So I got a tincture going of 10 oz bourbon, 2 oz oak chips, and 2 chopped vanilla beans that I'm planning on adding to an imperial stout in about a month. (brewing it this weekend). I just plan on straining this out and adding to the bottling bucket with some cold-steeped coffee before racking the beer onto it. This is my first time doing the tincture method. Usually I will just add all of it to secondary and let it age on that for 2 or so months, but I really don't want to wait that long. I feel like with the tincture method, the bourbon will pull a lot of that oak/vanilla flavor with it when it's blended with the beer. I guess my question is.. has anyone noticed a difference in flavor from adding a tincture of oaked bourbon vs aging on oak for 1-2 months? It seems like it would pretty much be the same flavor-wise. Just seeing if anyone else has gotten good results with doing it this way. TIA
What you have described is precisely the way I will do it in the future. When I aged on oak directly the last time, putting oak cubes into all 5 gallons, I got contamination and ended up dumping the batch. Tincturing seems to provide safety, in that the alcohol prevents stuff from growing in there, plus it's a small amount so if the tincture went bad you could dump it, plus the alcohol pulls flavors out. In my view it's like a win-win-win all around. Cheers.
Yea, that's what I've been thinking. Plus why risk more oxidation by racking to secondary, and then have to wait an additional few months to get the flavors you want? While the beer's fermenting, the oak is infusing into the bourbon so we're getting two things done at once. I'm just hoping it infuses the same amount of flavor as bulk aging. I don't see why it wouldn't though.
I don't have experience with exactly what you are asking, but i have messed with tinctures quite a bit. My suggestion is to experiment with adding some of the tincture in different amounts to individual bottles, to get a sense of what they do. I was stunned by how much some of them worked, and some didn't, and you can save some disappointment by testing it out on some bottles so you can perfect it. You might even draw some samples and mess with it before I bottling to see how it will work in the context of the beer
I'm probably gonna add a half oz or so of the tincture to an Old Rasputin, or something similar, to taste test before I commit to dumping it all into the bottling bucket. I would be really pissed if it was over-oaked, or was too boozy because of the bourbon. I've done something similar to a porter before, so I'm thinking it'll be ok, but I'm with ya.. perfecting the amount is key.
