jarod7736

Recipes 

is there some sort of formula/ratio to compare the effect of aging in a barrel vs aging on oak chips?

gregpio85

Recipes 

Edit: After some research, it looks like for an average 53 gallon Whiskey Barrel, your surface area is about 2,500 sqaured inches. This is about 47.5 inches squared per gallon.

With 4 inch squared (2" x 2") wood chips you're looking at 12 woodchips to get the same effect (47.5 / 4).

Updated Equation:

Original Post:

You can actually add the amount of oak chips you want that will equal the same utilization as a barrel. Your rate of absorption is based on surface area so you'll just need to produce the surface area in woodchips as you would get with a barrel.

The formula would be:

(3.14 x Diameter of Barrel x Height of barrel) + 2x(3.14 x Barrel of Radius squared) = (height of wood chips x Width of woodchips) x Number of woodchips

Of course, you've got bigger and smaller barrels so if you're trying to match a certain brewers style, finding out what type of whiskey barrels they use would be clutch.

This would be an interesting calculator for brewers.

__________________
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jarod7736

Recipes 

Wow, nice. I may have to write up a calculator program for that when I get a chance.

dragon99

Recipes 

Interesting recipe. I'm brewing mine tonight and just stumbled on this thread. Here's the recipe I'm going with. I originally planned to do this as no-sparge (hence the 55% eff), but I'll probably go with a tight mash and sparge a gallon or so.

What type of oak did you go with? I purchased some medium toast American and medium-heavy toast French CUBES. I plan to use a 50-50 mix of the two (soaked in bourbon of course, Makers is a fine choice btw).

Original Gravity 1.133 (1.119 to 1.139)
Final Gravity 1.033 (1.029 to 1.036)
Color 59° SRM / 116° EBC (Black)
Bitterness 68.5 IBU / 26 HBU ƒ: Tinseth
Mash Efficiency 55%
Batch size: 5.0 gallons
Alcohol 13.3% ABV

% LB OZ Malt or Fermentable ppg °L
76% 24 0 American Two-row Pale info 37 1
13% 4 0 Munich Malt - 10L info 35 10
3% 1 0 Chocolate Malt (UK) info 34 450
3% 1 0 Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L info 34 60
2% 0 8 Caramel/Crystal Malt -120L info 33 120
2% 0 8 Roasted Barley info 25 300
2% 0 8 Debittered Black Malt info 34 550
31 8

hops
use time oz variety form aa
boil 85 mins 2.0 Nugget info pellet 13.0
boil 15 mins 1.0 Willamette info pellet 4.8
boil 5 mins 1.0 Willamette info pellet 4.8

yeast Wyeast PacMan

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Homer: “I’m feelin’ low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it, you know, Skittlebrau?”
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Homer: “Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.”

jarod7736

Recipes 

I have 4oz of light toast american chips soaking right now. I was thinking about picking up some darker french cubes tomorrow, just to mix it up some. I took a sample last saturday, and it was down to 1050, and tasted really good so far, smokey, but i'm guessing that's because it's super green. I'm going to let it primary for 4 weeks at least, so it has a while to go.

jarod7736

Recipes 

Just took another sample, and it's down to 1040. It's super green, I'll let it sit in primary another 2 weeks, then secondary on bourbon soaked oak for a month, then age until it's good (a few months at least I'd guess).

dragon99

Recipes 

I'm going to try and save mine until Christmas. Or as close to that as I can hold out.

__________________
Homer: “I’m feelin’ low, Apu. You got any of that beer that has candy floating in it, you know, Skittlebrau?”
Apu: “Such a product does not exist, sir! You must have dreamed it.”
Homer: “Oh. Well then just gimme a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.”

Haputanlas

Recipes 

Any updated tastings on these? This is one of my all-time favorites and would love to attempt this as well.

__________________
"There is no strong beer, only weak men"
"Pretty women make us BUY beer, ugly women make us DRINK beer" - Al Bundy
"Give a man a beer, he'll drink for a day. Teach a man to brew, he'll be drunk for the rest of his life."

Primary: Hoppy Wheat, Porter
Kegged: Reaper's English Mild (OO), BBK Jr., Lagunitas IPA, Fireman's #4
Bottled: None
Notable Empties: Oaked Black IIPA, BBK I, Red IIPA, Burning Bush, Apophis "The Destroyer", Vanilla Porter
On-Deck: The Titan BW, Ale of Olympus

jarod7736

Recipes 

Mine got down to 1039. It's not bad, but it definitely needs to age more. It was very smokey at first. Next time I'll cut the crystal back. I aged on chips, then cubes. It's nicely oaked. The bourbon is there, but it's not too strong.

Haputanlas

Recipes 

Does this mean that you hit the bourbon characteristics? Or does it need more oak?

__________________
"There is no strong beer, only weak men"
"Pretty women make us BUY beer, ugly women make us DRINK beer" - Al Bundy
"Give a man a beer, he'll drink for a day. Teach a man to brew, he'll be drunk for the rest of his life."

Primary: Hoppy Wheat, Porter
Kegged: Reaper's English Mild (OO), BBK Jr., Lagunitas IPA, Fireman's #4
Bottled: None
Notable Empties: Oaked Black IIPA, BBK I, Red IIPA, Burning Bush, Apophis "The Destroyer", Vanilla Porter
On-Deck: The Titan BW, Ale of Olympus