again.  The air inside was hot from the water, so they will be vacuum sealed until the day we go to fill them with wort.

Steam Cleaning a Barrel (part 3)

Third time around.  I've finally got a functioning and effective barrel steam cleaner.  My previous attempt was somewhat amateur and had it's issues.  Here is a more professional steamer equipped with a pressure gauge, control valve, diffuser and all the right fittings (video below, another video here).  For a truly professional steamer, check out Cantillon's barrel cleaner!

All the parts were found at a local hardware store, and cost ~$50.  The little nipple valve on the top of the pressure cooker was removed and replaced with an adapter to 1/2" pipe.  From there I attached a pressure gauge and a shut off valve.  I know that the pressure cooker is regularly used at up to 15 psi, but am unsure of what its actually maximum is.  So, to be safe, I will maintain pressure of no more than 15 psi.  At the end of this section is a connection to 1/2" hose, which enables me to attach a diffuser.  The diffuser is simply a pipe with some small holes drilled into it for the purpose of evenly releasing the steam throughout the barrel's interior.

The goal of steaming the barrel is to kill the bugs (yeast and bacteria) living inside the wood.  Its unlikely that one would be able to kill ALL the bugs, but steaming them should kill the vast majority.  What I'm trying to do here is make an environment in which the desired concoction of bugs can be added and will be able to take over.

Given that this is my first time using this barrel, I first needed to soak it with hot water to extract the wine flavor from the wood.  I did this by turning my water heater up to the highest heat.  Once heated I connected a hose to my basement wash basin and turned on the hot water.  As you can see from the following picture, the water entered at ~170 degrees.

Obviously the water heater couldn't keep up and, once the barrel was full, the final temperature of the water in the barrel was 150 degrees.  I let that soak for about 14 hours (at which time the water was still 120 degrees), and then pumped the water out.  The water that came out looked nearly clear, but had a hit of pink to it.

The steaming process on the other hand penetrates deeper into the wood and pushes out the wine.  After I finished steaming there was a puddle of dark liquid at the bottom of the barrel.  My final step in cleaning was to give it a final rinse by completely filling and emptying the barrel.

The next step will be to "prime" the barrel...

Steam Cleaning a Barrel (part 2)

Following up from my previous post, I recently bought a digital probe thermometer and a better hose and tried another test round of steaming.  What I wanted to see this time was how well the braided hose would hold up to the heat and at what temperature was the steam coming out of the hose.  So, here's the setup again:

The hose goes straight from the pressure cooker to the barrel.  With the thermometer probe inside, I stuffed a glove into the bung hole and waited for the temperature to go up. Steam was already going pretty well, and initial reading were around 180°F.

As the pressure in the cooker goes up, the temperature of the steam rises (see table).  Water, under no pressure, boils at 212°F, but at 15 PSI it will boil at ~250°F.  The hotter the steam is that blows into the barrel, the more bacteria/yeast it will kill.  As Vinnie mentioned, you want only the strongest strains to survive.






So, I let the pressure build up and checked the temperature again, and I had hit 201°F!





I consider this a huge success.  Without a way to control pressure, to hit and stay at those higher temps, being able to bring the barrel temperature to ~200°F is very good.  However this is just a local temperature.  Both the hose and the thermometer probe are at the bottom of the barrel.

The next step is to build two parts.  First, I need to build a way to control the pressure.  Second, I need to build a diffuser.  Instead of just sticking the end of a hose into the barrel, a diffuser will allow me to disperse that hot steam evenly.  And then controlling the pressure should allow me to raise the temperature of that steam much higher.  (see that done here)