Oak vanilla bourbon stout suggestions?

Im thinking to make a stout (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/extract-none-more-black-vanilla-stout-96969/) and then rack it into a secondary on top of bourbon oak chips and some vanilla beans. Anyone ever try anything like this before? would all those flavors risk washing each other out?

I was thinking i would have about 1 oz french oak with 2 split vanilla beans sitting in around 4-6 oz of bourbon (maybe scotch instead) for a week or two, and throwing all of that into the secondary with the stout for 3-4 weeks.

any suggestions/advice would be great!

I just did something very similar with my Oak Barrel Stout clone attempt.

Are you using oak chips or cubes? I used 1/2 ounce of untoasted oak and three vanilla beans for two weeks. It ended up being a little too woody and not much vanilla came through.

As for the bourbon, it won't sanitize the wood chips, I recommend steeping the wood chips in 170+ degree water for 30 mins or so. Anyways, don't think you will be washing things out if it is balanced. You can always add pure vanilla extract if you think the vanilla is understated. I plan on doing some testing with that on mine

im planning on using chips, just because i already have them. ive heard they impart flavor quicker so im thinking ill do 1 oz and taste testing every week or so until i hit what i want. im planning on toasting them just a little bit aswell.

Realized i didn't specify, but I used chips as well. If you use an ounce I'd check it at 3, 5, and 7 days. My 1/2 ounce for two weeks was REAL strong

hmmm...maybe ill knock it down to .5 oz and then try it after a week. id rather have it sit for longer and get the flavor i want than add a lot and drink wood.
thanks for then input!

OK, now you guys have me re-thinking my bourbon-oaking idea. I have 6 gallons of an imperial stout in the primary right now. And 3 oz of charred oak chips soaking in 8 oz of bourbon that I was going to toss into the 2nd for about a week before I kegged.

Am I crazy? I seem to recall added a couple ounces to one some time ago and not getting all that much flavor.

Oh, and so I don't completely hi-jack your thread, even though I don't like vanilla in my beer (from what I hear, you will get 'natural' vanillin from the oak bourbon interaction), I like the sound of 2 split beans in the bourbon.

A few ounces is great for cubes, but seems a lot for chips. I brewed an Oak Bourbon Vanilla porter back in October and it was epic. I primaried for 3 weeks, the secondaried on 1oz of oak for 10 days, with 2oz pure vanilla extract and 8oz bourbon. Unlike Brett, I can barely detect the oak, I woulda bumped it up a little. The vanilla & bourbon are noticable but suble. It was a strong porter though - 1.080 OG, so maybe that's our difference.

But, as Brett said, test it every few days and bottle when it's where you like it. With chips you should need 7-14 days max, anything longer and you risk woodchip beer.

OK, that makes me feel a bit better. The Imperial stout it's going into is 1.105 OG, so if you can barely detect it, at 10 days, 3 oz may not be to crazy given the extra gravity in mine.

Ya mine was about 5.8% alcohol so maybe thats why the oak was more prevalent. Additionally, when I soaked my oak chips in 180* water for 45 minutes, The resulting 8 ounces of water smelled, tasted, and had the color of bourbon, sans the alcohol of course! I think on the Wood-aging Brew Strong show they were saying you could add just an ounce or two of bourbon and it would impart enough flavor for it to be noticed. Can't hurt to have more! I love my bourbon There is a wood aging thread on HBT that gives the recommended dosages for chips, cubes, spirals etc. Also, the char/toast level affects the flavor a lot as well. I had untoasted oak so that might be another factor for why mine is pretty prevalent.

That makes sense - the toast & gravity should make a difference.
The nice thing about bourbon/vanilla is you can add on the low end of what you think you want when going to secondary, and you can always bump it up at bottling time. You can kinda cheat the same way with oak too - if you want more oak on bottling day, just make an oak tea and add that with your priming sugar. Easier to overdo it with that method though...

tytanium...did you use 1 oz chips or cubes? im aiming towards an OG around yours so going off what you did would be helpful.
they guy at my lhbs racked his imperial stout from his secondary to a whole new carboy ontop of 2 oz toasted french chips that had been soaked in JD and let the beer sit on it for 6 months. he said it was great, probably because it picked up alot of oak and then mellowed in that amount of time, but im not really a 6 month wait type of guy.

I used chips b/c they were cheapest & work in days, not months (wanted it to be ready for Christmas)

"Thunderbrew" Porter
15# Briess 2-row
0.5# Crystal 45
0.25# Crystal 120
0.75# Chocolate malt (Note: I skipped roasted barley b/c I don't like it)
Mashed @ 156 for an hour, single batch sparge. My liquid volume was high, so I boiled 90mins total.
1oz 6.8% Cascade @ 60 mins
1oz 5.8% EK Goldings @ 10 mins
1.080 OG, 1.018 FG, ~26 IBU
3 week primary at 63 degrees with fresh, washed WLP008 slurry (b/c that's what I had around). Meanwhile, soaked 1oz light toast American oak in 8oz Jim Beam White Label (i.e., cheap, but good oak bourbon) in mason jar.
Racked to secondary on top of oak chips & bourbon mixture + 2oz pure vanilla extract.
Bottled after 10 days in secondary. Primed with ~3oz priming sugar (low carbonation) and bottle conditioned for 3 weeks.
Turned out awesome for Christmas Eve dinner. Huge hit with the family.
I'm planning to age some to see how it changes, but will age in the bottle, off the oak. It was spectacular after only 3 weeks in the bottle though, ~7 weeks from brew date.

The oak was barely noticeable, so if (when) I brew it again, I'll probably bump up to 2oz oak. That said, I still had a lot of yeast in suspension that dropped out when racking, so it's possible my oak was covered with yeast. The reason for putting the oak/bourbon in first then racking the beer on top is that any dissolved CO2 in the beer off-gasses and purges O2 from the carboy, supposedly.

Thanks for all the info...very helpful

For my Oak-Nog stout I used 4oz bag of medium toast French oak chips soaked in 8oz of Rum and 2 split vanilla beans and it sat in secondary for 4 weeks and it came out amazing and no favors canceled each other out

one8tvw said:

For my Oak-Nog stout I used 4oz bag of medium toast French oak chips soaked in 8oz of Rum and 2 split vanilla beans and it sat in secondary for 4 weeks and it came out amazing and no favors canceled each other out

Click to expand...

That's good to hear. I'm going to be tossing 4 oz of dark roasted american oak chips and 8 oz of bourbon into my Imperial Stout.