Aging on imperial stout soaked oak chunks

[CatsCradle]

Hi everyone ! I am trying to make a mead similar to pips obscure, a blueberry vanilla mead aged in a imperial stout barrel. I don’t have access to a barrel so my thinking was to fill a mason jar with an imperial stout and put some cubes of new American oak to condition . My question is will the beer spoil? I have had the oak sitting in the stout for about 2 months now, and am hoping to go another 3. The imperial stout is Bella expedition .Any thoughts on this

 

[evolutionary]

Should be ok. The beer will Oxidize a bit but as long as the container is ok then just dump in the wood when you’re ready to start. Pull it and bottle/keg as soon as the oak is enough.

 

[SimPilot]

I don't understand. Are you going to use Oak in mead after this? Isn't oak taste will be left with beer and you get empty tasteless peace of wood?

 

[kjdevault1]

This is done often for finishing spirits as well. You probably wouldn’t want to drink the beer after, but the wood will be fine. The beer won’t spoil to a point to be problematic, the process is actually pretty sciency deep and I don’t understand. You may look at heat and cold cycling the mix some too. It’ll force more liquid wood interaction. At a faster rate, allowing deeper penetration of the beer into the wood that you are then going to reuse.
There’s quite a bit of info on the details out there, homedistiller.org has many pages dedicated to the aging process that may help you.
You can probably use the beer on another round of wood after this one too with no problems.
The wood will be awesome after it’s done in the mead as well. As someone who makes whiskey, brandy, rum spirits, the wood would be great for aging a spirit.
- grab a cheap whiskey or rum when the mead is done. Reserve a bit as a control, and put the remainder on your used wood. Taste that after some time and see what you think compared to the control.