Re-used wine oak

I’m currently working on a potential clone of goose island’s Sofie beer. They say that they take 10% of the beer and age it in wine barrels, then recombine with the remainder of the volume.

I’m treating this like I did a bourbon stout… Soak oak chips in white wine for x amount of days, then add to the small fermenter with 10% of the volume, while the remainder goes in a keg. Combine the two after y amount of days.

My question is… Once the oak has soaked in wine for a few days, I imagine I need to sterilize them before putting it in beer (Wine not being strong enough to sterilize them on its own). How should I sterilize the oak chips without losing the wine flavor that has hopefully soaked in?

I was debating just dunking into a bowl of vodka really quickly, hoping the oak is fully saturated with wine so that it doesn’t lose any flavor. I assume I don’t want to boil or steam the oak chips.

Tough decision. Options appear to be alcohol, like your vodka idea, boil/pasteurize or chemicals like campden tablets. There is always toss them in right from the bag and hope it works.

Hey guys! What do you do? I have only done one or two beers with wood chips and that was a long time ago. Think I did the vodka method and soaked them for a while. I don’t have access to my notes to look now.

where did you get these oak chips that you think they are contaminated with something. If they are from a barrel with some Brett on them maybe. probably if your worried soak them in vodka before the wine not after. If you purchased them packaged just . Soak them in the wine then right into the fermenter. I’ve done that. never pasteurized oak chips

I bought them packaged straight from NB. But I was just afraid of any sort of… Well, ANYthing… That isn’t sanitized at this stage of the brew. I’ve never used any secondary/dry hop additives that weren’t sanitized before dumping into the beer.

I was going to soak them in some sort of store bought wine, in a pre-sanitized mason jar. But wine is usually something like 11% abv or so, and that’s just not strong enough. When I have done bourbon stouts, the bourbon was typically strong enough to self-sanitize the mixture.

I just wanted to make sure it was safe, while also not losing any wine taste that might be absorbed. I wouldn’t want the oak to soak up any vodka, thus preventing it from getting wine tastes.

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Check the pH of yer wine. Low pH can eliminate a place for many bugs to live.
Sneezles

the other thing Ive done is just pour a bottle of wine in my beer. So maybe buy an okay wine and just add that

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Isn’t there an actual drink like that called….?
Sneezles

not sure if it has a name but I made it as a saison. did one white did one read. they both came out well. Only used a half bottle of the wine but my notes say add the full bottle next time. Just a recipe I was fooling around with. Not sure where I got the idea. Might have read it somewhere

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I looked it up its called Viere for obvious reasons. There is a brewery around my town called OEC. Did some work there. They do weird stuff like that. Probably got the idea there

hhhmmmm… OEC, they use to have a website about these anomaly’s they did? One of the contributors to brew magazine started it? The Mad Fermenter?
Sneezles

could be

Didn’t brewers and vintners burn sulfur sticks in oak barrels to “sanitize” them? Never tried that myself but have bought bags of oak chips and tossed them right in with a quick dunk in cheap vodka first.

yes they do. I had a bourbon barrel for making BB porter and would buy a handle of bourbon and dump it in there for a day. I don’t do a BB porter anymore so gave it to a friend of mine that makes wine. What he does is use vodka and I’m not sure if he does it all the time. He hasn’t had a problem. Another thing the OP can do is use dry heat instead of the vodka soak thus purging all the moisture to better soak in some wine. probably at 180F for 30 min would do it. I sure hope he reports back to us

I was leaning towards steam, but the dry heat does sound enticing. I’ll probably try the oven method, like you said to dry it out and leave more room for the wine. I might pour some of the wine into the keg as well. I’ll let you know how it all goes. Luckily, since I’m only using 10% of the beer, if an infection forms I just won’t recombine with the rest

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Isn’t that called toasted?
Sneezles

if I were toasting probably need to be hotter

I’ve made several beers aged with oak chips soaked in wine. Just tossed the right in after soaking. Never had a problem.

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