Adding bourbon soaked oak chips to stout

Hey everybody, I'm wondering how much bourbon I should add to my oak shavings for a 10 gallon batch of my American stout? I'm using knob creek for the bourbon and Hungarian medium toast oak shavings. On the bag it says 3-4oz per 5 gallons and to add at the beginning of fermentation. I thought you added flavors to secondary? I also wanted to add vanilla beans as well. Would this be too much added flavors to an American Stout? If not, do I soak the beans in a separate jar of bourbon? Lemme know! Thanks in advance!

Gordonwes said:

Hey everybody, I'm wondering how much bourbon I should add to my oak shavings for a 10 gallon batch of my American stout? I'm using knob creek for the bourbon and Hungarian medium toast oak shavings. On the bag it says 3-4oz per 5 gallons and to add at the beginning of fermentation. I thought you added flavors to secondary? I also wanted to add vanilla beans as well. Would this be too much added flavors to an American Stout? If not, do I soak the beans in a separate jar of bourbon? Lemme know! Thanks in advance!

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The oak chips should be soaked for at least a month to fully absorb the bourbon. Then the beer should be racked onto them in secondary vessel once primary fermentation is complete.

The vanilla beans should be split and scraped and also put in secondary but not for the same amount of duration as the chips. It's really a taste and see process. Start with the oak and after a week sample, if toylike then add the beans and do the same. It's kind of a trial and error thing to taste

Also keep in mind that you can always add more of both, so start off easy. The shavings will add flavor much more quickly than cubes, so checking after a week would be a good idea and add more if needed.

I always like to let my beer sit for at least a month with oak - if not longer to really get all the flavor depth I can out of it.

The first time I decided to use oak I dumped 4oz in 4 gallons of porter. Tasted like chewing on a stick. Im still aging it trying to get the oak twang to mellow and it's been over 6 months.

As far as the bourbon goes - I've just been adding it by itself - not soaked in to the oak. It gives me better control on the flavor. If you pull a measured sample of the beer after you've oaked it and add measured amounts of bourbon until you find the sweet spot you can scale it from there.

No experience with vanilla.