Adding bourbon soaked oak to secondary

I'm working on an RISish recipe. Looking like target gravity is 1.107. I'd like to simulate bourbon barrel aging for about half of my 5 gallon batch.

I've got white oak and darker French oak. I'm thinking that the white oak is the way to go. How much of the chips should I use? How much bourbon should I soak the chips in? For how long should I soak them? For how long should I let this sit in the beer in secondary?

Thanks for any help!

My RIS that I do, I soak 375ml of bourbon with 2 oz of american oak chips for two weeks in a glass jar, while the RIS is fermenting. Then I rack to a secondary on top of the oak/bourbon for two more weeks max. Actually start tasting it around 7-10 days until it is where it is just prior to where you want it

Then cold crash for three days and bottle or keg

Since you can over do the bourbon and oak I split the batch into 1 and 4 gallons using a Carlo Rossi jug. Then I could push it as far as I wanted and then recombine the batch without fear of over doing it. I did 1oz Med+ French with 4oz Makers soaked for 3 weeks. I poured all the Makers and oak into the 1 gallon jug and let it sit for a month and then combined. Worked perfectly.

French is a lot stronger than American too iirc

calebstringer said:

My RIS that I do, I soak 375ml of bourbon with 2 oz of american oak chips for two weeks in a glass jar, while the RIS is fermenting. Then I rack to a secondary on top of the oak/bourbon for two more weeks max. Actually start tasting it around 7-10 days until it is where it is just prior to where you want it

Then cold crash for three days and bottle or keg

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Was this for a 5 gallon batch? Halving these numbers for 2.5 gallons.

I made a Bourbon Barrel Old Ale.

I caution you about how much Bourbon to use. I used 10 ounces for 5 gallons and it's noticeable.
Before using 375 ML of Bourbon, you should see how you will like that by adding Bourbon to a sample of your beer.

What I did was soak 2 ounces of medium toasted American Oak cubes in 10 ounces of Makers Mark Bourbon for 45 days, then poured that in, and bottled it.
There is a noticeable Oak taste, but the recipe calls for 6 months of aging so I will see how it is early next year.

Personally I've always got a better result from cubes than chips.

Chips will flavor faster...but the taste never seemed "real" enough for me.


That said...I love my barrel aged ones so much I just bought 2 JD barrels off ebay
They REEK of JD ...its awesome

JayInJersey said:

Personally I've always got a better result from cubes than chips.

Chips will flavor faster...but the taste never seemed "real" enough for me.


That said...I love my barrel aged ones so much I just bought 2 JD barrels off ebay
They REEK of JD ...its awesome

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I've used chips in the past and got some cubes recently for a planned brew. How long do you typically soak the cubes and leave in with the beer in secondary?

i used 375ml of makers mark and 2oz of american oak chips in 5 gallons of my imperial stout and one year later it is still boozy as hell! I think next time I will only use enough bourbon to cover the chips

My burbon-vanilla oak aged oatmeal stout only needed about 7 days with the chips suspended in a bag. The flavor pulls out quickly.

I would suggest doing it in a bucket with a spigot so you can taste regularly.

brycelarson said:

My burbon-vanilla oak aged oatmeal stout only needed about 7 days with the chips suspended in a bag. The flavor pulls out quickly.

I would suggest doing it in a bucket with a spigot so you can taste regularly.

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+1 I definitely agree with regular tasting as the aging progresses. Some like more oakiness others less.

tbrown4 said:

Was this for a 5 gallon batch? Halving these numbers for 2.5 gallons.

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Yep, 5 gallons

Subsailor said:

+1 I definitely agree with regular tasting as the aging progresses. Some like more oakiness others less.

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I was really shocked to see how quickly it got to where i wanted it. I mean we're talking about a 7% alcohol, 1024 beer - but the oak got to a tasty level in just a matter of 3 days or so and got to a nice whiskey/burbon flavor in a little over a week. Seems to be holding nicely a couple of months later in the bottles.