Having brewers' remorse. I brewed a farmhouse saison and put some chardonnay-soaked oak chips into it. i heated the oak chips up in a saucepan on my stove for 10 minutes, then put some chardonnay in it. i simmered it for 20-30 minutes. the chard turned brown, as expected. i used 1.9 ounces of oak chips for 5 gallons of White farmhouse ale yeast. plan was to ferment for 3 months. i'm now wondering if there's too much oak. i wanted things to be subtle. thoughts?
I think that 2 oz of chips in 5 gal for 2 months will not be very subtle. I used 2 oz cubes (which are supposed to be less intensly oaky) in a 5 gal batch of stout for 3 weeks and the flavor is very present.
Simple response, taste it. When it gets oaky enough pull the cubes out. Its pretty easy to over oak things unless your fairly vigilant about tasting it, to a point (i.e. taste it every day or two). One question, did you add the oak during primary fermentation or did you wait until it hit its final gravity? Your post almost sounded like you did the former.
correct. i started a previous thread and someone suggested adding it to the primary was fine. so now its day 3 of fermenting. its bubbling away. think my plan is to transfer it to a secondary in 2 weeks and let it ferment in there for 3 months. assuming there's enough carryover yeast from the primary. so how much wood is appropriate? and i assume that its stupid to try to remove the wood at this point as the krausen is forming. i was going to use a pair of sterile knitting needles to try to pull some of the wood up and out.
With that much oak (1.9 oz) in a very light beer, if you're looking for subtlety I'd be worried past oaking it a couple days. Since I've never done primary fermentation in/on oak (All my beers were fermented out and racked to barrels or onto chips), I have no idea what kind of a contribution you'll get from the oak and if you'll have any scrubbing of flavors or aroma. Since the oak is loose, if it were me, I'd taste it now, and if barely noticeable in terms of oak, just let primary finish then taste it again. If its too oaky you can rack off the oak to a secondary container to let bulk condition or just bottle it. If its slightly over oaked, you'll be ok aging it out. If its an oak bomb, it might not recover.
