adding oak/whisky

[andymacintyre]

I'm thinking I'd like to try whisky oaking an imperial stout I've made. From what I've read, oak chips seem to be a bit of a minefield and difficult to get the level of oak right. My thinking is to steep the oak bourbon barrel chips in bourbon for a few weeks to essentially create a heavily oaked bourbon. I then thought I could draw off a sample of the stout and slowly add the oaked bourbon with a syringe until I think it tastes right. I would then know how much of the oaked bourbon to add to the main batch. It would hopefully give more control than adding the soaked chips to the main batch and leaving them there until done. Has anyone got any thoughts on this?

 

[BigYin]

Interesting experiment, but I'm afraid I've never tried or even looked into doing something like that.

A wine kit I did a while back came with a wee bag of wood chips that went in with the primary fermentation, wasn't too heavily flavoured as a result, which was a relief!

 

[robsan77]

It's worth a crack. Could you run a side by side? Essentially do both methods and compare the results.