used bourbon barrels

[cowdery]

Bourbon Barrel Foods ages its soy sauce in bourbon barrels. They use the barrels for other products too but soy sauce is the main one. It's very good, although I don't detect any bourbon in it.

Kentucky Gentlemen Cigars is a cigar maker in Kentucky that ages its tobacco in bourbon barrels.

When I lived in Kentucky, I had a half-barrel planter on my porch. Right now the market for bourbon barrels is very strong but it hasn't always been. When they are cheap and plentiful in Kentucky, they show up as furniture, planters, rain barrels, etc.

[sailor22]

The prices are all over the chart for used barrels currently. The best I have seen is via Craigs List - a guy in Jacksonville Fl. selling them for $25 each if you buy 4. Looks like he bought a huge lot and needs to move them.

[cowdery]

I'm talking about the commercial resale market where they're buying them by the thousands.

[sailor22]

Understood - I was talking about the relatively very few that made their way to the retail market for use as planters and such.

[cas]

How many times can a barrel be re-used for aging spirits? Are they only good for one reuse or are there applications for multiple reuses? I imagine at some point the structural integrity degrades, but I don't know how quickly the character that's imparted goes down, or changes.
Craig

[Enoch]

Tabasco is aged for three years in used bourbon barrels before being processed for the market.

I have purchased several used barrels from craigslist. They were often sent to liquor stores which went out of business. I cut the front out and anchor the bands and make bars for my friends. Got the idea from my Maker's Mark display barrel.

[Rockefeller]

There are actually several online vendors you can purchase used barrels from (as small as 1Liter). There is a growing trend in various cocktail lounges/restaurants/speakeasies to make "barrel-aged" cocktails. The basic concept is using old-whiskey barrels to round out non-whiskey based cocktails like a martini.

Articles here:
http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/2...ged-cocktails/
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/dining/29aged.html

[Young Blacksmith]

One more use for used bourbon barrels, creating a certain type of tobacco called perique.

[cowdery]

How many times can a barrel be re-used for aging spirits? Are they only good for one reuse or are there applications for multiple reuses? I imagine at some point the structural integrity degrades, but I don't know how quickly the character that's imparted goes down, or changes.
Craig

It depends on a lot of factors but about five times, total, including the first bourbon use. Using a barrel multiple times is like using a tea bag multiple times. Same thing as far as extraction is concerned.

[Special Reserve]

I wonder how many times my grandfather reused his barrels to store hard cider.

As a child they looked very old. From memory, he had about four in the cellar.