Oak Ageing my Stout

[Jekster]

So, I decided to Oak Age two gallons of my Oatmeal Breakfast Stout from this thread:

http://www.homebrewchatter.com/board...ead.php?t=2989

I ran off the uncarbed beer into two 1 gallon Carboys:



I then boil some water and turn it down to low heat and added one ounce of oak cubes to steam / sanatize:

No pic cause I did this later in the night after I had a few beers and didn't think to snap a pic.

Added half the cubes to each gallon carboy and now it's time to wait:





This is my first stint at Oak Ageing anything. I'm going to give it a couple days and then take a taste from each batch. Once it has the desired amount of oak flavor I'm going to add some Bourbon to one gallon and then bottle each up as my special reserve. It will be neat to try the original out of the keg and each of the different ones from bottles. Should be fun.

[Ronthered]

cool, glad you went thru with it

[Ó Flannagáin]

Fekkin sweet, dude

[MrMarbleHead]

Dude next time just soak the oak in the bourbon to sanitize it. I did that with some oak (but used brandy) i used in a wine i made and it turned out well.

I didn't know you had this project going on, let me know when you get this one finished.

[landis]

This sounds like a great experiment. I think next go-round with an oatmeal stout I'm going to try the same thing

[PseudoChef]

Dude next time just soak the oak in the bourbon to sanitize it. I did that with some oak (but used brandy) i used in a wine i made and it turned out well.

I didn't know you had this project going on, let me know when you get this one finished.

Soaking oak in spirits isn't enough to sanitize them.

If you're super concerned, you want to steam the oak before adding it.

[MrMarbleHead]

Soaking oak in spirits isn't enough to sanitize them.

If you're super concerned, you want to steam the oak before adding it.

Why not?

[PseudoChef]

They went over it on this podcast: Brew Strong: Oak Aging.

[MrMarbleHead]

OH goodie in pocast format, because i listen to so many of them, So Again I ask Why?

[PseudoChef]

Eat some balls.

You're probably fine, on second thought. I know some people have said that it's not sufficient because it might not penetrate () the wood all the way, but looking around in multiple places it seems tons of people have done it with no ill effects. People have even just thrown the oak in there without anything and been fine.