I'm going to soak 4oz of cocoa nibs and a little bit of vanilla bean in bourbon to put in the secondary. I was wondering how much bourbon to use? I want to taste the bourbon but more on the light side.
What is your batch size and what style of beer are you adding this to? From my experience doing an imperial porter, a 5 gallon batch will have a mild bourbon flavor when 8 - 12oz of bourbon is added to it. Palates can differ though so you could always just use enough bourbon to cover the beans, soak either a few days to sanitize or a few weeks to extract, and then put it into secondary. After a certain amount of conditioning time in secondary you can try a sample and add more bourbon to taste.
OK thanks. With that in mind, my advice would remain the same as I previously replied. I'm sure others will chime in with some great recommendations as well. Good luck with your brew!
I recently racked a one gallon test batch of a 7% American-style stout onto 25 oz. of oak chips soaked in 2 oz. of bourbon to finish for two weeks in secondary. While the aroma was pleasant, it wasn't as bourbon-like as I would have preferred. Not sure if this helps, but next time I will definitely bump up the amount of bourbon I use.
Do you possibly mean 2oz of oak chips soaked in 25oz of bourbon? I ask because I've never heard of anybody adding 25oz of oak to a beer (especially in chip form) and I can't imagine that much oak fitting in 2oz of bourbon.
That's still a lot of oak chips for a 1 gallon test batch (most recipes call for 1oz of oak chips in a 5 gallon batch) and it would be hard to soak that much oak in just 2oz of bourbon.
