In Search of Casks

Oak is a wonderful compliment to alcohol, be it bourbon or wine, or beer. But who wants to pay $200 for a 5-gallon oak cask? Those things don't last forever, you know. Once the tannins are spent, they are spent. Why do you think you see so many planters made of bourbon barrels? Because they need to get rid of them!

Oak chips can work, true. But if you've seen pictures of awesome beer/wine cellars (and I've looked at many), the ones that look best have casks. So if I am not willing to pay for a cask, I must build one. What I'm talking about here is coopering.

Coopering is an art unto itself, and requires specialized tools you can't find anymore, not to mention welding of hoops. It used to be a trade like any other that required years of apprenticeship before you had the ability to put a barrel together yourself. But lets not let common sense be an obstacle here (or anywhere, for that matter).

The barrel is built using oak staves, which have to be shaped in 3 dimensions. Traditionally logs were cut to length, then a froe was used to split clear-grain wood into the right thickness and width. Then scraping tools (adze, spoke-shaves, etc) were used to thin the ends and put a bevel on either side where the staves butted against each other. Then these staves were assembled on a form and a preliminary hoop was hammered on to hold them together. Then fire was used to heat the staves until they could bend together at the other end, wherein another temporary hoop was hammered in place. Then the hoops were worked until it all fit together snug. At some point a slot was cut inside the staves at either end to receive the end pieces, which were laminated together using pitch or something. Then a disk shape was created for the ends by cutting and planing. Then BAM you have a barrel. You can probably deduce from my writeup here that I get the gist of it but don't really know what the hell I'm talking about.

So, nothing beats book learning except hands-on experience. I have made a CAD model of staves and put them together digitally, so I know exactly what shape they need to be. I plan to use a table saw to rip the staves to thickness and width, maybe a plane to thin them out at the ends, and maybe a router to cut the bevels. This will be an experimenting process. It is important to work with dried wood, so that when you hit it with water it swells and makes the whole thing air-tight. I'll probably just make the inside of the staves at the ends smooth so that I can screw the ends in place. Back in the day, apprentices started with making straight-sided buckets out of easier wood like ash or maple, before moving up to big hogsheads with curved sides, so I likely will too. I could always use them for maple sugaring. But when I do try to curve the staves I will likely just hit the whole thing with a lot of steam, then use a ratcheting strap to bring the ends together.

I've seen people do it at living museums, with the real hand tools and everything. That is the end game, to be able to do that and bring some of the old wood-working knowledge out of antiquity and back into modern day. But, for the first few casks, I'm gonna cheat and use power tools. The beer won't care.