Love it! Someone here has to know! It is primarily used to increase the amount of surface area the yeast has to be in contact with the beer. Depends on perspective, a little bit of both? My basement sits at around 58F — 60F, give or take. The cubes are toasted, and since they are thicker they have a gradient of flavor impact, so you want them in there longer to get all that wood goodness.
In my experience. Nice work! I have used two methods of adding wood. I have toasted oak chips dry in a skillet then added to Bourbon, then added both oak and Bourbon to beer. And I have used a blow torch to toast the oak chips then added to Bourbon, then added both Bourbon and oak chips to beer. I have not yet tried not toasting or not bourboning. I enjoy the char flavor. Both these methods worked great. Great experiment! It would be cool to see the difference contributed by different types of oak alternatives.
Another vector for faster wood maturation is lower pH, so sours tend to get more from the wood faster than beers of a regular pH. Nice one. Would be interesting to see this done with two 18 month old barley wines — 1 on oak the whole time, the other on oak for a month or two. Do you have any plans to Exbeeriment with the difference in toast levels of the wood cubes?
My understanding was that the charred inside of a barrel acted as a filter. Does the char also impact the flavor? Thanks for all the fun. I was wondering if wood-ageing provides some stability for long term storage. Tannins acting as anti-oxidants. I know not all are created equal. Is it me, or does boiling the cubes for 10 minutes seem excessive? I only boiled water in the boundary waters to sanitize for 5 minutes.
How much wood flavor is lost with the tannins in the boil? I love his full flavors. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. OG Est. FG ABV 5 gal 60 min Click pic for Thermapen review.
High alcohol beers are also often sweet so an oaky vanilla tone can help counter or balance that. One more thing about the kind of wood - charring. When oaks barrels are used for making bourbon the inside is charred as strangely this helps with aging.
Different amounts of charring will have different effects on your beer. The more charred or burnt your wood is, the more strong the flavors and smells that are imparted into the beer. Should I use wood chips or cubes or spirals?
We prefer chips over cubes as you get more surface area exposure. Your local homebrew store may have all three readily available on hand but Amazon will see you right too. Using oak chips Wood chips are essentially shards of wood that you add to your fermenter or secondary in order to achieve the level of barrel flavor you desire. Chips offer a greater surface area that's exposed to the beer than cubes.
Wood chips are probably going to float and that means a lot of oak will be making contact with the air in the fermenter and not imparting oaky goodness into the beer. So a handy tip is to place the chips into a clean and sterile hop bag and then weigh the bag down with something heavy and inert such as a glass marble or three. Make sure the marbles are sterilized! It's a really good idea to do this as picking stray oak chips out of your tubing or bottling wand will be a pain in the ass.
They will sink to the bottom of your fermenter, won't get stuck in your tubing and many brewers prefer to use cubes over chips because the amount of surface area to beer ratio is easier to determine on a cube than a chip.
Not that it's really a big deal. Using spirals. The amount of chips to use is not an exact science. I've seen recommendations that range from grams per 5 gallons. Remember this is largely to taste - especially if you are using the tea making method. We would, however, recommend you start light and add more as you get more experienced and learn the effect of whatever form of oak you are using. I've never done it but you could potentially skip the oak and just add bourbon to your brew directly!
You'd have to experiment a bit so maybe split your wort into a few small units, or add a small amount in the first instance and build to taste. Making an oak tea There are a few ways to add the oak flavor to your beer and making an 'oak tea' is an easy way. Simply boil the oak chips and make sure they are covered in an inch of water. Once the tea is made, add a bit of the water to your beer in the fermenter and then taste it.
Making a tea is much faster than aging with oak, and also lets you more closely control the flavor. The boiled tea will also be sterile but don't confuse it for some medicinal brew! Speaking of tea - did you know you can make hops tea for brewing? We exclusively age in 10 and 20 liter medium-charred Oak Barrels. It requires slightly more maintenance, however they are so versatile and give us the ability to layer various flavors that we could never accomplish by using chips or spirals.
Follow BeerSmith The use of oak and other woods in flavoring beer has enjoyed a resurgence recently among home brewers and some micro breweries. When To Use Oak Oak flavor does not match every single beer. Types of Oak There are many types of oak though the three most popular are American, Hungarian and French. Forms of Oak for Homebrewing Oak Chips — These are the most popular form used in home brewing — typically the chips are sold in a bag and look like wood shavings.
The small chips have a large surface area which delivers the oak flavor to the beer quickly. The only disadvantage is that the small chips can be hard to separate from the finished beer, so it is important to have them in a grain or hop bag so they can be easily removed after aging.
Oak Cubes — Packages of cubes are also widely available from home brewing supply shops. They work similarly to chips but take longer to impart their flavor as they have much less surface area than oak chips.
However the advantage of cubes is that they can easily be separated from the beer when you are finished aging. Spirals — Though less common that cubes or chips, spiral cut oak is a compromise that offers a large surface area similar to chips, but are still easy to remove like cubes.
Therefore they still impart flavor to the beer quickly but allow for removal. Their only disadvantage is that they are more expensive than chips or cubes.
Oak Essence and Oak Powder — Oak essence such as Sinatin 17 is a liquid flavor extract that can be stirred in at bottling time to taste. Oak powder is similar — essentially it is a powdered oak flavor stirred into the beer. Both work instantly and can be added in small amounts to taste. Barrels — Oak barrels offer both unique opportunities and challenges. They are generally pretty expensive to purchase unless you get a great deal on a used one, but they offer a lot of potential for reuse.
They can be a challenge however, as older barrels can get infected, can leak, allow some oxygen in, and may have their own flavors depending on what they were previously used for. Wine barrels should be sanitized before use, and any barrel needs careful maintenance.
Finally it can take some time often months to achieve the desired flavor, particularly for larger barrels.
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