Whether you’re looking for wooden barrels to age your best wine or whiskey, to add an interesting flavor to your beer, or to use as a decorative accent in your home or garden, you’ve come to the right place!
At Wooden Barrel Warehouse we have the best wooden barrels for sale. Most are oak (American White Oak if you want to get technical), some are charred (or ‘toasted’), and all of them are made to the highest quality and standards.
Things to Consider When Looking at Wooden Barrels For Sale
The most important thing to consider when looking at wooden barrels for sale is what are you going to use it for? Finding a wooden barrel that is going to be used to age wine, beer, or whiskey is quite a different task than looking for one that you’ll be transforming into garden or patio furniture, or using as a rain barrel.
Aging Wine, Beer, and Spirits
If you’re looking for a vessel to age wine, beer, and spirits then you should be looking for an oak barrel that is slightly charred inside. This charring, or toasting as it’s also called, intensifies the ‘woodiness’ of the oak and imparts a stronger flavor and aroma to the liquid inside. You can control the amount of flavor and aroma by controlling the amount of time that the wine or spirit is in the barrel.
If, however, you are looking to use a wooden barrel to dispense wine or whiskey then be sure to look for a smaller barrel (2-5 L/ 0.5-1.3 G) that has a stand and a spigot for easy dispensing. You want it to be large enough to hold a decent amount of spirit but not so large that you never get through it to try the next batch!
Wooden Barrel Projects
Wooden barrels can also be used for any number of projects around your house and home. They can be transformed into planters and plant stands, bases for tables, coolers for beer, television stands, and water barrels; you imagination is the only limit!
When looking for wooden barrels for projects you’ll want to find barrels that are the right size for your idea. Here’s a handy chart that calculates the average dimensions of a barrel based on it’s volume (remember, this is only a rough guide):
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Multiple Uses For Wine Barrels For Sale
Used wine barrels for sale have a unique property that makes them ideal for all sorts of purposes. Not only are they often charred, or toasted, inside but they have also already been used to age and flavor wine. This means that they have been impregnated with the flavor of some of the best wines in the world. You can take advantage of this by using wine barrels to add a unique flavor to wines and spirits.
Wine barrels are often the best barrels to use for decorative purposes. Whether using an intact barrel to enhance the decor of your home or splitting it in half to use as flower planters in your garden, wine barrels have developed a lovely patina from the wine they once held that makes for a beautiful accent to your finished product.
Important Considerations of Oak Barrels For Sale
The two most important considerations of oak barrels for sale are the type of oak used and the amount of charring, or toasting, on the inside.
French, Hungarian, and American oak are all used to create oak barrels. How do you know which one is the best one for you? French oak tends to be the most expensive, but it is also considered to be the best quality and the only wood that is suitable for aging wine. Hungarian oak has started to become more popular in the last few years due to the quality of the coopers (barrel-makers) in Hungary and for it’s lower cost when compared to French oak. American oak is the most available wood and is usually perfectly suitable for all home-aging projects. It imparts a warm, vanilla, flavor to wines and spirits.
There is no argument that the toasting of barrels makes for a more delicious and aromatic final product. Most oak barrels come with a medium level of toasting that is best for medium term aging projects. The key to using charred barrels, though, isn’t the amount of charring but the ratio of wood surface area to the liquid inside. You want to choose an oak barrel that is the right size for the amount of spirit you plan on aging; too small and not enough of the spirit will come into contact with the wood; too big and the spirit may be overpowered by the wood. Intermittent tasting is the best way to determine if the spirit is ready or not.
Choosing Whiskey Barrels For Sale
Most whiskey barrels for sale are much smaller than wine barrels or other wooden barrels. This is because they are primarily used as dispensers at the same time as they are aging the spirit. Most people aging spirits in their home don’t have need for 20 liters of capacity so most whiskey barrels are in the 1-5 liter range. That’s not to say that you couldn’t find a larger barrel if that’s what you’re looking for but mostly you’ll be choosing from the smaller size range.
Fortunately even these smaller whiskey barrels still come with the charring, or toasting, option so you can still take advantage of the rich flavoring that comes from charred oak in a more convenient size.
As an added feature, many whiskey barrel vendors also offer personalization of their barrels. This means you can add your initials, or name, to the barrel making it a great feature for your home bar or as a gift for a special occasion.