How toasty do you like your oak?

Hi all --

Long time listener, first time caller.

I'm brewing a Winter Warmer which I'm planning to rack onto oak cubes in the secondary. I had to choose between light, medium, and dark toast. I'm familiar (from wine) with the differences between American, French, and Hungarian oak, but wasn't sure how the different toasts come out. For instance, I could imagine the dark toast being more robustly toasty but also less tannic and raw. Any input?

As a follow up, how do you modify soaking time by beer style? Does something like a porter require 4x the time on the oak as an equivalent gravity pale?

Thanks in advance.

Oak can be tough for first timers.

In general, the lighter the oak, the more sweet and vanilla-y the flavor. Light toast is very vanilla flavored, with little tannin flavor. Medium toast has hints of tannin with hints of vanilla. Dark toast is burnt tannic.

I like American oak, medium toast, for most "medium" beers. I make an oaked Arrogan Bastard that is great with about 1 ounce of those chips for 2 weeks for three gallons. It's a bit too oaky for the first couple of months, but it ages and smooths beautifully into an oaked bastard.