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Dropped by a tiny kombucha brewery in Portland and the owner was using a 50 gallon pickle barrel as a fermenter
He said he found it at an estate sale for $30 and now his juniper berry brew tastes like dill pickles, anyone else run into weird flavors from repurposed gear?
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joel_martinez3mo ago
Man, that's a classic rookie mistake right there. Pickle barrels hold onto that brine flavor forever, it'll leach right into whatever you put in there. I've seen it happen with homebrewers using old whiskey barrels that still taste like bourbon, but pickles are way harder to get rid of. You basically need to soak that thing in hot water and baking soda for weeks, maybe months, before it's safe for anything delicate like kombucha. That juniper berry batch is probably a total loss unless he actually wants pickle flavored booch, which could be a weird hipster hit I guess. Wood is porous and holds onto previous flavors like a grudge, your mileage may vary but I'd just hunt down a proper fermenter and call the barrel a planter.
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ericj453mo ago
30 bucks and free pickle juice thrown in? What a steal. Honestly I bet he could bottle it as "Dill Booch" and sell it to the same crowd that puts hot sauce on everything. I've seen guys try to scrub whiskey barrels clean for beer and end up with weird bourbon stouts that taste like band-aids. Wood is just a sponge for old flavors, especially brine. That barrel is never not going to be a pickle barrel, might as well lean into the chaos.
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jamesroberts3mo ago
Right there with you on the wood being a sponge thing... I once tried to use an old pickle barrel to age a batch of mead and it came out tasting like a deli sandwich. @joel_martinez nailed it with that baking soda soak advice, I shoulda done that for a month instead of giving it a quick rinse and hoping for the best. Now I just keep that barrel as a weird conversation piece in my garage and stick to glass carboys for anything I actually want to drink.
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