I am brewing an IPA and am wanting to utilize rum chips in the process. I was told that if I soak the chips in rum for a week and add the chips themself to the secondary that should work. Has anyone used chips before and what would you recommend? Thank you for any tips.
I think you're better off adding the rum to taste directly to the beer. It'll give you more control and won't risk adding too much oak character. If you want oak character too, add the oak and then dose with rum to taste at bottling.
lighter toasted chips if your gonna soak rum, agree with old sock to add the rum that was soaking and not the chips so you can fine tune the flavor to your liking. Have plans for an agave IPA with some tequila that was soaked in chips.
Soaking oak chips for a week in rum to sanitize them before racking to 2ndary works quite well. Some will drain the rum and add just the chips. Others ... like moi ... will pitch tous ensemble. All depends on what you want your brew to be.
I have tried a couple of different "oak-aged" IPAs and have concluded that this is difficult to do well. My "ideal" IPA is a lot cleaner/dryer than my barrel/oak aged beers. If you added some details about where you were trying to go with your recipe, I am sure somebody here can recommend something. My best guess based on the above is you might want the straight rum flavor from a good dark rum.
