Looking for some help/advice from anyone who has made a bourbon BA brew using bourbon chips. I'm going to be making a BA old ale and/or a BA stout and will be adding the chips in the secondary. Right now, I have 4oz of bourbon chips that I've vacuumed sealed with 3oz of bourbon (the vacuum seal helped speed up the amount of bourbon soaked in the chips). I plan on putting the soaked chips in a 5 gallon secondary, but I have no idea no long I should keep them in there and if 4oz of soaked chips is too much or too little. Any advice on this if you have brewed using bourbon chips? I suppose the right answer is to drop the chips in and taste every week until I get the flavor I want, but I would love to hear what other people's experiences are. Also, I plan to cold crash the beer for a few days to a week by putting the carboy in the garage. I live in Boston, so I'd imagine it would be similar to an ice bath or refrigerator. Let me know if this is also a bad or good idea. Never done it, but it seems to make sense to me....in theory and as long as it's not during another polar vortex. Thanks for the input.
A few months ago I brewed a Bourbon Barrel Porter. This was my first time I have used bourbon and oak cubes in making a beer. I did a bit of research prior to making this beer and it appears that there are a lot of variables to be considered. Below is a list (and I may have missed a few items). Type of oak: American, French, Hungarian, … American oak is stated to impart the most oak flavor(s). Format of oak: cubes, chips, spirals, …. Chips are reported to impart the oak flavor the quickest. Toast level of the oak: heavy, medium, light How long to leave the oak (contact time) How much oak to add Etc. For a bourbon/oak aspect there is also the variables associated with the bourbon: How much bourbon to soak the oak Add the bourbon to the beer or just add the oak What type of bourbon to use Etc. For my Bourbon Barrel Porter I decided to do a two stage bourbon soak for my 2 ounces of American medium oak cubes. I first soaked the cubes in Jim Beam Bourbon for a few days to extract ‘extra’ tannins from the oak. I discarded the Jim Beam Bourbon (it did not smell too good; I did not taste it) and then soaked with 20 ounces of Makers Mark for a week. I added both the bourbon and the 2 ounces of cubes to the secondary for a duration of 16 days. I did not periodically taste the beer for the level of bourbon/oak. It is my experience that tasting an un-carbonated beer is not the same as tasting a carbonated beer so I was uncertain what the incremental tasting process would yield in a final product. I am very happy with the resulting beer! The amount of bourbon/oak is just right for this style of beer and my palate. I am by no means a bourbon/oak expert since I have only did this one time but I have a few things to suggest based upon my one time experience. Since you have chips I personally would not use 4 ounces and I definitely would not have a long contact time in the secondary. Since you have only soaked in 3 ounce of bourbon you might want to consider adding more bourbon to the secondary. I would suggest that you think about discarding the 3 ounces you have already used for soaking and maybe to a second stage with more bourbon and add both the bourbon/chips to the secondary? Good luck with your bourbon/oak beer! Cheers!
That was thorough and awesome. What size batch did you do? 20oz of Bourbon straight into the beer seems like a lot to me, but how did it turn out?
I have not tried this but, I would think that you may want to up the malt a little bit in this beer due to the tannic acid in the chips. Just a thought.
It was a 5 gallon batch and unfortunately my memory was a bit off when I wrote my previous post: I used 16 ounces of Makers Mark Bourbon. Since I had never brewed with bourbon/oak before I heavily relied on the recipe for the Northern Brewer Bourbon Barrel Porter as regards the topics of oak (2 ounces of American medium toast cubes), bourbon (16 ounces of Makers Mark) and contact time (1-2 weeks; I selected the 2 week ‘option’). I am glad that I did since the beer turned out great. I did have a ‘twist’ of performing a 2-stage soak. This was based upon an online conversation that I had with another BA homebrewer. Cheers!
Thanks for all the info and sharing your feedback. Since I'm using "used" bourbon barrel chips rather than "fresh" oak cubes, would the tannins issue will be less of a issue? Also, any ideas on what happens when using more chips/no bourbon vs. less chips/adding bourbon to the secondary?
Ahhhh. These "bourbon chips" are chips of wood from old bourbon barrels, not fresh oak chips that you have soaked in bourbon yourself. I'm not sure if there would be a big difference in tannin extraction or not. Your chips will have a lot more surface area that was not previously in direct contact with bourbon when they were part of the barrel, so I'm thinking you'll still have plenty of tannin extraction. And I think you should soak these in your own bourbon again anyway just to make sure they are sanitized.
