slimpickins66
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- Mar 25, 2012
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So, I have read a lot of different ideas for adding a bourbon oaked flavor to a batch of beer. I had an idea for speeding up the process (a shortcut of sorts) and I would really like to get some opinions.
From what I've read, most people soak oak cubes in bourbon for a few weeks, then add infused bourbon and cubes to secondary. Then let everything sit in the secondary for many months, presumably to replicate the flavors of oak barrel aging.
My idea to shorten/simplify the process is to add oak cubes to bourbon and let the bourbon extract the oak flavors for a few weeks/months. Then, since I don't plan on using a secondary, I would add a few ounces of the oak infused bourbon to the bottling bucket when I add priming sugar and wort to be bottled.
I think this would allow me to:
1) Shorten the time needed to "oak" the beer, by eliminating the secondary;
2) Control the amount of oak flavor in the brew, by getting a sense of the intensity of the oak in the bourbon so that I can determine how much to add;
3) Always have oak infused bourbon ready to go, by keeping oak cubes in a bottle of bourbon and only using a few ounces for each batch. Presumably, the intensity of the oak flavor in the bourbon will increase over time so that I would need less and less for each batch.
Thoughts?
From what I've read, most people soak oak cubes in bourbon for a few weeks, then add infused bourbon and cubes to secondary. Then let everything sit in the secondary for many months, presumably to replicate the flavors of oak barrel aging.
My idea to shorten/simplify the process is to add oak cubes to bourbon and let the bourbon extract the oak flavors for a few weeks/months. Then, since I don't plan on using a secondary, I would add a few ounces of the oak infused bourbon to the bottling bucket when I add priming sugar and wort to be bottled.
I think this would allow me to:
1) Shorten the time needed to "oak" the beer, by eliminating the secondary;
2) Control the amount of oak flavor in the brew, by getting a sense of the intensity of the oak in the bourbon so that I can determine how much to add;
3) Always have oak infused bourbon ready to go, by keeping oak cubes in a bottle of bourbon and only using a few ounces for each batch. Presumably, the intensity of the oak flavor in the bourbon will increase over time so that I would need less and less for each batch.
Thoughts?
