Oaked Tripel

[Bennywisest]

Hi everyone,

I am planning on brewing a Belgium Tripel that I want to add Chardonnay soaked Oak cubes. I originally planned on adding 2 oz of Med Toast French Oak Cubes after fermentation.

MY LHBS only carried med toast French Chips. Everything I've read says that the chips will impart oak very quickly. I still plan on soaking the chips in Chardonnay, but I am not sure how much oak chips to use (they came in 4 oz packs) and for how long should I add the chips to the beer?

I am probably going to age the bottles for several months before drinking. I want it to have some oak flavor but not overpower.

Also this is my first time using the oak chips. Should I boil them first or will Chardonnay be enough to sanitize?

Thanks in advance.

 

[fogley]

The advantage of adding cubes is you can pull your beer off when you hit the desired amount of "oakiness". I have experienced the quick and overpowering oak from chips... however you can work around it. The chips release everything fast so I would recommend undershooting heavily especially since its a light beer like a tripel. Maybe start with a 1/2 oz or even a 1/4 ounce (really all depends on level of oak you want - personal taste varies)... I've had a single ounce go over the threshold I wanted. Tasting once a week should give you a good idea (the chips will do their work fast). You can always add more if you want, but you can't remove the oak taste.

The wine soak or liquor soak will sanitize, but you really shouldn't run into any infection problems because a tripel will have quite a bit of alcohol. However it is frequently recommended to boil your chips/cubes for 10 - 15 minutes first inorder to remove some excess tannins and that tree taste you really don't want, so in my opinion definately boil them first.

Hope that helps, I bet it will be a tasty beer !

 

[fogley]

edited previous post

 

[Bennywisest]

Thanks fogley!

 

[kagythings]

I got a recipe for a tripel here on HBT and decided to split the batch. After primary fermentation was completed I put part of the tripel into a 3 gallon better bottle and really wanted to try making an oaked tripel so I put the rest of my split batch into a secondary with medium american oak chips. I had 8.5 quarts of beer on 1.2oz of oak chips for 12 days and it has a noticeable oak flavor but not over done. I soaked the chips in vodka like I read on HBT to sanitize and not impart any other flavors. I just bottled yesterday so I won't know how the finished product turns out until around Christmas due to my schedule. The sample I tried yesterday was excellent and hope the oak flavor doesn't mellow too much. If it happens to be overpowering I will have the rest of the tripel bottled plain that I can mix with it to test the ratio that I like. I hope your oaked tripel turns out well.

 

[el_kirk]

So how did this turn out?

 

[kagythings]

So how did this turn out?

I tried the regular Tripel first and it tastes amazing. The oaked version is a bit strong at this point but it hasn't had much time to allow the flavors to blend and mellow. I have my hopes up for it to mellow out but it's still beer and doesn't taste bad, just could be better. I'm away from home for a bit longer but when I get home I was thinking about trying to blend the oaked version with the plain Tripel to see how the flavor changes.