Adding oak - will this work

[Calder]

I have 7.0 gallons of an IPA (chinook, centennial, cascade) dry hoppong right now. Plan to bottle Friday, or Sat if I get lazy.

Thought I'd add some oak and bourbon to 24 bottles.

I took some Jack Daniels BBQ oak barrel chips, and added 8 ozs bourbon to them in a jar. Did that this evening. Plan is to take a sample of beer before bottling and add a measured amount to see how much I need, then, when I have about 24 bottles left in the bottling bucket, add the amount of the liquid idecide on, and finish bottling.

Questions:

- will I get enough oak flavor in 4 days?

- I used about enough chips to fill a 4 oz jar (liquid is twice the height of the chips) is this enough?

- anyone used JDs BBQ wood chips?

- see anything wrong with this?

 

[ja09]

From my experience with oak cubes, if you dump it all in, you should get some oak flavor within 4 days, but it will be a little harsher with the tannins extracted into the bourbon. Discarding the original bourbon is ideal, and if you want more bourbon flavor, soak the chips a second time for a day or two then pitch everything. Keep in mind this takes longer than 4 days. More like 2-4 weeks but is a much smoother and well rounded oak character. Are you looking for bourbon flavor in an IPA? Or just the oak?

Don't have any experience with JDs BBQ wood chips. Are you sure they're 100% oak with no treatments?

 

[Calder]

I just did a little research, and it looks like JD chips are pretty popular, especialy with distillers. I believe they are just oak from chopped up used bourbon barrels. You can still smell bourbon in them.

Some have reported that excess tannins is not an issue, since they have been used before as part of a barrel.

They are in now, not going to waste the bourbon. Will try sone of the bourbon straight, and in a test beer before I add them to the bottling bucket. Just hope I have enough chips, but don't want to use to many.

 

[Brewkowski]

I've used some of them for part of a batch, personally I preferred the taste of the oak options from the local brew shop, they just seemed a little more harsh compared to other options. If it's what you have, I'd totally try it though, I mean worse case scenario you have to make a few batches to try some other ideas! I normally soak my chips for a couple of weeks and then add in some of the booze. Sometimes I'll try to find a similar style commercial beer and add a teaspoon or so of the wood soaked booze to see how that goes.

 

[Darkness]

I love oak'n my brews, and love testing barrel aged brews.
Lessons learned. 1- Never use un toasted oak that has not had whiskey or other high proof liquor, this will more than likely Funk your brew.
2- Our brew group has done numerous side by sides of French and American oak, French heavy toast Spirals or Chips give a more rounded flavor than American. American has a sharper note mid palate. But American is great in Stouts, Porters,BIPA.
3- Soak at least two weeks out if not a month, and soak in beer till flavor is where you want for us about 2 weeks works good. The bigger beers we let the notes from oak get harsher, this way when it rest the flavor mellows and will deep'n with age.
4- HAVE FUN! Right now I have Heavy toast French Oak soaking in 8year Bacardi with 2 fresh Vanilla Beans that I split and scraped. This is going in a new Stout recipe just brewed. One guy in our group dose a IIPA and adds Apple Brandy soaked Apple wood chips, it is freaking smooth and 11% hides it well.

Look for a brewery Brouwerij Hof Ten Dormaal they did a Belgian Blond and aged it in 8 different barrels and bottled each. I found 7 of them and we did a tasting amazing to see how much a beer can pick up from a barrel.
And try getting a barrel. I have 3 full size whiskey 2- Buffalo Trace and1- Eagle Rare, also 3-3gal barrels and we have a lot of fun with them.