About six months ago I did my first oaked aged beer.I did some research and honed it to thread about soaking chips in your favorite spirit for an extended time frame. Which for me was two months. The hard stuff was Noah's Mill Bourbon 0-871. But the reference was to soak for close to a year. It was pretty much the choc/cherry stout from JZ'z BCS book. As a stout the base beer turned out bit thin and not very stout like. A bit of a session stout. I fed it one of those big sterilized cheery tins that we can get at the local HB shop. Nice, but was in the give me a cookie and I'll go home category. So I added a third of an oz oak and some of the booze. I kept doing that and after 2/3 of the oak and a shot or two of the booze that was in the corny I got busy doing other things. 6-8 weeks have gone by. Now I'm in the time to bottle mode and I chilled this down to 33F and gave it a taste. The oak, that has been sitting in the corny for months has filled in the lacking mouthfeel from before. Defiantly an enjoyable drink. So my take-away is go get some oak and put it away in some booze. Don't be in a rush, As the old bull said to the young bull, "Lets walk down and get them all".
