Wood Aging Imperial Stout - Contact Time

[Vintage63]

I just brewed an imperial stout and racked to secondary. This is my first attempt at wood aging the beer and added a medium toast plus french oak stave to the 5 gallon carboy I got from More Beer. Their website says that the contact time should be similar to that of cubes.

My question is: Is there a rule of thumb to go by in terms of a minimum amount of contact time? I plan to taste the beer as it ages, but just curious if I should wait 2 weeks, 2 months, etc.?

Any thoughts on this from the forum?

 

[Just-a-sip]

Although I dont know much at all about aging stouts or even beer for that matter on wood, I do have an extreme amount of experiance aging spirits on oak. Now im not sure how it would translate to brewing, but I wiuld assume that alcohol is alcohol. Now it that practice adding toasted wood has many factors to include length of time, temeratur variances, how many uses the staves had prior. But the best rule of thumb was at least a month and then by taste. See you need the alcohol to hace time to be obsorbed I to the wood to extract all the vanillans, almond, and woody charicteristics it can. For spirits temperature was a huge factor because in colder temps the wood would obsorbed amd then excrete in the warming process. Think of whiskey makers aging in barrels open to the elements in old barns and warehouses. The charicter is gained from time and temperature. Of course there are other factors like temperatur and lengh of toasting process but all that is a little more advanced.

Now again im not sure how any of this transfers to brewing but I think it would be similar in that while I. The secondary and the cold crashing process you would see enough temperature variance to allow for good flavor transfer. So in short, I would just let it sit 3-4 weeks then taste as needed but for 5 gal to 1 stave your probably looking at 2 months min for enough surface contact and flavor exchange.

 

[brewinginnc]

I just used 1oz of chips on my ris and 7 days was enough. Haven't used a stave before though. I know its not the same but good luck.