Bourbon, oak, and flavor extraction

[hamaien]

I have a barleywine in primary right now that I think I want to add some bourbon soaked oak to. About 6 months ago I threw an ounce of French oak cubes into a mason jar with 4oz of bourbon (Larceny) and forgot about it. I just pulled the jar out and what was once a medium-light colored bourbon is now a deep red bordering on brown.

Most of the stuff I've read about bourbon soaked oak seems to suggest soaking the cubes for only 1-2 weeks. Have I extracted any kind of off flavors by leaving the bourbon on the oak for half a year? Have I completely extracted all the oak character from the cubes into the bourbon? I wasn't planning on adding the bourbon with the oak originally, I just wanted to get a small amount of bourbon character into the oak. But now I'm worried I've either sucked all the oak flavor out of the cubes or extracted off flavors by soaking them too long.

 

[HopOnHops]

You might be able to get away with just adding some of the bourbon. I soaked some oak in bourbon for a month and added the liquor and oak to one batch and just the oak to the other. The batch where i added the liquor had a massive astringent tannic taste to it that took months for it to fade. The batch where i added just the oak had no oak/bourbon flavor even after 3 months.

 

[Boy]

Here's what I did: I added the cubes and bourbon together to the batch. However I was worried about over oaking and having the oak and whiskey flavor being to intense. I pulled 1 gallon off the batch and added the oak and whiskey to that and let it sit for a month while tasting weekly. Once I felt the 1 gallon batch was a little strong in oak and whiskey I combined it with the rest. Kept me from screwing up the whole thing.