Bourbon Barrel Aging

Do you pre-boil your oak?

 

If you're going to soak your oak in spirit and then add the oak and liquid to your fermentation vessel or bottling bucket I would suggest doing a pre-soak of the oak first (With a cheap ass schwill whiskey- of course) and discarding the tannin rich liquid first and then doing another soak and using that.

Better yet is to simmer your oak on medium heat for 10-20 minutes and remove the excess tannin and then go about your soak as usual. This way you don't waste any spirit/time.

That being said, you CANNOT get the flavor profile, mouth-feel and nuance of barrel aged beer without the barrel. You can get close, but it's just not the same. I've worked with barrels and chips/spirals/cubes/staves/etc for a long time now and the barrel is king.

Any barrel less than 5 gallons volume is also hard to attain a good flavor profile with as well. Too much surface area of the beer coming into contact with the wood.

I like 8 and 10 gallon barrels, easy to fill, can still lift them and move around and they taste great.

True 55 gallon barrels are the best. They are magical.

 

I brewed a Bourbon Barrel Porter a few years ago using oak cubes. I pre-soaked the cubes in Jim Beam Bourbon for a few days and discarded that liquid. I then soaked the cubes in Makers Mark Bourbon. I was happy with the results of this process.

Cheers!

 

I have not used new oak chips/spirals; I should have mentioned that I use Jack Daniels barbecue oak chips and don't feel a need to pre-boil them because they are made from chipped-up used bourbon barrels. I use Jack Daniels whiskey as my liquid so that I stick with the same whiskey flavor. (Although using that specific whiskey is probably no big deal.)