Imperial Stout - Whiskey, Oak, and Vanilla

[FatDragon]

I just put down a first runnings imperial stout, and I'm planning on adding oak chips, whiskey, and vanilla beans in secondary (5 gallon carboy filled to the top). It will age for a year or so before becoming a regular drinker.

Recipe:
9kg Vienna,
500g Carabohemian (between CaraMunich III and CaraAroma)
700g Roasted Barley
500g Chocolate Malt
1kg oats
800g brown wheat malt (~90L, tossed in because it's been sitting - vacuum sealed - in my grain bin for a few years and this is probably the best chance to get rid of it)
Mashed at 69C
2 hour boil
22.5p/1.095 OG
~80-100 IBUs first-wort Calypso and no other hops
Fermenting around 17C with two packs of Nottingham.

I've got 70g medium toast American oak chips, five 10-13cm Madagascar vanilla beans (a bit runty), and a bottle of Jim Beam Rye whiskey. I plan on toasting most of the oak a bit in the oven and removing a bit at a time to achieve a variable toast level that should be more complex than just using regular oak chips, but other than that I'm looking for suggestions. How much whiskey, how much oak, how much vanilla, and how much time on the vanilla and whiskey should I go for in a beer that's gonna age another year or more? Right now I'm thinking 250ml whiskey, 50g oak, 3 vanilla beans (equivalent to 1.5-2 bigger beans), and 2 months in secondary (after soaking the oak and vanilla in the whiskey for a few weeks). How's that look? Will it mellow out too much before a year of aging? Too strong? Just right? I could use advice from anyone more experienced than me with whiskey, oak, and vanilla in beer, especially big imperial stouts like this one.

 

[snowtiger1987]

I would not put the raw whiskey directly into the beer. Use it to soak the oak chips and the vanilla beans. Then add those to the beer. You can even add the flavored whiskey too. For the vanilla amount, it just depends on how intense you want to vanilla character. I put one split vanilla bean in 5 gallons of my winter saison (big and black) for about 2 months and find the flavor quite noticeable.

 

[FatDragon]

I would not put the raw whiskey directly into the beer. Use it to soak the oak chips and the vanilla beans. Then add those to the beer. You can even add the flavored whiskey too. For the vanilla amount, it just depends on how intense you want to vanilla character. I put one split vanilla bean in 5 gallons of my winter saison (big and black) for about 2 months and find the flavor quite noticeable.

What do you mean by "raw whiskey" and "flavored whiskey"? The whiskey will be used to soak the vanilla and oak for a few weeks before going into the beer. At that point, would it be "flavored whiskey" by your definition? I'm also considering the possibility of using a portion of whiskey for a vanilla tincture with the bean/s and adding that to the beer, while holding back from adding the whiskey that is used to soak the oak, but that's only if I have good reason to believe that using that much whiskey is going to have too strong an impact on the beer's flavor.

As for your vanilla, do you have any idea about the size of your vanilla bean? My little understanding of vanilla beans is that longer beans also tend to be a bit meatier, so one 20cm bean might be the equivalent of three or four 10cm beans, rather than just two as one would generally expect. I'm also not sure what to expect in terms of aging so I'm flying a bit blind; what is noticeable after two months may be noticeable after a year, or it may be long gone by then, I just don't know.

 

[Calder]

I think Snowtiger means whiskey straight out of the bottle when he says 'raw', and flavored, when it has taken on some of the oak and vanilla characteristics.

You seem worried about the amount of Whiskey you plan on using. 250 ml is not much. I assume you are making 5 gallons, or roughly 50 x 12 ozs bottles. If you are making 50 bottles, that would mean each bottle would get 5 ml. That is a teaspoon. Do your own test. Pour yourself a beer and a teaspoon of Whiskey and see what effect it has, use your imagination to figure how it would play in your stout. I think you might want to change the amount upwards. I go roughly 500 ml/5 gallons for most beers I add Bourbon to.

 

[FatDragon]

I think Snowtiger means whiskey straight out of the bottle when he says 'raw', and flavored, when it has taken on some of the oak and vanilla characteristics.

You seem worried about the amount of Whiskey you plan on using. 250 ml is not much. I assume you are making 5 gallons, or roughly 50 x 12 ozs bottles. If you are making 50 bottles, that would mean each bottle would get 5 ml. That is a teaspoon. Do your own test. Pour yourself a beer and a teaspoon of Whiskey and see what effect it has, use your imagination to figure how it would play in your stout. I think you might want to change the amount upwards. I go roughly 500 ml/5 gallons for most beers I add Bourbon to.

That's a good point. I've had a couple whiskey beers that tasted like cold, bubbly bourbon and I didn't like them at all, so I'm a bit wary of overdoing it, but 5ml in each bottle is a good point. Between the three adjuncts, whiskey is the flavor that I want the least of. I want a hint of whiskey, but it's there as much to help sanitize and extract the flavors of the oak and vanilla as it is to lend its flavor to the beer. 250ml doesn't sound like too much to me now, but I don't think I'll go any higher than that.

Right now, my thinking is to use all 70-80g of the oak chips that I've got, either four or all five of the vanilla beans, and 250ml whiskey. Our glorified toaster oven is not at the house right now so I'm still waiting another day or two to get my variable toast on the oak chips. The vanilla beans should arrive by then as well, and then I'll get everything soaking in whiskey in anticipation of going to secondary sometime mid-December.

 

[MaxStout]

I did an oak/bourbon thing with an imperial stout a few years ago. Soaked 2 oz. medium-toasted cubes in about 8 oz. of Maker's Mark, but no vanilla. After soaking the cubes for about 3 weeks, I poured all of it into the secondary at the same time I racked the 5 gal. of beer into it. Aged it about 5 months. Just the right amount of oak and bourbon, IMO. But I've only done this once.

 

[FatDragon]

Thanks, @MaxStout - that sounds like a pretty close equivalent to what I'm thinking with the whiskey and oak, with the shorter time on my oak chips balancing out the reduced surface area on your oak cubes.

 

[FatDragon]

Well, my vanilla beans came in. I've never worked with vanilla beans before, but I was expecting a strong vanilla aroma when I opened up the sealed package. Nope, they're limp, pathetic little things that, when smelled up close, have a particular unappealing vegetal smell that my wife and I both find familiar but can't place. I was expecting meaty insides, too, but the insides are just full of these almost microscopic little dark brown balls that I assume are seeds. I cut them up and started them soaking in an ounce or so of whiskey just in case there's some miraculous transformation in the next couple days, but I'm not counting on it. Time to try to get my money back...

 

[FatDragon]

Living in China has its downsides. The site selling the vanilla beans had a note saying that because of the packaging and storage process, they wouldn't smell much like vanilla straight out of the package, but should be left out to dry for a while before use and the aroma will return. Not sure if it's total bunk or not, but they certainly haven't undergone that transition in the whiskey, and I can't exactly test it at this point. Buying stuff on the Chinese internet sometimes causes problems like this: there's way too much text for me to reasonably read every time I buy something as a non-native speaker, so when important instructions for using the product are built into it, sometimes I end up missing out and get screwed. Can't get your money back when you didn't read the instructions, either.

 

[anteater8]

Here are my thoughts on using oak and liquor in strong ales. I've zeroed in on this process after six or seven experiments and I'm pretty happy with it.

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.