So about 3 years ago I made a smoked turkey for Thanksgiving,. It was great, I made a soup with the carcass, but that is another story.
My wife told her entire side of the family that I wanted smoking equipment for Christmas, so I ended up getting like 10 pounds of wood chips for the smoker… oak… cherry, apple , I have a few unopened bags… can I use those wood chips for beer flavoring in the second fermenter? . I have not oaked before so:
Do I boil them first to clean them up, or would that loose flavor?
Do I soak them in whiskey?
Wood-spirits contact time needs to be long enough to sanitize the wood chips. A day or two would be sufficient. I don’t think there is a maximum but I don’t think there is any benefit after a week. Another decision you have is whether you dump the spirits in with the wood chips or just the wood chips. I usually use bourbon and add both. It depends on the flavor profile I am going for.
The wood/spirit-beer contact time is again depending on the flavor you are going for. Do you want a hint of flavor or do you want it front row with the other dominant flavors. But you don’t want it to over power the other flavors. For a lighter beer I would suggest a week and for a heavier beer, I would suggest three weeks. And for a very heavy beer (in the range of a Wee Heavy) that you will bulk age I would leave it in the entire time in secondary. Note: These are ballpark numbers and more importantly just my opinion.
