# Aging beer with oak instead of barrels



## Exile (17/1/16)

Anyone ever try aging beer instead of barrels with this method?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCN3k52281Q


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## manticle (17/1/16)

I would call it oaking rather than aging but yes.

Works great with brett beers. Any other beer - make sure you go the whole hog on steaming and toasting those chips. I'd like to try Tony's method of adding to the no chill cube.


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## Yob (17/1/16)

What like chips? Staves etc?

Yeah, of course, just nowhere near as nice or aesthetic


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## Yob (17/1/16)

manticle said:


> I would call it oaking rather than aging but yes.
> Works great with brett beers. Any other beer - make sure you go the whole hog on steaming and toasting those chips. I'd like to try Tony's method of adding to the no chill cube.


Got a link to that man? Don't believe I've read that one


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## keifer33 (17/1/16)

Think it was this one - http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/66550-no-chill-cube-oaking/


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## Danscraftbeer (17/1/16)

I've added them to kegs. Works nice at around 1g per litre. I have baked them in foil in the oven and in to keg in a hop bag. Or for this Smokey Oak Stout I made I put the bag of chips into a 200ml canning jar with 1/2 water and 1/2 Jack Daniels. Pressure cooked it and cooled it and added all to the kegged beer. Somewhat simulating being stored in a whisky barrel. That worked really well. It was a subtle background flavour.


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## Hippy (17/1/16)

I've had some success with adding medium toasted American oak dominoes to the keg.I boil them in water for about 15 minutes to sterilise them and add about 3 to a corny. Works well with English bitters.


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## barls (17/1/16)

mostly i use hungarian med toast.
i generally ether add to the cube or the keg after boiling in a pot, i add the whole lot


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## timmi9191 (17/1/16)

Has anyone ever seen wine barrel chips?

I want to do a shiraz barrel aged stout, but dont want a whole wine barrel


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## barls (17/1/16)

take your chips and soak in shiraz then add.
although i find chips are a bit one dimensional in flavour and over oak really quickly.
the bigger the piece the more rounded the flavour and the longer the exposure time can be.


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## Xander (23/3/16)

Danscraftbeer said:


> I've added them to kegs. Works nice at around 1g per litre. I have baked them in foil in the oven and in to keg in a hop bag. Or for this Smokey Oak Stout I made I put the bag of chips into a 200ml canning jar with 1/2 water and 1/2 Jack Daniels. Pressure cooked it and cooled it and added all to the kegged beer. Somewhat simulating being stored in a whisky barrel. That worked really well. It was a subtle background flavour.


 How long would you "age" the beer for - say with 1g per litre as you suggest?

This is for an Imperial Coffee Stout...

Cheers.


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## droid (23/3/16)

<edit> to get another opinion and broaden your horizon's you could PM grainer - i'm pretty sure he used oak chips for his award winning RIS


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## TheWiggman (23/3/16)

Interesting that this has come up, I've got a bourbon stout lined up for ageing for the next brew. By memory the recipe is pale, brown and roasted barley with 400ml of bourbon to 23l beer added prior to bottling to reach about 7%. The only problem is I only plan to do 12 litres so I'm not going to be cubing. Maybe...

Ferment as per normal, ~10 days.
Toast 25g oak chips and soak in bourbon
Rack to secondary, add oak chips + booze and leave for a week.
Bulk prime, add bourbon when priming, bottle
Leave for at least 6 months before sampling

I'm getting thirsty thinking about this, better distract myself with work...


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## Charst (23/3/16)

I put one oak stave in a nectarine Brett saison for 6 months. I think it's a touch over oaky to me. A bigger beer would stand up to it no drama though.


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## Blind Dog (23/3/16)

barls said:


> although i find chips are a bit one dimensional in flavour and over oak really quickly.
> the bigger the piece the more rounded the flavour and the longer the exposure time can be.


agree


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## Cortez The Killer (23/3/16)

I've had a lot of success with oak dominoes from http://www.stilldragon.com.au/oak-dominoes/

The IBU's had an oak based brew comp that was a lot of fun.

I've added them to secondary and straight to the keg - beers end up delicious.

No good in the primary as the yeast will coat them and limit extraction.

From my understanding the cut of the domino reduces the amount of end grain as compared to chips or cubes thereby reducing harshness etc.

My usual dosage is 2 - 4 dominoes per 20L. From memory each one weighs 30-50g. Most of the time I don't bother taking them out of the keg so the beer takes on more oak as time goes on.

I can't say that I would regard anything I've used them in as being over oaked though.

If anyone got a Hungarian oak domino bulk buy up I'd be in on that after sampling Barl's beers

Cheers


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## drsmurto (23/3/16)

I regularly 'oak' my beers and have used a few different methods. My favourite is the 100L ex-Yalumba octaves i the shed which are due to be refilled next weekend with a RIS and an imperial rauchbier as part of the local group of brewers. Last year we did a Pliny and as RIS, both of which I put on tap. The Pliny got drained and was a great twist on the original, the RIS is getting very low and is lush. Putting a beer in a barrel also allows for slow oxidation as a barrel is not air tight. So the end result is different to adding oak to a beer in a keg. I add a lager yeast to the barrels to help with the conditioning and to knock a few more points off to try and dry the beers out a bit. Once I am happy the SG is stable I add 5g/100L barrel of potassium metabisulfite as an insurance policy against wild yeast or any of the brett/lacto/pedio getting in as they are near impossible to remove after. The barrels also get professionally washed inbetween uses and stored with a concentrated sulfite holding solution. 

I've also used oak in kegs, similar to Cortex I often use the dominoes from Punkin but I also have a large supply of french oak staves leftover from winemaking I did a few years ago. These were full length staves (~1m in length) that were in 200L fermenters of wine. They were thoroughly cleaned after use and then sawn in to 3cm lengths. Before using oak staves or dominoes I always sterilise them by putting them in the oven ~ 120-140C for 20 mins till the house smells like a winery barrel room. Add immediately to the keg from the oven and rack beer on to them. I wouldn't boil them in water as you will strip oak character doing this (taste the water after).

The next step is to rack all the whiskys I have on oak and use the oak in a beer to add an extra dimension.

Can you over oak a beer? Yes. I was squeezed for time and wanted to get an oaked beer in to a comp but only had 1 week in a keg. So i used the equivalent of 50 dominoes in a 19L keg. After a few weeks the oak really started to become dominant. It went a period of 6 months where i wasn't happy with it but once it had been there for closer to a year it seemed to mellow out, still very oaky but it seemed more balanced. I happily drank it over the course of another year.

An oaked RIS is probably my favourite style of beer and I try to keep one on tap all year round. Although the Imperial Rauchbier smells amazing in the fermenter, used Gladfield Manuka Smoked malt rather than the usual Best Smoked malt. Can't wait to taste how the oak blends with the smoke.

Unfortunately Yalumba no longer sell the barrels or I would probably grab a few more.


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## GalBrew (23/3/16)

Cortez The Killer said:


> I've had a lot of success with oak dominoes from http://www.stilldragon.com.au/oak-dominoes/
> 
> The IBU's had an oak based brew comp that was a lot of fun.
> 
> ...


These are very nice bits of oak compared to the chips that are more readily available. I am using some French oak dominos in a Shiraz that I am making, the smell amazing out of the bag. The good thing too is you can leave them in for long periods without getting the unpleasant flavours that leech out very quickly from chips.


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## Danscraftbeer (23/3/16)

Xander said:


> How long would you "age" the beer for - say with 1g per litre as you suggest?
> 
> This is for an Imperial Coffee Stout...
> 
> Cheers.


I slow carbonated it in the kegerater with the bag of whisky oak chips for at least a week then taste tested it over maybe a month. When it became really impressive in blended flavour I bottled the entire keg and left in the garage fridge and enjoyed it here and there over a few months to a year. After aging in bottles it did mellow on the flavors including the Whisky Oak character. I also put some in the cupboard to let sit at room temperature to see if it gets better or worse. It didn't get worse. It was all good to the very last.

Edit: after checking notes.


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## barls (23/3/16)

Cortez The Killer said:


> If anyone got a Hungarian oak domino bulk buy up I'd be in on that after sampling Barl's beers
> 
> Cheers


I'm good for oak but i still have the contact details of the company i bought through.
minium buy i think was 25kg


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## TheWiggman (24/3/16)

I can imagine punkin waltzing into work today. Unlocks front door, flips sign, boots up computer and sits down.
Cracks knuckles.
Checks online orders.
"... wtf is with all the oak dominoes orders?"


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## sp0rk (24/3/16)

I've done it with both beer and... other stuff...
It works, but not as good as just time on oak
my other stuff usually sits for 4-6 months, beer for 2 months
I use Suber Lefort ministaves and offcuts from Roll Out The Barrel in Brisbane


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## manticle (24/3/16)

Funnily enough I just watched the video.
Rednecks makin' moonshine taste like something other than wood ethanol.


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## Vini2ton (27/4/16)

I've used the 10 inch staves in wine and mead in 5 litre carboys with great results. I split them with a cleaver to get them in and mostly leave them for months at a time. Oven sanitised. I'm going to rack some ye olde type ale on to some oak and dry hops soon and leave it for a week or so before bottling. Does anyone have any suggestions of commercial oaked beer to sample? It's an amazing process that can vastly improve a product or make it a grippy puckering grimace.


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## sp0rk (27/4/16)

Vini2ton said:


> I've used the 10 inch staves in wine and mead in 5 litre carboys with great results. I split them with a cleaver to get them in and mostly leave them for months at a time. Oven sanitised. I'm going to rack some ye olde type ale on to some oak and dry hops soon and leave it for a week or so before bottling. Does anyone have any suggestions of commercial oaked beer to sample? It's an amazing process that can vastly improve a product or make it a grippy puckering grimace.


I'd suggest Innis and Gunn


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## Vini2ton (28/4/16)

Yeah tried that, nice. I suppose 200 years ago all beers would of had a touch of oak. I'm surprised with the mass of craft breweries around nowadays that oaking hasn't become more of selling point and practice.


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## TimT (28/4/16)

I have read that old time brew makers did everything they could to keep oakiness out of their brews. They'd seal the inside of their barrels with something - pitch, maybe? So oak is not necessarily an old world flavour. Smoke is more the thing in old time brews due to the way they kilned their malts (though they didn't like that either).


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## Vini2ton (28/4/16)

Smoke and oak eh? Well I'll be a son of a pitch. I can feel a recipe coming on.


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## drsmurto (29/4/16)

Vini2ton said:


> Smoke and oak eh? Well I'll be a son of a pitch. I can feel a recipe coming on.


Early samplings are very nice indeed!

The Imperial Rauchbier is quite smoky so it will be interesting to taste how it develops over time.


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## Vini2ton (29/4/16)

Nice. Firken impressive. Are they ex-port barrels? How many times can you refill them until the oak flavour is not there?


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## drsmurto (30/4/16)

Vini2ton said:


> Nice. Firken impressive. Are they ex-port barrels? How many times can you refill them until the oak flavour is not there?


They are Yalumba Shiraz barrels that were used for 5 vintages of wine before i bought them. Last years RIS picked up plenty of oak character in 5 months so i expect it to get some albeit less this year. 

The larger benefit of barrel aging is the bulk conditioning, plus in my case, extended yeast lees contact as i add fresh lager yeast to the barrels, and slow oxidation as the barrels allow air in.

If i decide after several months in the barrels that the beers need more oak character then i can add oak dominoes to the keg since i don't bottle.


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## Vini2ton (2/5/16)

DrSmurto said:


> They are Yalumba Shiraz barrels that were used for 5 vintages of wine before i bought them. Last years RIS picked up plenty of oak character in 5 months so i expect it to get some albeit less this year.
> 
> The larger benefit of barrel aging is the bulk conditioning, plus in my case, extended yeast lees contact as i add fresh lager yeast to the barrels, and slow oxidation as the barrels allow air in.
> 
> If i decide after several months in the barrels that the beers need more oak character then i can add oak dominoes to the keg since i don't bottle.


Have the beers developed slight raisin and sherry notes? If I steeped staves in say a Durif for a few months maybe I could replicate the process on a smaller scale. Well, maybe to some degree.


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## slcmorro (2/5/16)

I spoke with Andy at Renaissance Brewing in Blenheim NZ on this topic at length, and his opinion is that it makes as negligible difference as there is. He even went on the divulge that some of his oaked beers have won awards, so he doesn't bother with barrel aging these days.


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## Vini2ton (2/5/16)

On a commercial level, you'd think the risk of infection would be too great to barrel. Plus barrels are expensive.


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