Adding bourbon to Holiday Brew too much?

[snowbum007]

Everyone,
I am brewing my first batch in 3 years this coming weekend. I am going to do a holiday brown ale with a hint of cinnamon, coriander, orange peel, and ginger. I am tempted to split the wort and take half and do a secondary fermentation with oak chips soaked in bourbon. Has anyone done this, and if so, was it too much? I'm worried that may be too much and the spices may get lost or it is a bad combination. I would really appreciate some opinions on this.
Thanks,
Kurt

 

[lstrowge]

I've used bourbon soaked oak chips in other beers but not a Holiday ale. I would think that using Rum instead of Bourbon might be better. Say a spiced rum for instance?

 

[skydvr74]

I just bottled my bourbon-oaked brown ale. I did a 6 gal North England brown ale and split the batch. Separately, I soaked 1 oz of medium toast oak chips in bourbon (just covering the chips about 1.5 fl oz) for 3 days. I poured off half the bourbon and added the remaining chips and bourbon to my secondary. Let it sit a week and bottled. It had amazing flavor with caramel and vanilla notes.

As the previous poster alluded to; I am not sure this is necessarily the flavor profile you want with cinnamon, orange and ginger.