Tiny Oak Barrel

[PredatorMilk]

Medium skilled brewer here. Look what I got for the holidays!

What should I do with it?

I'm inclined to put some sort of whisky in it for a while... how long? Then some red wine or port... and THEN the homebrew... But really I'm totally new to this. Plus I read that smaller barrels like this can be unpredictable.

Anybody have experience with these things?

 

[Weezy]

I have a gallon one. I've used it on a few beers. 5-6 weeks gave a nice flavor to my taste. I'd recommend taste testing after 3 weeks. I recently put a fifth of wine in it and rotated the barrel sitting position for more than a month. It absorbed 1/3 of it and what came out was syrupy from evaporation. I split a batch between glass and the barrel, both for secondary fermentation with Brett, for later blending.

Seasoning the barrel with anything may be moot. Unless the barrel has aged with generations of liquor such that the liquor has modified the oak, you might as well just pour a shot into the beer....but seasoning the barrel is fun anyway.