Tips for oaking a brew?

[stuknkrvl]

Hey, good people! I have a four ounce bag of dark toasted French oak chips and I've been thinking about pulling a gallon from my next batch and putting it on the oak to see how it turns out.

Any advice on best spirits to use to sanitize the wood (vodka? light/dark rum? bourbon? and why is it your favorite?), how much to use, and how long to let it sit would be very much appreciated.

For what it's worth, next batch is a toss up between my RIS or my strong scotch ale, both recipes are in the OG 1.096 range and end up between 10 and 11%.

Thanks!

 

[Timberline]

I used oak chips in a recent batch of Bourbon Barrel Porter that's maturing in my cellar right now. As you can imagine from the name, I soaked them in a pint of Bourbon for about a week in a sealed mason jar. I set it on a shelf in the kitchen and shook the jar a little whenever I walked by. Can't tell you how it turned out yet since it won't be ready for first test until later this month, but based on guidance from others who made this recipe this was the consensus approach more or less. If you're not trying to add any flavoring beyond the oak, I'd use vodka though I could see doing the Wee Heavy with Scotch instead.

ETA: Just noticed you're talking about using this with a gallon from your bigger batch. For a gallon, I'd use only an ounce of those chips. Too much oak can result in too strong tannins in the beer; it might settle down with a year or so of aging but I'd go lighter.

 

[EtchyLives]

In the short term a little oak goes a long way. When I first did a Barleywine with 2 oz of oak cubes at 72°F I got a TON of oak flavor at 3 months of aging. These were the heavy toast cubes and were soaked in bourbon for about 3 weeks prior to dumping into the carboy. The second time I used oak I used 2oz at 50°F and let the beer age for 7 months and there was much less oak flavor.

Your oak chips have a lot more surface area than my cubes so I would recommend less weight. I would also recommend planning for a nice long, slow, cool aging in order to get a smoother oak flavor. I thought about trying a lighter toast but have quite a bit of heavy toast cubes left and wanted to experiment with these at different concentrations, times, and temps before I changed out the toast.