The Grape and Granary sells a number of barrel treatments to both prepare a new barrel and to maintain a used barrel. If you have a brand new barrel, you will want to fill it with water and wait until it seals completely. It is normal for a new wine barrel to leak a bit as the wood starts shrinking as soon as the barrel is made. Once the barrel is holding water, you may want to add Barolkeen to the barrel. It will remove some of the harsher 'new barrel' character and allow you to keep the wine in the barrel longer before the wine becomes 'over oaked'. Barrolkleen is also very good at removing 'wine diamonds' or precipitated tartaric acid from stainless steel tanks and carboys.
If you have a barrel that is still imparting oak flavor and you don't have any wine to put in the barrel, you can burn a sulfur strip or disk in the barrel to stabilize the barrel for storage. This keeps any bacteria from growing in the barrel and preserves the oak character. If you were to fill a barrel with sulfite and citric acid to preserve it, you would strip out the valuable oak flavor of the barrel effectively shorting the barrels ability to add oak character.
If you want to sanitize a barrel prior to using it, we recommend making up a solution of sulfite and citric acid. For every 5 gallons of water it takes to fill the barrel, add 2 ounces of sulfite powder and 1 teaspoon of citric acid. Soak the barrel in this solution overnight. Dump the solution, rinse the barrel well and then you can fill the barrel with wine (to the very top) and seal the barrel with a solid bung.
Contact us if you have any questions regarding barrel treatments.
