Oak aging a sour

How long should I keep oak on my sour? I'm doing a La Folie clone and it's been fermenting for about 3 months now. The recipe that I found indicated to oak it after about 3 months, but I know with other beers I've only kept it on oak for about 2 to 3 weeks. This sour still has another 7 months of fermenting, so I don't want to put it in too early. Also, do I have to worry about disturbing the pelicle? Theres a nice white bubbly blanket on top of the beer. Thanks for your help!!

For oak I usually add it when the beer goes into secondary and leave it there until either the beer is ready to bottle/fruit/blend, or the oak character starts getting too strong. I tend to use about one ounce of oak cubes, boiled or steamed for a few minutes first. La Folie spends up to three years in oak foeders, expected contact with old/mellow oak. I think you get better flavors from longer with less oak, lots of oak for a short time makes a beer taste like lumber in my experience.

Don't worry about disturbing the pellicle, it'll re-grow.

Don’t put your sour on too much of a schedule. With mixed fermentation you really need to judge when a beer is ready using gravity and your palate.

Sweet, thanks for the info. I'm soaking the chips in some wine for a week or two. I'm replacing the wine every couple days to mellow out the oakiness. I made the mistake of trying the wine after about 3 days on oak, boy was that a mistake!! This is my first attempt at a sour, so I appreciate the info!

BSquaredBrewing said:

Sweet, thanks for the info. I'm soaking the chips in some wine for a week or two. I'm replacing the wine every couple days to mellow out the oakiness. I made the mistake of trying the wine after about 3 days on oak, boy was that a mistake!! This is my first attempt at a sour, so I appreciate the info!

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Your last post mentioned using oak chips, just wanted to note that Oldsock's comment regarding time on oak was using oak cubes. The difference between cubes & chips can be rather stark as chips impart much more flavor, more quickly.

For a sour beer, I would also recommend low & slow with cubes mentioned by Oldsock.

Yikes, I just saw that. I already have the chips soaked in the wine for about a week now. What if I cut the chips down? I was thinking 1oz instead of the 3oz of cubes?

The difference between cubes and chips is in speed and complexity, not intensity. Cubes will give you all the flavor that chips will; they'll just take a little longer getting there. That doesn't exactly answer your question, but I would use a smaller amount for a longer time. If you have 7 months to go, obviously you're in no hurry. Drink the wine, it will give you some idea how much oak flavor you are losing with each successive soak.