Oak cubes and bourbon addition to imperial stout

[Trails_n_Ales]

I just brewed the below recipe and wanted to add some oak cubes and bourbon to secondary. I currently have american medium toast oak cubes soaking in 12oz of Old Forester bourbon. Any experience using oak cubes and adding bourbon? How long to age on the oak? How much bourbon to add? I want this to be a balanced beer.

FWIW I am willing to let this age up to a year.

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 5.5 gal
Boil Size: 6.5 gal
OG: 1.082
Estimated Color: 37 SRM
Estimated IBU: 87 IBU

Ingredients:
------------

17.00 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) UK Grain 81.93 %
.75 lb Roasted Barley Grain
.75 lb Special B Malt Grain 4.82 %
.25 lb Chocolate Malt Grain 3.61 %

3.00 oz Challenger [7.20 %] (60 min) Hops 59.1 IBU
2.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.80 %] (30 min) Hops 28.2 IBU

2 Pkgs English Ale S-04
OG – 1.082 10/28/17

 

[Trails_n_Ales]

I should also mention that i have 3oz of oak cubes soaking in bourbon. Should I add all of this oak?

 

[radwizard]

I like to boil my cubes first, and take some of the flavor down. I've used about a cup of spirits with them before and was pleased with it. I've over oaked before and had to age further in a keg to get the flavor down.

If you are going for a year, you could probably taste it ever three months and get it off the oak if it gets to strong.

 

[Trails_n_Ales]

I like to boil my cubes first, and take some of the flavor down. I've used about a cup of spirits with them before and was pleased with it. I've over oaked before and had to age further in a keg to get the flavor down.

If you are going for a year, you could probably taste it ever three months and get it off the oak if it gets to strong.

So do you think 3oz is good and just taste as it goes? Would the beer get too oaky if i leave it sit on oak for 10mo or so? or would it mellow out?

12oz of bourbon too much? or taste test it?

 

[Morrey]

Real easy to over oak since you are working with a very dominate flavor profile. I made a tincture with oak spirals for a Porter and got mine too oaky. Take advice from radwizard and boil the cubes to leach out some of the harsher tannins. Using a tincture is good since you can add slowly to taste and just don't just dump the whole tincture in at once.

I saw another person say they soaked the cubes in bourbon and threw out that first tincture batch. The second infusion was more mellow and nicer to use...but I think boiling may do the same and save the cost of wasted bourbon.

 

[MaxStout]

I did an RIS a few years ago, with bourbon oak cubes. It was a 5.5 gal batch. I soaked 2 oz. of med. toasted Am. oak cubes in a small jar with about 4 or 5 oz. of Maker's Mark. I soaked the cubes for 2 weeks, then dumped it, whiskey and all, into the fermenter right when I racked to secondary. I then let the beer bulk age another 3 months in secondary. I did not boil the cubes. I thought the bourbon oak was a right balance.

Three oz. oak with 12 oz. whiskey might be a bit much for your RIS. Perhaps dump in half the whiskey and put only some of the cubes in a dry hop bag into the fermenter. Draw a small sample after a couple months and taste.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I'm doing a medium stout that's been aging in a corny with 1 oz of bourbon soaked medium oak cubes since the beginning of august (along with 16 oz of bourbon and 3 vanilla beans).

It's probably a bit more oaky than I planned, but still tasty. I plan to bottle very soon. I would not do the whole 3 oz unless you do something to tame it down a bit or only plan to oak for awhile.

You could do all 3 and plan to remove them in pretty short order (weeks), then bulk age for the another few months to a year.

 

[Trails_n_Ales]

I think i'll cut this in half and use 1.5oz oak and 6oz. bourbon and taste along the way.

 

[anteater8]

I just posted this is another thread but it seems relevant here too:

I think the oak is probably fine to use but I would not use the bourbon. The bourbon will have extracted the harsher tannins from the oak, making the oak better but the bourbon worse. Add fresh bourbon after the beer is oak aged.

I have experimented with oaking strong ales over 7-8 batches now and I'm pretty happy with the process I've landed on. I have only used this on 10-14% stouts and barleywines.

1) Use 0.25 oz medium toast American oak cubes per gallon of beer
2) Boil the oak cubes in water for 3 minutes before adding to beer (to remove the tannins)
3) Let your beer sit on oak in secondary for a minimum of 6 months, longer is better. You may be able to get oak flavor using more oak over less time, but it won't taste taste as complex. This will get you those vanilla & coconut flavors that you're going for.
4) Add bourbon or whatever spirit to taste at bottling/kegging. You have more control over each variable this way, I don't see any benefit to soaking oak in spirits. I recently used 2oz/gal in an 11% barleywine and 2.7oz/gal in a 13.8% stout, so it depends on the strength and intensity of the beer to get the right balance.