Quick question guys, are you supposed to soak your oak in water/starsan/ liquor etc FIRST before you add to your beer ive seen people say that it’s best to do so since you’ll leech out the strong tannins and leave behind just the nice oak flavor before you add it to your beer any thoughts on this. I want to try adding it to a pale ale, I’ve added oak before and it was a bit over powering but I did in fact use a lot more than normal , comparative to the batch size just to see how much was too much. thinking about doing this by soaking in starsan for a couple days before adding to the keg to rack beer on top off. Cheers!
Not sure on chips, I only ever used cubes or spirals, but I always boiled to remove tannins/whatnot first. If soaking in spirit, I would boil first and allow to dry out for a few days,and then soak in chosen liquor for a month or so. My understanding is that chips give up the flavor really quickly due to increased surface area, so when the oak flavor is where you like it, you pretty much have to rack off or package then. Cubes and spirals give you a little bit more leeway.
I have spirals too that I plan on using too. Can that be left in the keg or do you usually have to rack off of those too?
I don't think it's only the tannins that you have to manage but there's also a concern about any 'bugs' that may be hiding in the nooks and crannies of any wood. It's been years since I brewed using wood, but I'm pretty sure that I soaked them in cheap vodka to lower that risk. I don't recall how long I soaked them.
At a certain point, the wood will give up all it has to offer. My advice if you want to leave it in the keg is to use less than you planned to and let it age longer. There's a lot of experimenting with quantity and time to hit your sweet spot when it comes to using wood.
