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Sander Marechal
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 Posted: Sat 17 Sep, 2011 1:56 am Post subject: How to get wine out of medieval barrels? |
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Hi. On my vacation in France I bought a couple of beautiful new oak barrels for our reenactment group to store our drinks in. Prices in France are a lot lower than in The Netherlands because many folk still use oak barrels there for wine, calvados and other liquors. The barrels came with a big filling hole in the side but there are no holes yet in the front where a tap would go. I bought a couple of wooden taps along with the barrels, but before I start drilling I would like to know if such taps were actually used in medieval times.
I have been looking at the various indexes on larsdatter.com but I have trouble digging up images. I have been looking at the cooper, tavern and beer brewing sections. I found a couple of images showing barrels with holes and taps on the front, but just a few. It looks like (to me) that taps were used in the 15th-16th century, but our group portays the 13th century.
Does anyone have any idea how 13th century folk got the wine out of the barrels and into the jugs?
Things I found so far:
Cooper (1518). Looks like a hole in the top.
Guy pouring wine (16th century). Looks like some kind of tap.
Beer brewer (16th century). Holes where taps could go.
Tavern scene (13th century). Looks like a tap maybe? It's hard to see. I'd love a bigger image.
Wine (15th century). Looks like holes with corks, and maybe a tap of some sort in the back? Very hard to see in detail.
Innkeeper (15th century). Most definitely a tap, but maybe copper of something instead of wood.
Thanks in advance for any help! I'd love to have some more sources before I start drilling holes in my 150 euro oak barrels.
The Knights Hospitaller: http://www.hospitaalridders.nl
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Sander Marechal
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Sat 17 Sep, 2011 6:15 am Post subject: |
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Lay underneath with mouth open and get friend to hit barrel with axe.
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Kel Rekuta
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| Posted: Sat 17 Sep, 2011 7:18 am Post subject: |
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Sander,
You have fermentation and storage barrels. It would be normal to rack the contents, either by tube or by rolling it sideways on the stillion to decant to another vessel. Until the barrel was no longer useful for aging, having had too many batches through it, one wouldn't tap the face. Its very difficult to bung the hole effectively. Keeping one bung upward on the rack means the other is under load and will leak. Admittedly this is from observation in modern vintners and breweries as well as my own experience with mead aging. Having a smaller vessel to draw off a short term supply for serving seems to be more practical.
Find a book on cellaring, preferably for the wine industry. Ale cellarmen handle the finished product a little differently.
K
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Sander Marechal
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| Posted: Sat 17 Sep, 2011 7:40 am Post subject: |
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@Kel: Thanks for the tips.
| Kel Rekuta wrote: | | Having a smaller vessel to draw off a short term supply for serving seems to be more practical. |
I have a 10 liter barrel and a 30 liter barrel. But how would I draw off a key or something through the top bung hole without too much spillage? I would tapping the face and leaking not be a problem for these small barrels?
@Dan: I'd love to, but I think our group treasurer wouldn't like it very much :-)
The Knights Hospitaller: http://www.hospitaalridders.nl
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Eric W. Norenberg
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| Posted: Sat 17 Sep, 2011 9:05 am Post subject: |
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Sander,
I've seen images from early beer making wherein the big filler plug was bored for a smaller tap, probably a second plug swapped in after fermentation. I don't know what time period that belonged to, or if the drawings were accurate. Also, beer and ale are a bit different from wine, both in making and enjoying!
Is your group planning to actually vint or are they for storage and serving only?
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Jared Smith
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| Posted: Sat 17 Sep, 2011 10:01 am Post subject: |
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You can buy valves that fit the cork or bung hole from some home brew suppliers.
You will probably end up with very strong "oak" tasting beverage for a while. The ratio of surface area of wood / volume of beverage changes dramatically as you vary from small barrels to larger (standard 44 gallon) barrels. Miniature barrels as sold through home brewing type suppliers tend to have excessive intensity of wood flavor. It sounds like you got small ones. I would would start off with a couple of batches of water, rinsed, and replaced on a week or two interval to dilute the wood flavor. I know one local brewer with a 5 gallon oak " mini barrel" who used a bottle of whiskey the first couple of rinses to help purge the wood intensity out.
If these are traditional barrels, once you get them wet, you need to keep them wet or they will loosen up and leak. Water is fine for preserving the fit of the slats as well as for diluting the intensity of wood flavor while breaking them in.
A misericord in a choir stall, circa 1532 http://www.bildindex.de/bilder/be00098f03a.jpg
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Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence!
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Kel Rekuta
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| Posted: Sun 18 Sep, 2011 9:04 am Post subject: |
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| Sander Marechal wrote: | @Kel: Thanks for the tips.
| Kel Rekuta wrote: | | Having a smaller vessel to draw off a short term supply for serving seems to be more practical. |
I have a 10 liter barrel and a 30 liter barrel. But how would I draw off a key or something through the top bung hole without too much spillage? I would tapping the face and leaking not be a problem for these small barrels?
@Dan: I'd love to, but I think our group treasurer wouldn't like it very much :-) |
Liquids were transferred from larger vessels to smaller ones by troughs or what we would recognize as gutters and down spouts. Siphoning in the modern sense demands quality hoses that simply weren't available.
Tapping the face of a keg or the side requires a tapered hole predrilled and bunged with soft wood. The tap, as shown above is driven in with a mallet, pushing the bung into the keg. Great to dispense but how to move the thing around without dead lifting it? Your 30L barrel would be manageable by two stout lads but the larger vessels normally used in the wine and ale trade are impossible to dead lift without a crane or pulley set up. Barrels roll, that's why they didn't use boxes for liquid storage. The tap was driven only once the keg was set up to dispense.
Leaving the historical for the practical. Keep your kegs wet with clean water, use a vintners' sanitizer occasionally. Remove the tap and siphon your wine in. Sanitize the tap and seat it tightly again. Enjoy. 30L of wine is a good banquet volume. Not too expensive if you are making it yourself.
@Jared
As to the oakiness of a new barrel... French oak isn't anywhere near as nasty as American oak kegs. A couple changes of boiling water left to rest a day or two will be sufficient. American white oak is far more tannic and needs significantly more treatment. That's one of the reasons top wineries in N.America make great noise about aging in French oak. Its just better than American white oak and about three time the price per vessel.
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Jared Smith
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| Posted: Sun 18 Sep, 2011 11:23 am Post subject: |
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| Kel Rekuta wrote: |
@Jared
As to the oakiness of a new barrel... French oak isn't anywhere near as nasty as American oak kegs. A couple changes of boiling water left to rest a day or two will be sufficient. American white oak is far more tannic and needs significantly more treatment. That's one of the reasons top wineries in N.America make great noise about aging in French oak. Its just better than American white oak and about three time the price per vessel. |
I am somewhat familiar with this issue, but not claiming to be an expert. I also use the materials as a home brewer of ales and wines. The traditional "French" part of "french oak" is largely in the toasting or charring of the slats over a fire. This drives off a lot of the volatiles and tannins. A lot of the French white oak forests were depleted long ago, according to an article I read a year or so ago. I am not sure of the accuracy of the article that I read on it, but have heard that roughly 90% of oak used in their industry is now imported, quite a lot of it from America (actually harvested from my general mid-West area), some from Hungary and other places. There is nothing chemically unique about their native wood that I am aware of. (American Chardonay makers were notorious for using kiln dried oak in the 80's and making excessively intense oak flavored wines. They have since learned to properly season/air dry age and toast the oak.)
Anyhow, when buying an oak cask, it is advisable to find out if the slats have been properly charred (turned golden to medium brown color depending upon the degree of toasting) over a fire or heat. This reduces the excessive tannins that American wine makers erred in leaving in their oak a couple of decades ago. The charring process is not too hard to learn to do. I char my own white oak chips (for putting into glass fermentors) on a layer of aluminum foil using the grill at around 450 to 500 F temperature. I have used my native charred oak chips and imported "French Oak" chips, and really can't tell any difference in the flavor that it generates for aged ales and wines.
http://www.enologyinternational.com/americanv...choak.html
Absence of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence!
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Sander Marechal
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| Posted: Mon 19 Sep, 2011 10:47 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for all the advice!
| Eric W. Norenberg wrote: | | Is your group planning to actually vint or are they for storage and serving only? |
The 30 liter barrel will probably be used just for storage and serving. Most likely water. With 18 people running around, half of them in armour, we use a lot of water. I want to expand our groups storage so that we only need to get water once a day.
I'm not sure yet about the 10 liter barrel. It might go to out group and be used for serving beer, wine or mead. But I am also inclined to keep it myself and use it for my own mead. My girlfriend's uncle is a beekeeper so I can get good quality honey at low prices. And I love mead 
| Jared Smith wrote: | | If these are traditional barrels, once you get them wet, you need to keep them wet or they will loosen up and leak. Water is fine for preserving the fit of the slats as well as for diluting the intensity of wood flavor while breaking them in. |
I've been told that by the cooper in France that I bought the barrels from. Also, supposedly you can't just store water in them to keep them wet, because it can cause molds to form. I found out online that you need to fill the barrels with a solution of 1 tablespoon of metabisulfite and 2 teaspoons of citric acid for every 5 gallons of water, with needs to be replaced every couple of months.
| Kel Rekuta wrote: | | Tapping the face of a keg or the side requires a tapered hole predrilled and bunged with soft wood. |
My barrels don't have holes predrilled in the face. Just the big bunghole in the side for filling it. Could I just drill a straight hole and snugly fit the tap using some cloth? That's what the copper did with the big bungholes (cork + cloth). I was smart enough to buy a couple of those wooden taps in France, but I wanted to get some more advice here before I started drilling
PS: I'd love to hear about some of your experiences with mead aging. I got all the ingredients and materials together for mead and I think I'll start mixing up my very first batch of JOAM in a week or two.
The Knights Hospitaller: http://www.hospitaalridders.nl
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