First time using oak

[brewerTristan]

I just racked my English barley wine onto an ounce of oak chips. I have a few concerns/questions.

The beer started at 1.110 and finished at 1.030. The chips I used were surprisingly fine, almost like sawdust. Are most oak chips like this? I think they were intended for wine, but I figured there is no difference. I didn't bother to sanitize them. The batch was 3 gallons. It seemed like a lot of oak for the volume, but the beer is pretty big, so I thought it would be okay. What is the recommended contact time? I was going to go with a month or two, but if the amount of oak I used is too much, I want to reduce the contact time significantly.

[CaribouBill]

Hmmm....go to your fermenter and remove the beer from the oak...do not pass go, do not collect $200.00...

Oh well...maybe that was a bit much...but anyhow...

I can say from a recent experiment that 2 ounces of oak chips (Large chips, some had to be broken to fit in the carboy) was WAY too much for
my Sour Pinot Belgian Type Thing (Soaked the oak in Pinor Noir for 3 days and put the oak and 8oz of wine in the fermenter).
The only flavor I could detect at 4 months was oak....I am going to wait it our for another 6 or so.

I usually do not 'sanitize' oak, but I do put it in a sanitized bowl and microwave it for 1.5 min on high.

I am not sure why I decided to use 2 oz after making several great beers with .5 to 1 oz. Vanilla oaked porter was delicioud with only .5 oz for 3 weeks.

My advice would be to rack it to a clean fermenter and let it age for a few months.

Bill

[Bugeater]

I have no way of knowing the exact contact time. From the sound of it you will have much more surface area of the oak in contact with the beer than you would if you have used cubes. For this reason your contact time will be quite a bit shorter. I would take a small sample after 10 - 14 days and every week or so after that just to see how the taste is progressing.

Wayne

[brewerTristan]

I have no way of knowing the exact contact time. From the sound of it you will have much more surface area of the oak in contact with the beer than you would if you have used cubes. For this reason your contact time will be quite a bit shorter. I would take a small sample after 10 - 14 days and every week or so after that just to see how the taste is progressing.

Wayne

Yeah I think I'll shoot for one month and check half way through.

Caribou Bill - Should I really rack off right away? I used 1 oz in 3 gallons, so that is roughly equivalent to 2 oz in 5 gallons. Plus the beer is really strong.

Bugeater - what is it about my scenario that would make you disagree with Caribou?

[CaribouBill]

Well....I was trying to (and possibly failing) to be funny.

I would let it got for a week, and if you have a sanitary way (i.e. Sanitized wine thief) to test it I would do so.
It just seems to me that dust ot fine chips would be way too much sirface area., and while I have never oaked a beer
of this starting gravity I would still think that it would be too much.

I have oaked many belgian sours so plesae feel free to ask any questions....we will try to assist if possible.

[SoCalBrewer]

When I use oak I constantly sample the to see the flavor I'm extracting. I plan on doing a barley wine and let some oak cubes sit in the keg while it ages (hopefully for a year or two). might be to much contact time but hopefully it all mellows out over that time period.

[brewerTristan]

So I ended up bottling this several weeks ago, after only a week or so on the oak "chips", which were more like shavings. I've been tasting it over the last few days and the oak character is pretty prominent to me. At least, I think it is (I have tasted few oak beers, so don't have much comparison). I assume the oak character will fade in the bottle, or is it the opposite? I plan on keeping it around at least a year, so I'm hoping the oak will fade a bit.