Vanilla beans.

[mikek]

Going to be racking a massive RIS into secondary for several months. Near the end was thinking of taking oak spiral and soaking in bourbon with a couple vanilla beans in the bourbon as well. Was then going to add only the oak. Any thoughts on that plan and would anyone do it differently?? Also does anyone sterilize the oak and the beans beyond the effects of the bourbon??

 

[butterpants]

Bourbon is usually around 90 proof and going to kill just about anything..... plus you're putting it into a high alcohol brew with a ton of hops. It'll be fine.

Your plan sounds fine

 

[unionrdr]

Soak the oak & cut/scraped vanilla beans in the bourbon for a couple weeks before hand. It needs time to soak the flavors out of the wood & beans.

 

[LLBeanJ]

The bourbon will sterilize the oak and vanilla. It will also pull all the flavor out of the oak. After a few weeks of soaking, toss the oak in the trash, filter the vanilla solids from the bourbon with a coffee filter or something similar and just add the the oak and vanilla flavored bourbon to the bottling bucket or keg right before you transfer your beer.

 

[craigger64]

Would it be prudent to soak the oak and vanilla in the bourbon right in the secondary vessel (sanitized and sealed up tight, of course) so that they are already in that vessel when it's time to rack from primary?

 

[LLBeanJ]

I suppose you could do that, but we're only talking about ~8 oz (give or take) of bourbon for a 5g batch, so you may not get full submersion of the oak in a large vessel. Also, I've found that the vanilla will clump and can result in floaties if not filtered first. Whether or not it is an issue is really just personal preference. I like to filter it out once the flavor has had some time to transfer to the liquor. Another benefit to adding the bourbon to the beer at packaging is that you can hold some back (like maybe half) and then add more to taste if needed rather than committing to the entire amount, which might give more flavor than desired.

There's no single right way to do it. I've done it using a couple different methods and I've found that I prefer adding the liquor at packaging. YMMV.

 

[unionrdr]

I soak the oak in liquor in a tightly sealed container in the fridge during primary fermentation. Then pour through a sanitized hop sack into secondary,bagging the chips as well,tie off & drop in. Vanilla beans need to be filtered out & just use the liquor.

 

[heckler73]

i did a 5G batch of dry stout by splitting it in half in secondary - 2.5G with whisky/oak and 2.5G with whisky/oak/vanilla. Although it was a great idea to get 2 different beers, the vanilla version was much better.

 

[unionrdr]

I soaked the vanilla beans in vodka for a couple weeks & used it in a robust porter.

 

[mikek]

I like this idea. I don't need to open and add it to the secondary at all and thus no added O2... Would you do 8 OZ like you said??? Two beans???

 

[LLBeanJ]

I've found the 8 oz in a 5g batch gives a nice bourbon flavor without being over the top. Two beans seems to be about right, as well.

 

[unionrdr]

Yeah,two beans worked out just right for my Snowdrift Porter last winter.