Oak Chips, for Barrel aged taste in small batch

Edd562, another note on the chips used for BBQ/smoking. You can usually find them virgin wood, and flavored like Jack,beam,sock,etc. This is nice if you want to impart a Bourbon/whiskey profile.

As others have stated, you can straight up oak from trees, if available. My great friend has developed a Pocomoke Porter. It is named after our local Pocomoke river, the deepest in the U.S for its width. The local tree is Bald Cypress and he uses dried staves to impart a tang to it.

Try something unique to where you live. Its cool when you craft a crazy brew, and you can share it with buds.

 

Well, the cooper steams the hell out of the barrel staves so they can be bent into shape; the boiling is my close approximation of this technique.

 

Right - every time you use the chips, spirals, cubes, what-have-you, they will offer less and less tannins, until eventually they are 'neutral', ie: they contribute nothing on their own. At this point they are still great for soaking in wine or bourbon and adding them to your beer for spirit and wine notes.

 

toaster oven is a good idea, but might need higher heat to toast them.

boiling the wood, being say, new chips or cubes in some water is pretty smart. Fresh cubes, just soaked in the spirit or alone will have some tannic notes that aren't really pleasant.

If someone is going for the barrel aged replica, the oak has already given up the goat in terms of the tannic notes, as the spirit has melded in and with the wood. So the second and third use is usually for beer, which gets a subtle note.

A quick boil, like.. 4-5 minutes, and then removed works.. taste the water afterwards.. like a dry tea.