has anyone aged beer in oak barrels...

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casablanca

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i am interested to knoiw if it is possible to age beer in oak barrels... like 1 week in the primary two weeks in the secondary one week in a barrel then 3 weeks in the bottle.... or maybe even longer in the barrel?
 
Yes it's possible, but you'd want to do it for months if in a barrel.

You can add oak chips, powder or liquid to your primary instead. It's all about surface area. So a gram of oak pwder may be stronger than a small bag of chips. Add to primary and rack when normal. May need longer secondary of bottle conditioning time to mellow out. Be carefull if you use toasted oak. Toasted oak is strong!
 
The main things that prevent people from actually using barrels are size & cost. Most barrels are in the 50 gallon range and small ones cost hundreds of dollars.
 
I've used oak chips and will use the toasted oak cubes in the future. An actual barrel, I'm worried about getting it sanitized properly in addition to the cost and size issues. I'm not sure that there's any real advantage, at least on the homebrew scale, of using barrels versus carboys/cubes or chips.
 

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