Aging my Barley wine with red wine soaked oak chips

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clept

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Made a hoppy AG American style barley wine about a month ago... Some details below

OG 1.080(had terrible efficiency due to my mash tun being too small for 20lbs grain)
FG 1.011
abv. 9%(right where I wanted despite the low efficiency, woo hoo attenuation!)
97 IBU's
W001

Anyways, I made 6 gallons and split into a 1 gal wine jug and a 5 gal carboy upon transferring to secondary. I'd like to bottle the 1 gallon by itself after another month or two of aging. In the mean time I'd like to add some oak chips that have been soaked in red wine to the other 5 gallon.

A little history here; While at the Stone Brewery I sampled some of their Old Guardian Barley wine that had been aged in red wine barrels and the experience was, well, sublime. I'd love to try and recreate that experience here at home.

What I need to know since I have ZERO experience with wood aging beers is what type of oak should I use? Toasted/roasted or not? Also what type of wine would be best suited for this application? I'm thinking a red zin or pinot noir myself? Also, I hear of people soaking wood chips barely covered in bourbon for 2 weeks then dumping the whole thing into the brew. Would that technique work, or would the spoiled wine chance an infection?

I also plan to dry hop this brew before bottling/aging. Should I dry hop before wood aging, vice versa, or both at the same time?

Thanks for your replies.
 
I have nothing to add, but this red wine oak aging sounds great for a barley wine. I'm going to have to seriously consider this in mine...
 
i can tel you the Chianti wine kit I used, the oak chips were not toasted at all. any idea what kind of red wine was used? merlot? chianti (doubtful), cabernet?

i wouldn't go with anything too toasted.
 
It had to be a California wine... either a Cab, Merlot, Pinot Noir or possibly a Zin..

I'm not sure, I wonder if I email the people at Stone if they'd be willing to share that info with me...
 
Cant be of any help, but would appreciate it if you kept the thread going with what you end up doing/how it comes out.
 
Still nobody with any experience trying this sort of thing?

If I was to go at this alone I'm thinking of soaking about 3oz of french oak in a sweetish red zin for 2 weeks and then dumping the oak into the carboy for about a month? Too long? too little oak? bad win choice? help?
 
I have no real experience with using oak chips but have been researching the subject some and if it was me I would toast the chips to cut the green wood flavor as well as give it a slight smokey character. I would also use a medium to full flavored red wine. The barelywine will be sweet enough (although your attenuation was really good for a barelywine). I would use a mellow Zinfandel or a rich pinot noir. You could use a merlot too but I think the other two would give you better flavor notes.

Again take all that with a grain of salt from a book learner.
 
Well I emailed the guys at Stone yesterday and got a very informative and friendly reply today, man I love Stone, can't wait for their Louisiana launch next month. Anyhow this definitely points me in the right direction..

The barrels were French oak from a variety of varietals. Note that those barrels were used to age Stone Vertical Epic 07.07.07 for a year before we filled them with Stone Old Guardian Barley Wine. I don’t think too much of the Belgian beer flavor shows up in the barley wine, but most of the red wine and much of the wood flavor had already been leeched from the barrels, making for a subtle effect. What does this mean for you? Go a bit light on the oak, and use a mellow red wine. I’ve heard air stones are useful in simulating the gentle oxidation that comes with barrel aging, so you might consider that as well.

So here's my plan, I'm going to take some lightly toasted french oak chips(1 to 1.5oz) and soak them in either Seven Deadly Zins or a Francis Coppola Pinot Noir. I'm thinking of putting the oak chips and wine in one of those ziplock vacuum seal bags to reduce the oxidation of the wine, and increase the penetration into the oak.


I'm still on the fence about taking an airstone attached to a piece of tubing ran through the middle of a stopper and left open ended for a gentle oxidation effect. Anyone have any experience with anything like that? Couldn't I just let a small amount of air into the carboy by gently swishing it with the air lock off to achieve the same effect?


btw I'm still open to suggestions for what type of wine to use. I'm thinking a $25 or less bottle. I'm wine stupid so I'm not real sure if my 2 above choices are very mellow, I just know I like them.
 
If it was me personally I would skip out on the airstone, just doesn't sound kosher if not used with proper awareness. I wouldn't try to intentionally oxidize the beer at all for that matter, for as long as your aging it, it will happen to some extent naturally. Although I think the sherry flavors of oxidation would compliment the beer, I wouldn't risk over doing it.

La Crema is a pretty smooth, low tannin pinot noir for about 20 bucks, i've had the coppola but don't remember it, just that I liked it but not as much as the crema. I think toasting the oak is a good idea, are you gonna add just the oak after its soaked, or throw in some of the wine too? I'm thinking, add the oak, then taste the left over wine, perhaps even add some to a glass of barleywine to get an idea of the combination, and if it tastes good throw some of the wine in too.
 
I don't know about wine, but I'm about to rack a barleywine onto 3oz Med toast american oak cubes that has been soaking in Makers and age it for a year. Wish I had thought of wine, I have a great homemade red blend in the cellar that would be good for that. Maybe next time.

I wouldn't use an expensive bottle of wine since you're not putting a lot in the beer. Don't go with wine in a box but don't go nuts on a $30 bottle. If it was me, I would probably use a Cab or Cab/Merlot.
 
It's been shown that a Plastic "Ale Pale" has a higher oxygen permeation than an Oak Barrel. (Yeah, I didn't believe it either!) I've seen it mentioned on this site as well as a previous podcast of BrewStrong. I'd just rack it in to a bucket on top of the oak chips if you are thinking of the airstone idea. Just my $.02.
 
I Think I will try red wine aged oak chip in my next Barley Wine. I have one barley wine aging now and I used 1.5.oz of American Oak chips that soaked in 5 oz of Jameson 18 year old whiskey for a month before going into the secondary.
 
Are you also going to be adding the wine that you are soaking the chips in? From what I understand the wine takes on the wood flavor and the wood takes on the wine flavor.
 
Are you also going to be adding the wine that you are soaking the chips in? From what I understand the wine takes on the wood flavor and the wood takes on the wine flavor.

:drunk: No more for you, it's only 11am and you're contradicting yourself! :drunk:
 
Okay yall asked, so here's an update...

I brewed this beer back in early August. I gave it about a month in primary, then racked it to secondary where it sat for another month. Then I added 2oz medium toast Hungarian oak cubes that had a 2 week sit on about 4 oz's of French Cab.

I left the oak cubes(+wine) on it for about 2 months then bottled.

Its drinking pretty good right now. As far as the red wine oak aging I'm satisfied with the result, it's definitely more oak-y than red wine-y. Since I had such low attenuation the beer is pretty dry to begin with and the red wine really comes through on the dry side as well with a definite faint cab flavor. The oak is still a bit strong but I feel this beer is still a bit green and the oak will fade to a nice level as this beer ages.

Overall I feel like I missed the mark with my barley wine since I didn't do any of the dry hoping that I had originally planned for. I had to bottle sooner than I wanted because I had to move houses. So I bottled instead of racking a 3rd time just to get it off the oak. It came out a lot more English style than I'd have liked but its still pretty tasty.
 
Glad it turned out well, Let us know how it changes when It ages down the road. I am sure it will keep getting better.
 
Very interesting...

I got some french oak chips that came with my kit.

I'm thinking of soaking them in some red wine now in a baby food jar.

Just thought I would mention that supposedly bottle caps(and I'm assuming the lid on a baby food jar) lets in a very very very tiny amount of air with temp changes, so this might be more ideal to simulate the barrels breathing than a vacuum sealed bags.

You were also probably better off using the cubes than chips( i already have the chips so will use them). Cubes are supposed to be more complex and Oak flavor leeches in slower.
 
Just a quick update: I'm very happy to report that nearly a year after I originally brewed this beer it is now pretty awesome!

After first bottling it I wasn't very happy with it, but some age sure is doing my red wine oak aged BW some justice.
 
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