Liquor in the Secondary

[mortal888]

If I add Rum or Whiskey to the secondary, will it increase bottle conditioning time?

I made a Rum Amber with just rum barrel chips, but think i would like to add some real rum in the next batch. I already have an imperial porter that will take 3 months or so to be ready, so I'd rather not do another batch of long conditioning.

Also, how much rum do you think would be good for a 5 gallon batch if i'm still using the barrel chips too?

 

[unionrdr]

Soak the chips in some rum,maybe 3-4oz of chips to 3 jiggers of rum. You don't want a lot of liquor in the chips,it can get strong real quick. Soak them for at least a few days. Then pour all through a hop sock into secondary,tie of sack,& drop it in. Then rack beer onto them. The reason being that as the chips soak up rum,the rum soaks out resins in the wood that make flavor. I did it for 8 days,& it was pretty prevalent.

 

[solbes]

I'd go 1-2 oz of chips max, they have A LOT of surface area. Probably take just 1 week too, so sample often. I would be tempted to soak chips/cubes in rum for a week, then dump the rum. Resoak for a few days/1 week and pour the whole thing into your fermenter. I would go less than 5 oz of rum if you wanted this to meld into the background.

If you could go with wood cubes, then you could do longer soaks of up to a few months.

And I don't think this will greatly increase bottle conditioning time. In 5 gallons, you are only adding a few tenths of ABV %.

 

[unionrdr]

I wouldn't dump the rum & resoak. Your throwing away flavors from the wood that soak out while lquor & chips mingle. But even 2 or 3 ounces of chips to 3 jiggers rum would be fine if you want the wood/rum flavor more on the back.

 

[mortal888]

Ok, so it's better not to add any straight rum to the secondary? I was already successful in making a good beer with the last batch with just rum soaked chips, but have seen recipes that add straight liquor to the secondary. Mainly these were bourbon barrel porters and ales. I want to try this same technique with my favorite liquor, rum.

I'm back around to the original question. If I add liquor to the secondary will it increase the time needed to condition after in the bottle?

 

[unionrdr]

Either way,it depends on how much you add to secondary. If you go a bit lighter on the amount of rum/soaked chips added,it won't take as much aging to even out the flavors.