Oaked Imperial Whiskey Stout

Hi guys, I brewed an Oaked Imperial Whiskey Stout from AHS last week. The directions do not specify how long to leave the stout in the secondary on the oak and whiskey (actually, Im going to use a bourbon instead) Any suggestions? Plan is two weeks in the primary, dump the trub and harvest the yeast, and add the oak and bourbon to it. I know it needs aged for 3-6 months, but is that entire time in the secondary? Or should I be doing two weeks primary, two weeks secondary, then bottle and age for 3-6?

Thanks

Caleb

Did the recipe kit come with oak chips or cubes? If chips, they'll quickly impart a lot of intense oak flavor in about 2 weeks. If cubes, you can let them ride for months. Either way, boil them for a good 10 minutes+ before adding to your secondary for bulk aging.

I just did my first oaked bourbon beer ( a wee heavy). I read a number of different approaches. In my case I let it get through primary,then racked to secondary on top of oak chips (that had been soaked in bourbon for about 2 months). I believe the adding of oak and bourbon flavors is separate from the aging. I sampled the beer a few times when it was on the oak and decided to bottle it after 1 month on the chips. That was last week. Now I'll let it sit until the fall - or I get too impatient - whichever comes first!

Bottom line - I'd say sample occasionally until you have the oak/bourbon flavor you want, then package and let it age.

dcHokie said:

Did the recipe kit come with oak chips or cubes? If chips, they'll quickly impart a lot of intense oak flavor in about 2 weeks. If cubes, you can let them ride for months. Either way, boil them for a good 10 minutes+ before adding to your secondary for bulk aging.

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It came with chips...in fact, half the bag almost seems like sawdust....that should be fun to clarify out....

But I think I will take that route. Two weeks on the Oak, then bottle.

Thanks!

calebstringer said:

It came with chips...in fact, half the bag almost seems like sawdust....that should be fun to clarify out....

But I think I will take that route. Two weeks on the Oak, then bottle.

Thanks!

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I think I've heard of some of the 'Brewer's Best' kits coming with a powdered, toasted oak, perhaps it's similar. You could probably use a sanitized muslin hopsack and a coffee filter and run it through that. That way you could add your oak sack for a couple weeks and pull it once you like the taste and continue to bulk age, if you like. It's been my experience that even overwhelming oakiness will age out over time (years). Good luck with your stout, cheers.

sorry for the bump, but brewing this same kit saturday and was wondering the same thing about the oak chips.. I'm kind of weary about adding 375ml of maker's mark as suggested.. i might try half of that & add more if needed. any recommendations there?

boredstate said:

sorry for the bump, but brewing this same kit saturday and was wondering the same thing about the oak chips.. I'm kind of weary about adding 375ml of maker's mark as suggested.. i might try half of that & add more if needed. any recommendations there?

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When adding liquor, you can always add more but you can't take it out. Add to taste.

I added 125ml to a vanilla bourbon porter I brewed which came out fantastic. I wouldn't think of adding any more than that though. I had a Makers Mark stout at Great Divides anniversary party that tasted like almost straight mm, I could barely drink it - maybe in the winter months it would be better but outside in the summer...ugh

375ml is going to give you a solid bourbon taste that will always be towards the front of the flavor palette. I've experimented w/ everything between 6-16oz (you'll have to convert the other numbers, but for reference 375ml=12.68oz) and I found 10oz to be the sweet spot for a 5 gallon batch. You still get really good bourbon flavor, but it rides somewhere in the middle of the flavor palette. As posted by MrTheKing, 125ml or roughly 4-5oz will give you a nice essence of bourbon.

When it all comes down to it, think about what YOU are looking for. I know it's an imperial, but is it one that you plan on having a few of at a time? Or is it going to be a fireside sipper from a snifter where one is enough?

As a side note, bourbon stouts/porters are my absolute favorite to brew and drink. The only problem is waiting for them to mature!!!

dcHokie said:

Either way, boil them for a good 10 minutes+ before adding to your secondary for bulk aging.

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i assume you mean to boil them for sanitization purposes, but wouldn't soaking them in maker's for a few days effectively sanitize them?

Soaking them for a week in maker's will more than sanitize them. It will infuse deliciousness down to their core.

boredstate said:

i assume you mean to boil them for sanitization purposes, but wouldn't soaking them in maker's for a few days effectively sanitize them?

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Boiling them is dual purpose, for both sanitization & to soften some of the harsher tanins in the wood. I've found that straight out of the package even the lightest toasted cubes can still have similar intensity to a single use whiskey barrel.

And 80 proof spirits will kill off some stuff, but won't truly sanitize...there are plenty of threads here that hash that out, though.

boredstate said:

sorry for the bump, but brewing this same kit saturday and was wondering the same thing about the oak chips.. I'm kind of weary about adding 375ml of maker's mark as suggested.. i might try half of that & add more if needed. any recommendations there?

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I just did a 1 gallon batch and had to add half of my .375 of Jim beam to get any character to come through. You should be fine with .375 for a 5 gallon bath.

dcHokie said:

Boiling them is dual purpose, for both sanitization & to soften some of the harsher tanins in the wood. I've found that straight out of the package even the lightest toasted cubes can still have similar intensity to a single use whiskey barrel.

And 80 proof spirits will kill off some stuff, but won't truly sanitize...there are plenty of threads here that hash that out, though.

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Ah, great to know!

Just a thought.. Same rules apply to the chips? They are pretty damn small.. Largest one I'd say is about 1/4" square x 1/8" thick

boredstate said:

Ah, great to know!

Just a thought.. Same rules apply to the chips? They are pretty damn small.. Largest one I'd say is about 1/4" square x 1/8" thick

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chips and cubes are pretty different...here's some good info cribbed from an old Zymurgy article:

Oak Chips and Oak Cubes

Chips are flat shreds of oak, usually about two inches long. Because there are only two sides to an oak chip, the wood reacts quickly to the heat during toasting andboth surfaces are toasted to an even level. This gives the wood a rather one-dimensional flavor. Chips have a very short extraction time in beer, usually about a week or so, which make them ideal for use in the fermentation process. Yeast will actually metabolize certain oak compounds, like vanillin and furfural, and leave much of the spice and other characteristics behind. This creates a nice foundation to build off of with any later oak additions. Beers that do well with this method include English bitters and American pale ales-styles that generally don?t benefit from a longer aging time. Oak cubes have several layers of toast due to the thickness and shape of the cube. A toasted oak cube will have varying degrees of color along each side-these layers represent the level of heat penetration during the toasting process. Heat is what brings out all of the different and wonderful flavors of the wood, and different temperatures with different woods for different lengths of time develop different flavors. Oak cubes replicate the complex flavors of a barrel better than chips because the cubes are able to have multiple toast levels like a barrel would. Think of it as ?what you see is what you taste,? where the different colors of the cubes provide more flavors than the single color of the chips. Cubes also have a much longer extraction time, from about two weeks up to a year depending on the size of the cube (the beer has a lot more wood to penetrate than with a chip) and the longer extraction time enables the beer to absorb the full character of the oak, and not just one or two facets of it. Cubes are ideal for beers that require a lengthy aging process such as imperial stouts and barleywines.

I'm sorry if this is only partly on-topic, but what about adding whiskey without oak chips? I actually have oak chips which I could use, and which I intend to use when I make a rum porter ... but actually, when I think about making whiskey-infused beer some other flavor combinations come to mind. For example, if you don't go too wild on the whiskey, I think caraway might work well.

Not that there's anything wrong with oak chips... I'm just wondering if/why they are really a prerequisite for making whiskey-infused beer.

I don't think they are required, just added for additional layers of flavor that complement the whiskey nicely.

messersc said:

I'm sorry if this is only partly on-topic, but what about adding whiskey without oak chips? I actually have oak chips which I could use, and which I intend to use when I make a rum porter ... but actually, when I think about making whiskey-infused beer some other flavor combinations come to mind. For example, if you don't go too wild on the whiskey, I think caraway might work well.

Not that there's anything wrong with oak chips... I'm just wondering if/why they are really a prerequisite for making whiskey-infused beer.

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And some whiskeys will just have more oak in them than most. Elijah Craig comes to mind, but I am sure there are others which have more oakiness than the really cheap four year old versions. I'd bet most 12 year whiskeys could be used without chips/cubes and still get some oak in the beer.

So I brewed this kit Saturday, ran into some efficiency problems and my OG came up short about .018 (target was 1.091, actual was 1.073) & my post boil volume was low about .75 gallons. I would have thrown some more water & DME in there at the end of the boil, but I was all out of DME. Would I be ok boiling 2 lbs. of dark DME in a little over 3 quarts of water and throwing that in with primary this evening or should I just leave it alone? I'm just afraid it's going to wind up overly bitter..