1 Gallon Oak Aging Barrel (5 Liter) with Stand, Bung and Spigot - Wooden Mini Whiskey Barrel - Charred Oak Barrels for Aging Whiskey, Bourbon, Cocktails, Rum, Tequila, Mead Wine

Have had four good barrels (a 2L and 3 5Ls). Make sure you prep it when you receive it!I see some people complaining about leaky barrels, and I'm sure it happens, but so far we've had no problems at all. I bought the barrel wax, but so far it's completely wasted. Just make sure that when you get it you put the spout in (and make sure it's closed, far left or right), then fill the keg with boiling water and put the top cork in! This is 'tempering' and will make the oak swell to prevent leaks. If it's leaking after a couple hours (when the wood has had time to swell) then it's time to deploy the barrel wax. If that still doesn't work you might have a bad keg (hasn't happened with these for me, cross fingers).Then when you're ready to use it (after at least a day tempering), remove the spout, pop the top cork, then flip it upside down and let it drain from the 'top', just because that has a larger hole. There will be a lot of charred oak shards, which is fine! This just shows your good stuff is in contact with charred wood.If you go a long time before you use it again and the inside dries out, you might consider re-tempering it before you use it.

Barrels have proved to be high quality. I plan on buying more

Kind of small but worth it for the money!

This was a leaker right out of the box. I knew that might happen, so I reached out to the seller for recommendations for how to swell the wood, use wax, etc. Initial response from the seller was a quick generic response. I reached out for ideas of how to seal this up and received no response at all. Based on my own research I soaked for 10 days and used barrel wax and the leaks stopped. Several months later the leaks came back, despite turning regularly. I reached out to the seller again and only heard crickets. I gave it an honest try for 6 months but ended up throwing it away. Would not recommend to a friend. Bought a different brand with no issues.

Well made little barrel

It works well, cool conversation piece

I ordered 2 and while one was perfect, the second was clearly a hack job that looked like child had a turn making one. None of the bands were tight, there were serious gaps between many of the boards. I had to do a lot to seal that second one and I'm not sure i can trust it long term.

The barrel seems to be well made, and is lacquered. I'm curious how this will impact evaporation of volatiles. The bung is well made and has a sealing gasket material on it. The valve was made with several areas of chipped grain that will not seal. This is hard to capture on images but lengthwise chips are missing from tip to 1/4in past the barrel and into the shoulder. (Hard to capture with phone camera. Valve body should be made with much tighter grain wood for this scale of barrel if it supposed to be anything but decoration.