I made this beer a week ago and it is almost done fermenting:
8 lb 2 row
7 lb vienna
1 lb caramel/crystal 20
1.5 oz fuggle at 60 min
1.5 oz fuggle at 15 minutes
S-04 yeast.
It’s supposed to be 27 IBU and 7 SRM
Would adding 2 oz of oak chips, maybe soaked in tequila be overpowering? I have only used oak once before and it was in the bourbon barrel porter. I am not sure if this beer would be too mild to accommodate the oak. What do you all think?
I’d be careful with chips - they can release an awful lot of oakiness in a pretty short time period, maybe just a matter of days. I much prefer cubes or spirals left in a beer for a much longer period, like several weeks. With any kind of oak, it helps to boil it first to sanitize and extract some of the harsher compounds, then maybe soak it in tequila.
I’ve used up to 8 oz tequila in a 5 gallon batch and didn’t find it overpowering, so I think you’d be ok. But I think a light or medium toast oak cube or spiral will give you a much better result.
I think it’s wise to be careful regardless. This does look like a light beer and flavors can really change especially with the high surface area on oak chips. If you made a 5 gallon batch I would recommend that you split it into 1 gallon batches for testing.
Get a 1 gallon glass jug and age it with some oak and see how it effects the flavor on a daily or semi daily basis.
I recently tasted some beers at Firestone’s Barrelworks. They had aged some light beers in barrels and some I didn’t think got a good flavor at all. Not sure how some people drink that stuff!
I did a brew a few years ago I aged with birch…. I will look for my tasting notes, but it did bring some mellow, soft flavor to the party… Sneezles61
same here did brew and add some whisky soaked oaks was waiting to keg and drinks full of exitement butt when it was time to sample did think it did turn out nasty next brew i did just pour in the white whisky and much beter
I think @wilcolandzaat makes a good point here and so does @sneezles61. Oak is probably the wrong choice of wood to use for a light beer. It will overpower the flavor and could impart some funkyness to your brew. Lighter flavor woods would be key.
This is similiar to smoking meats, if you ever smoke meat on the grill. Stronger flavor woods are used for stronger flavor meats. When smoking fish you use a much lighter wood, like a fruit wood, applewood for example. But yes you would be blazing some new trails and I would not do that to a full batch of beer.
Beechwood aging!
Thats what lead me to using birch, as I have access to a lot of birch! Sneezles61
