Treated Chips

Lots of people throw them into their beer after fermentation. This time ranges from a week to a few months depending on the char of the oak, the flavor you want, and the beer profile.

 

I have heard all over the place on this one, but have gotten plenty of flavor after one week. Since they are chips I would not think more than a week or two, but the more the better I guess. I also think that you are best off adding the bourbon you aged them in to get the wood flavors the bourbon may have sucked out.

 

I have American Medium Plus Oak Cubes in Makers Mark since November 2011. I plan on using them in secondary (not the liquid, the liquid soaked cubes) in an Impy Stout that I'll be brewing in a couple months. I'll let it sit in secondary for a few months to replicate a barrel aged beer. For the most part breweries don't barrel age a beer for 3 days or a week. I'm trying to replicate what you get commercially. As for the presoak; think of it this way. When a distillery ages it's whiskey or bourbon or whatever in an oak barrel it is done for months or years, so why not replicate the soak time if you have the time to do so.

I have heard to discard the liquid that the cubes have been soaking in though as that would have extracted the unwanted tannins from the cubes that you don't want to mix with your beer. If you don't get enough bourbon flavor in your final beer you could always add some fresh bourbon at bottling or kegging.

 

I think you have a few ideas mixed up...

Commercial breweries barrel aging thier beers is vastly different in many ways from a homebrewer using oak chips or cubes to add character in secondary fermentation. There are a vairety of effects and desired results that barrel aging has on beer. The "appropriate" use of oak chips in homebrewing depends on which of these charcteristics you are trying to emulate.

What are you trying to get from the use of oak?

Big vanilla oaky flavor like a CA chardonay or KY bourbon?-- Use med toast american oak chips or cubes that have been sterilized. If it is this oaky flavor you want, then I would add much of the liquid that you soaked the oak in, as it probably extracted some/ most of the flavor you are looking for. Unless you add it to the beer a lot of that flavor will be left behind.

Also, in this case I think it is a good idea to periodically taste the beer for desired level of oaky-ness, as it will probably be super oaky in just a week or two. The reason comercial breweries barrel age thier beers for many months without "over oaking" I think is PARTIALLY the fact that the surface area of the total beer actually in contact with the oak relatively is way smaller than in homebrewing because of the size of the barrels/ amounts of beer involved, and MOSTLY because I think they are using second-use barrels. Which brings me to the next point...

There is a finite amount of oak flavor that a given piece of oak can impart. In the case of second use barrels, this means that whatever was in the barrel for the first use, we'll say bourbon, already sucked much of the oaky flavor out of the barrels. Yes there is some left, and it will flavor the beer to a degree, but most of it left with the bourbon. In the case of second use spirit (wine is a different story) barrels like with big american imperial stouts I think a lot of the "barrel aged" flavor is really just the bourbon (or whatever else) that was in it previously. So, if it is the warming-boozy-depth-from-whiskey flavor you are looking for, add some more whiskey as a seperate adjustment once the desired level of oakyness has been achieved.

The other, much more important (IMO), use for barrel aging has to do with the effects oxygen and wild bacteria. Were you going for a sour beer? If so, oak chips or cubes wont really get you where you there. But I don't think that is what you had in mind.

 

I'm looking to impart a nice bourbon flavor with subtle oakyness without the tannins. I understand that I'm not going to get the oxygenation effect that barrels produce but want to try this method and if it doesn't work then I'll try another route. Since I got this method from Bill at White Birch, who does a lot of barrel aging with their releases, and was a homebrewer before he went commercial and still a homebrewer. I feel he is a good source for information in this field.

Brewers usually don't use original oak barrels. They will get them from wineries or distilleries so the oak would have been sucked of some flavor by the time beer goes in it as you mentioned. I'm just trying to replicate what is done commercially with a hint of oak but more bourbon.

As for the bacteria in the second use of the oak, I know that it probably won't go sour or tart or funky for any reason since my sanitization process is vigorous. I was just saying if something went crazy with the wood during the second use I wouldn't be mad.