Adding Oak to a Helles

Never brewed a helles , but have Oaked stouts and barley wines.
Usually I use 4 oz od oak or oak and sugar maple for 2 weeks up to 1 month. Oak is noticeable but not overwhelming. I use medium toast wood to I'm sure the results would b different if you had a heavy charred wood.

 

I think 1 oz would be a good place to start. And yes, you would want to be much more careful with oxidation as opposed to a stout or BW. I would add the oak to a keg, that way you can sample without exposing to oxygen. Then when you think it’s ready, keg hop it to a serving keg.
For the record, I don’t think an Oaked Helles sounds that good. But it’s your beer man. Cheers!

 

I often brew a Helles, but would never consider adding oak to it. The whole point of a Helles IMO is it's light and gentle malt flavor. But it's your choice, and if I were to do it, I would go very light on the oak 1 ounce or less. A trick with using oak cubes that I discovered on my own: take a chisel and hammer and chop each cube in half. This provides a nice caramelly flavor from the inside of the cubes. It also gives more exposure (12 sides rather than 6).

 

@OldBrewer Oaked pale lagers are delicious. I've had some excellent foeder-fermented ones lately. You should give one a try sometime.

 

I’ve had some great Foeder fermented lagers and some bad ones. The bad ones taste like Oak.. way too strong. The good ones have a very subtle character that has a positive affect on the mouthfeel and texture but it’s hard to actually pinpoint the oak.

Hill Farmstead Poetica and Rhetorica are fermentered in stainless the transferred to an Oak Puncheon for months to lager, then transferred back to stainless and Krausened for carbonation. These beers were insanely soft but have virtually no oak charter.

I haven’t had the Three’s Foeder lagers. I’ve had a few from Cerebral that weren’t that good.

I had The Tree House Foeder fermented lager that was phenomenal. A very light oak tannin structure and wonderful mouthfeel.

A lot of the lager purists think the wood lager lagers are dumb. They contend that while lagers did used to be made in wooden vats, those vats were pitch lined so there was really no oak/wood character to them. Notch will soon be releasing another round of their Pitch Lined Pils which I would love to try one of these days.

You could do two things. You could add 2oz of light/medium toast oak cubes (never chips) to primary and let it ferment on the oak and then continue on as normal. You could add oak chips to a keg and lager in that. When you think the beer has the character you’re going for you can transfer to another keg and krausen it. There’s a krausening calculator on brewers friend. If you haven’t krausened a lager yet I’d highly suggest it. Foam and mouthfeel really benefit from it.

I wouldn’t use more than 2oz of cubes regardless.

 

I've never tried one, and have never seen one, but may try a small batch some time.

 

Yeah @wasatchback, I definitely should have said "can be delicious" as they can easily be too much.

 

I've had Helles from wooden barrels in Munich. No oak flavor as those are lined with pitch. Some say the pitch adds subtle flavor, but I haven't noticed anything.

Firestone Walker has the DBA, which is a pale ale that has been in barrels (or part of it was). I found that to be very enjoyable, but the base beer would be a British Pale Ale with more flavors than a Helles.

Do it, it is your palate and beer.

 

Oaked lagers are amazing man. The onsite only oak lagered beers I've had from Hill Farmstead have been amazing. I had a mead barrel lager from Wren House that was one of my favorite beers from last year. So seconding @wasatchback here.