Oak Barrel Dregs Considerable

[stm]

Greetings

I recently drained off the remains from a whiskey barrel [Jefferson] purchased for cider making....nearly a gallon!

However the finest charcoal particles rendering the fluid black as can be, now in a jar over 30 days and hardly changed....

some settling but not much. Not in a hurry but if there's a way to filter this i'm all ears!

Best

[HedgeBird]

Pretty amazing that a distillery would leave that much alcohol behind in the barrel!  Did you try just running it through a coffee filter?

[Silk City Distillers]

Assuming you don't have filtration equipment, coffee filters and cheesecloth in a strainer, just ladle in a little bit at a time and let it slowly drip through.  Depending on the level of fines, you may need to repeat this a few times.

That said, that's awfully dark, and large char easily settles.  It seems like a significant amount of very fine particulate carbon.

[Blockader]

Very large distilleries generally dump their barrels (rather than pump them I mean) and will be completely empty right after the dump. So any whiskey that you find in the bottom of one of their casks is what seeped out of the staves while it was sitting around empty. It can be pretty beasty stuff having been saturating the wood for so long. That said, that looks pretty dark, maybe its just the photo. Coffee filters, a stainless funnel, and time to kill should do it.

[Roger]

Several of our Canadian customers have told us similar stories about when they were young they would get dumped barrels from various Canadian whiskey distilleries and put a couple gallons of water in each one. They would roll them around and rock the barrels for a while and let it sit for a few days. 

After that they would re-dump the barrels, filter through fabric and call it "Swish". It was apparently very common, and I think you can buy it now called, "Devils Cut". 

[BlackButton85]

Just filter it through double thick cheesecloth. It will take the particles out