Oaking... in the bottle?

[Blue-Frog]

I have no idea what oak will do to my blackberry wine... so I want to try it!

Worried I might not like it, 1st try will be on a very small scale... 2 bottles.

Is there any issue I have not considered?
I plan on putting the required oak chips in the wine bottle and sealing it.
A month later... either just pouring as is (if I am thirsty) or
transferring the wine to another bottle for drinking at another time.

Anything to worry about? will the chips swell and not be removable?
Can small 1~2 liter vols not be "properly"oaked for some reason?

 

[bernardsmith]

I think the bigger problem might be over-oaking. Depending on how many chips you put in each bottle , a month may create too much "oak". I think that that is why many people add oak to the "secondary" a few weeks before bottling and taste frequently to determine when to remove the wine from the wood.

 

[IslandLizard]

I think your idea is fine. It only uses 2 bottles of wine for the experiment. As @bernardsmith said, watch out for over-oaking. Chips have a relatively large surface, so oaking will go proportionally faster. 2-3 weeks may be enough for your tastebuds.

 

[Blue-Frog]

OK, weighed out and ready to add... but wait... what should I do about sterilizing/sanitizing the oak chips? I have at hand only pure, unflavored 70% alcohol; META and boiling HOH.

I do not really need these test bottles to last that long(do I?) as I just want to see how the oak affects the wine and decide if I want to oak in the future.

Do I really need to sanitize?
The wine was just racked and got a dose of META just yesterday....

What do you suggest?

 

[IslandLizard]

Chips may harbor bacteria, mostly from dust clinging to them. If you've been in a brew shop there's usually grain dust everywhere. Now your wine contains 10-15% alcohol, so that will help deter them. There's not much that can grow in wine.

You could boil them in water beforehand, or soak for an hour (or longer) in a little bit of that 70% alcohol. Stick the lot in a small 4 oz mason jar or so with a good closing lid and shake up a few times during that time. You may want to boil or soak them longer. Many winemakers and brewers soak chips or cubes in grain alcohol for a few days to a few weeks to remove the early tannins since they tend to be the harshest or most assertive, depending on how you perceive them.

Since you're dealing with a relatively small volume of wine in each bottle, you may want to soak them like that for 2-5 days, before adding to the wine. Then fish out the chips with tweezers or so and add to your bottles. If you like some "early tannins," add some of that soaking alcohol to the wine too. Then let the wine "sit on them" for a few weeks. Actually, they'll sit on the wine. You should invert the bottles a few times during the "oaking" process.

You can use the soaking alcohol for something else, like a BarleyWine, a Stout, Saison, Bourbon, etc. You can try a few drops in a single glass, and oak to taste whenever you feel like tasting some wood. Mind, these tend to be the most aggressive tannins.

 

[Blue-Frog]

I really apprediate your comments. Really I do.
But you don't make it any easier to decide what to do!

I wonder if some of those methods change the result of the oaking?

I thought of one more option... What is the low side for toasting oak?
Perhaps 5~15 min at 100 degrees C.
(as long as that is well below the mild toasting protocol)
might be a viable option?

Since the chips have been toasted already,
perhaps this would be the most natural, least invasive method ?

Anyway thanks for your suggestions. I will try to chose one.Something not too invasive.

 

[IslandLizard]

I didn't mean to complicate things for you, although the topic is a complicated one. Here's a decent article about toasting wood. A simple search on Google reveals a lot of material.

Toasting temperature is important, but moisture during the process probably just as much.

There are many publications on interactions of wood and wine, or wood and (alcoholic) beverages in general.
I haven't delved much into wine, but Wood & Beer is an excellent book by Dick Cantwell and Peter Bouckaert, quite comprehensive on the matter and beyond, many of those concepts should hold true for wine too, especially sweeter wines.

Our club got an oak wine barrel that had been used by a local brewery. So we pickled it with rum, filled it with 10-some kegs of Old Ale and added Treacle. We really didn't understand the barreling process that well, so a few months later it was turning sour, and we racked the lot back into kegs. I kinda liked how it tasted, although a little too vinegary, so a 60/40 blend with a clean Old Ale made it into something quite special, IMO better than the Old Ale by itself. Think of an "Imperial" Rodenbach or a La Folie perhaps. I'm not sure what happened to the barrel, but I always wanted to get a few staves, cut them up and toast them a bit.

 

[Blue-Frog]

ok I put the chips in and at 6... now soon 7 days, the wine tasts decidly different, in a way that I found hard to impossible to understand much less to describe. it struck me as being less pleasing than the orginal wine.

Another person described the difference as the wine seemed to have lost all of it's fruity-ness.
I find that an apt description. Plus, I feel it tastes.... like wood.

I have heard that it is best to let the process go a bit too far as the flavor will fade over time, so with that plan in mind, a few questions:

Is it certain that 1 week is way too soon to remove the chips?
Are the flavors one gets early on "it" or does the good stuff "evolve into being" over time?
If I don't like it now, should I wait a bit... or should I get it off the wine as soon as possible?
Are my experience here unusual?

 

[IslandLizard]

How many chips did you add? Did you soak them first?

Wood flavors need to age (out) for a while.

 

[Blue-Frog]

2.5 g/L
about 10~12 pieces per 750ml bottle
They were not given a lenghthy soak; just a very quick bath in boiling water.

 

[IslandLizard]

2.5 g/L
about 10~12 pieces per 750ml bottle
They were not given a lenghthy soak; just a very quick bath in boiling water.

That's a lot of wood for a bottle! 1 or 2 chips would have been plenty, especially when unsoaked.