Oak chips. To dump with or without bourbon?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Special Hops

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 17, 2008
Messages
1,547
Reaction score
72
Location
Kanatenah
Brewed up a IIPA that I am planning on oak agog half the batch for a while. Normally for a darker beer ( stout) I soak the chips in bourbon to sanitize and then dump the whole thing in. Bourbon and all.

I am worried that with an IIPA the bourbon may overpower the beer. Do I drain off the bourbon 1st?

Thoughts?
 
How much bourbon. A very little goes a long way. I was surprised when I tried it that it only takes a few shots to make a huge difference.
 
8 oz glass filled with oak cubes to the top and then bourbon to the top. Not sure how much that is maybe 4 oz of bourbon?
 
Oh hell. DON'T USE THEM.

Oak in vodka if you must. A Bourbon IIPA has a cool ring to it, but sounds like vomit to me.

Bourbon is SO overpowering.
 
Bourbon is essentially alcohol aged on toasted oak. So what you have is oak chips aged in an oak solution. If you're going to dump the solution and just use the chips, I would say you made too much.
 
not sure about an ipa, but ive made two porters that have used bourbon. The pecan one i used about 12 oz and have won awards with, but i thought it was a bit much. The denny conn bvip i used about 8 oz and just sampled it and its very good.
 
I think it depends on the malt backbone of your IPA. A very dry IPA without a lot of crystal might not stand up as well to bourbon as a darker fuller bodied IPA with some medium crystal malts in it.

How much oak (in weight) are you talking about? I'm not sure how many oak cubes fit in an 8 ounce glass. I'd guess you have somewhere in the 2 to 4 ounce range. Oak can get dominant. I would start out with 1 or 2 ounces and add more later if you think it needs more. That is a safer method than ending up with too much.
 
It was 2 oz of oak cubes. I think I am going to set these cubes aside for something darker and go with some hot water sanitized cubes for this one.

You guys have reinforced my hesitation that the bourbon will overpower the IIPA. That's why I asked.
 
If you have the storage space, you could split your batch in two and add the cubes to half, then blend to taste later. You can always drink the bourbon if you don't want to waste it.
 
So if anyone is still subscribed to this, I'm thinking about making an imperial IPA with bourbon and oak cubes. Judging from this, my first thoughts are of taking a jar and using 2 oz of oak cubes and maybe 2 oz of bourbon and letting them sit for a couple of weeks, shaking them every day or so to recoat the cubes and such. I figure this way, there won't be too much bourbon and the cubes will get sanitized effectively.

No thoughts on how long I should let them sit though in what I'm assuming should be the secondary fermenter... Any thoughts on this?
 
I don't know the correct answer, but my approach was to:

1) Wait until fermentation was slowing down, then soak the cubes in bourbon

2) Wait until fermentation finished, add the cubes (but not the bourbon) to the primary.

3) Sample the beer every few days until it has enough oak flavor. This is the stage my bourbon barrel porter is at currently.

4) Rack to bottling bucket. Add some of the bourbon, stir and taste until I think I have enough bourbon in the beer. Bottle.

5) ???

6) Profit!!!
 
I do like the sound of that. Gives a lot of control over the oak level as well as the bourbon level. Do you think that bourbon would even work well at all with the IPA flavors? Or should I just stick with the oak?

Edit: Basically I'm brewing a batch of beer for my brother's birthday present, and he likes bourbon and oak, but not stouts, so I'm banned from the darker beers for this, and my want for a nice bourbon soaked beer is starting to get to some pretty high levels. Perhaps another style that would work better?
 
Jack Daniels sells chopped up barrels as smoking chips for BBQ at a lot of places. Black bag. Might be a cheap way to get a nice flavor without soaking if you sanitize them. Just thought of that now. A bit off the topic, but worth mentioning.
 
if nothing else, that sounds like a great source of smoking chips. ill have to inform my friends who have smokers
 
Edit: Basically I'm brewing a batch of beer for my brother's birthday present, and he likes bourbon and oak, but not stouts, so I'm banned from the darker beers for this, and my want for a nice bourbon soaked beer is starting to get to some pretty high levels. Perhaps another style that would work better?

Ipa, old ale, I really like scotch ale. Founders has a great example of this with backwoods bastard. I feel like they hop the sh*t out of it too.
 
If you don't want to go the IPA route, think about a scotch ale, like Innis and Gunn's Rum barrel version. I really liked it. I would think first of bourbon oaking maltier styles, so maybe a big brown (too dark?) might work, too.
 
Never had Founders, but it's on my list of things to try, although locally I only have the Dirty Bastard, rather than the Backwoods Bastard.

And I do like the idea of a scotch ale, I'll have to get some to have my brother try out. The only one that I've had is the Old Chub from Oscar Blues, which was phenomenal. However I think regardless at this point, I'm going to end up making a real big IPA with oak cubes. ALL FOR ME though. Something I can let sit until this summer when it will have aged a bit. Any recipe suggestions?
 
Made an allagash curieux clone. Had oak cubes covered in couple oz bourbon. Initially just added the oak cubes. The bourbon came through well. At kegging, added a splash (and I mean splash- maybe an ounce) to the keg. It is perfect.
Point is, the lighter the beer (tends to have less roasted/ caramelmalts) the less I would add. Just start off with the soaked cubes, then add very small additions. However with the cubes soaked in bourbon, that may be enough. For a darker , more roasty beer- porter/ stout- you might want to add some of the bourbon (I added 2 oz. to my vanilla bourbon porter). But you need to be careful. There is a fine line from just enough/ perfect to overpowering.
 
The last recipe I tried at 3 gallons, I used about .7 oz of oak chips soaked in bourbon, added to the batch for 4 days without the liquid... and it tasted great. It wasn't overwhelming, just enough of an oak hint.

Next time, I'll probably have let it sit a bit longer, or add more oak for the same period of time, but it was a good experiment.
 
Back
Top