Oak casks are used to age some alcholic beverages. Sometimes they are charred on the inside. I have heard that they are very expensive to make. Instead, why not just keep the hooch in stainless steel tanks with some oak inserts to flavor the beverage. Seems it would be a lot cheaper and easier to handle.
Some wineries do use oak chips to flavour their product. Some Australian wineries do, particularly for mid-priced chardonnay and shiraz (what I think you US types call Syrah). It is, however, a practice frowned upon by many vignerons and IIRC it is illegal in France.
Budweiser’s famed “Beechwood Aging” involves pumping the beer through a vat filled with Beechwood chips.
That’s why it tastes soooo good. :rolleyes:
Oak barrels are not very expensive to make, but the maintenance is costly. They are still used because there is not-fully-understood interactions between the last batch, the oak, the liquid and the air. A good search engine would probably get you more details.
Actually, I understand the barrels are quite expensive to make (or at least to initially purchase)…somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000 a piece or so new for French oak I do believe. American Oak are a little cheaper, but have a different flavor. I think this may even be on the cheap side.
My wife and I are casual wine enthusiasts, and whenever we can we take tours of vinyards/wineries (sp?). They often talk about the casks. They are such an expense that many “lower quality” winries will often buy old, several year old casks and re-charr them and re-use them.
Acoording to this site, a barrel works out to be $450 - $700. Oak chips are definitely cheaper.
I would have to say that it’s because steel can give an off flavor to wine, more so than beer just because of the acids. In some wines I’ve made, I have bottled some and then kegged the rest in steel kegs just to artificially carbonate them (too impatient to wait for the bottles to develop sometimes). After a couple of months, the wine in the kegs usually tastes much different than in the bottle, and never in a good way.
To line steel with charred oak in a way that would prevent contact between wine nad metal, would be just as, if not more expensive than just an oak cask, due to workmanship.