Sherry oak aged madness.

[Mephistopholes]

Hi all.

I'm planning a Xmas beer and part of my scheme relies on sherry oak aging. i basically want some of the toasty vanilllay goodness of the oak and the deep stone fruit richness of the sherry.

I plan to buy some simple oak chips/shavings. lose as much of the powdery stuff as possible and just use the chunks. then drop these into some amontillado sherry for a couple of months, strain them then drop them into my beer at secondary fermentation.

I ordered wood chips advertised for barbecuing rather than the more expensive but im pretty sure exactly the same ones advertised for wine making.

Feel free to shoot my festive plot down. i'm planning to double mash on this so it aint gonna be cheap and i would like to limit any risk.

HoHoHo :pray:

 

[Mephistopholes]

Gotta bring a bump.

22 views and all are silent...

Anyone ever looked into anything like this before?

 

[Samarith]

Don't really have any experience attempting this, so I didn't reply before.

Go for it, I guess the dosage of sherry soaked wood is the tricky part, I'd aim light and then look at upping the sherry hit at the end of the secondary (if required).

 

[Aleman]

And yet the funny thing is that wooden casks for storing beer were lined with pitch and therefore beer didn't come into contact with the wood . . . . Its a whisky thing . . . and also something that someone at Innis and Gunn came up with to flog off a waste product . . . Plus our US associates like aging things on wood.

So unfortunately you are on your own with this one . . . but please feel free to share your experience . . . plus I am available for beer evaluation at very reasonable rates :whistle:

 

[Petros]

Well, if it's any help (and I doubt it is), I had a couple of bottles of Innis & Gunn last night, bloody lovely stuff! So :thumb: to your idea!
It's just sad that I have no experience at all to help you with any practical aspect of this!
Fuller's also do a beer called "Brewer's reserve", the various vintages of which are all aged in different casks from previous drinks making. Scotch and Brandy barrels have been used for their first batches. I've never tried any, but would love to one day!
I think as long as you have a way of calculating the contact time with the surface area of wood being used, perhaps based on some of these commercial examples (Fullers, regular whisky barrels, 500 days, get the surface area of the inside of one compared to it's volume, hey presto) then you should be able to translate a good attempt at doing this very well to your beer!
Ho hum, those are my musings anyway. Once again though, as I've said, I have absolutely no experience, so be warned! :lol:

 

[graysalchemy]

Trial and error I think. Why not try just adding the oak chips to a gallon demijohn and leave it a few weeks and taste then leave it again and taste again. I'm doing this with an IPA with cardamom and cinnamon. Even after a few days I can taste the difference. When It reaches the desire result I will bottle it. It does mean that this will only be a test and you will have to do a second brew to age the whole batch in this way once you have worked out the correct dosage and time scale. However It would mean that you won't ruin a whole batch if it tastes ghastly :sick:

I have also just searched 'adding oak chips to beer' on google and there are quite a few interesting threads about it.

http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?t=18287

http://www.tastybrew.com/forum/thread/127064

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/adding- ... ps-109224/

They all seem to mention sanitising the chips first.

Anyway best of luck.

:

 

[Mephistopholes]

Thanks for the replys gents. It seems i'm pioneering something new for the home brew forum so I will endeavour to report back my findings.

I'm quite shocked even the mighty Aleman had little light to shed. Its definately been done in the US for sure by dogfishhead amongst others and it was something like the anchor xmas ale i was looking to make. not sure if they were doing this though.