So i am following a Clone recipe of Deschutes Mirror Mirror barleywine. Mirror Mirror is aged in Bourbon barrels. The recipe calls for 8 oz of oak chips for 30 days i believe. I went an extra step and am now soaking them in Bourbon to really clone the recipe. Plus who doesn't like a good Bourbon Barrel barleywine? My question is this. Is this way too much chips or Bourbon. In order to get full coverage of the chips i had to use a whole 750ml bottle of Bourbon. I will be soaking them for a few days to a week. I have never pitched chips, so before i pitch them should i let them sit and dry/air out the Bourbon any? Or should i drain the remainder and toss them in wet? Am i asking for an over the top un-drinkable beer with this pitching rate of Bourbon and chips? The recipe is here. http://hopville.com/recipe/82604/american-barleywine-recipes/mirror-mirror-clone P.S. It has been in primary for 3 weeks and will be going to secondary once the chips are ready. This beer is tasting absolutely incredible. So far the best tasting homebrew I have ever made to date. it is currently at 1.020 and still moving slowly. Slight Belgian taste to it, with tons of flavor and a little alcohol/spice finish that is ever so subtle. The beer will also get its dry hop addition in the last week of secondary fermentation. Beer is not even close to being to dry and is still perfectly sweet. Sorry for the Novel here, but any thoughts on the process?
I'm thinking this is WAY too much bourbon. I just covered about 1 oz of chips and it took <50 mL of bourbon to easily cover them.
Also from what I've read on here 30days seems too long. Most use chips for like a week or two. Apparently it is very easy to over oak with chips.
That for sure sounds like too much bourbon to me. I did Denny Conn's Bourbon Vanilla Porter and added 13 oz of bourbon to a 5 gallon batch and it had a nice bourbon flavor. As for the chips I would add some chips and then taste periodically. 8 oz sounds like a ton. But you could add them all and just be sure to taste it often. Then when it gets to where you want it you can remove. One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten was in regards to adding spices but I think it applies to oaking as well - if the taste of the addition is too subtle you can always let it sit on the chips longer (or add more spice). If the taste is too strong there is little you can do.
Good ideas, the beer is pretty much done since i am at a lower gravity than my expected finishing gravity already. I think i will put it all in and rack it when it gets to my desired level of Bourbon flavor. The recipe says 8oz of chips but the how long part is unclear. It says 30 days next to it but that is all probably based on how long the beer takes to finish. The creator of the recipe claims it was very close to the original so it shouldn't have been to overpowering. On the subject of the Bourbon, the chips will still only soak in so much bourbon right? I love a good Bourbon barleywine so we will see. Maybe I will start out with just 4 oz. After all in the end I will probably recieve way more flavor from the Bourbon than the wood itself.
My local shop is advising me on a similar technique I am trying with a Scottish ale. They suggested a lot less wood, and to taste it starting at 5 days. It sounds like you have a really nice beer in the primary right now, so a conservative approach would not cause you any harm. If the bourbon & oak do turn out overpowering, the only thing you could really do to fix it is to blend it with another batch.
Any thoughts on if i should dry the chips for like an hour or something? or keep them wet to try and keep the bourbons alcohol
If this is only a 5 gallon batch, and you have an entire 750 ml bottle of bourbon in with the chips, you might want to strain them off and see how much bourbon ends up back in a measuring cup. That way you will know how much is soaked in, and you could still pitch some of the additional bourbon that you initially strained off if the flavor is not strong enough on tasting. I think the real point is that it is easier to start with less and add more of either of these ingredients than it would be to correct for adding too much initially. I would pitch the chips while still wet with the bourbon, but I would start with a small amount and taste it each time before adding more. No harm in having a longer secondary to gradually add more oak/bourbon until it's just right to your taste.
When I did a batch of an Imperial Stout, I separated 1 gallon to do on bourbon soaked French oak cubes. I used 1 oz of cubes and only a few ounces of bourbon to soak them in. The beer was super strong in both oak and bourbon flavors. And I like a nice bourbon barrel beer, but I'd definitely scale back next time I do it. So, for a 5 gallon batch, I think 8 oz of chips + 750 ml of bourbon is way too much.
How long did you let that 1 oz sit for? There will be plenty of drain out that is for sure. thanks for all of the advice. I will probably start small.
30 days is way too long and 8oz is way way way too much. Add an oz or 2 at the most and after a week I would start tasting it to see how close it is to being done. Chips impart their flavor very quickly because they have a very high surface area to volume ratio. Also if you add 750 ml of bourbon that beer is going to taste like bourbon and nothing else. Maybe 4 oz bourbon? Best strategy is to pull a sample at bottling and add measured amounts of bourbon till it tastes how you want it to. Then scale up.
I've added the equivalent of 2 oz bourbon-soaked lightly toasted American chips + the 'enough to cover' bourbon / 5G to the 2ndary for a barleywine. One week rest produced good results. Suitably subtle oak presence. Bourbon notes...while quite forward when young...fade / blend / mellow with the march of time. As others have wisely noted...better to come in 'under' than 'over.'
From the looks of it the 8 oz of chips will only have soaked 1/4- 1/2 of the Bourbon so it won't be like dumping a bottle in! I will start with a few oz of chips and go from there. Thanks
I would follow the advise of bgjohnston. Use the chips with whatever bourbon they have soaked up. if you use 8oz of chips, taste more frequently and pull off when you have the right oak amount as the more oak chips the faster it will flavor your beer. If you want to let it sit longer use less chips. Save the bourbon that was on the chips as it will have a nice little oak flavor to it. Make a scaled sample in a large measuring bowl and that way you can add bourbon at a scaled/known quantity, that you can taste on a small scale, and then calculate the equivalent to add into your full volume and viola!
