Steeped the Oak Chips for Whisky Barrel Stout

[jasper_brewer]

I was following a recipe for Whisky Barrel Stout and I did not read the instructions properly(my fault).
I put the chips with grains in the steeping bag and steeped for 20 minutes at a temperature around 165-170 F.
Will this be harmful for health?
Will it still taste like oak?
I feel it will make the beer bitter.
My OG is higher than what the recipe mentions. Recipe mentions 1.06-1.065, but my OG is 1.12

 

[Kickass]

Will this be harmful for health?

I doubt it. If it’s safe to contact your beer at one particular point, it’s likely safe throughout the process.

Will it still taste like oak?

Maybe. I doubt it. Those flavor compounds are probably driven off during the boil. Which leads to the next question.

I feel it will make the beer bitter.

Very likely that the flavors are gone and you’re left with a little extra oak tannin bitterness

My OG is higher than what the recipe mentions. Recipe mentions 1.06-1.065, but my OG is 1.12

Was this an extract kit? I highly doubt your gravity was off by that much if you followed the recipe. If you ended up with half the volume or added double the extract then this is plausible. What’s more likely is that your wort wasn’t mixed when you drew a sample. Dense extract and light water stratify very easily. So if your sample wasn’t mixed well and/or came from the bottom you probably got a wildly inaccurate measurement.

Now, for the good news, it sounds like you’re well on your way to making perfectly acceptable beer! Cheers and welcome to HBT.

 

[Vopiscus]

A lot of people sanitize oak chips by boiling them for a few minutes and use the oak infused water in their beer. I'm assuming you tossed the oak chips along with the grain, so my main concern would be you didn't fully extract the compounds you wanted out of the oak such as the ones responsible for toasted coconut and spice notes.

In the future I'd recommend you pick up a reagent bottle or mason jar to extract the oak chips separately from the beer for a few weeks in a spirit base and then add it to the fermenter for a week or so. That way you pull out both the water soluble compounds and lactones that you only really get from a high alcohol extraction.

 

[Vopiscus]

In the future I'd recommend you pick up a reagent bottle or mason jar to extract the oak chips separately from the beer for a few weeks in a spirit base and then add it to the fermenter for a week or so.

Heh, didn't mean to quote myself. Been sampling a current brew and it's snuck up. But, yeah you can also add additional spices like vanilla or cacoa nibs to the oak you're extracting with this method.