Oak, Dry Hop And Crash Chill

[remi]

Hi,

I'm fermenting an American Rye Brown IPA, and am planning to add some oak in secondary.

I will also be dry hopping in secondary (I use a conical). I would usually dry-hop for 3-4 days prior to crash-chilling.

It is a 42L batch, and the plan is to add 100g bourbon-soaked oak chips, which I will sterilise in a pressure cooker. From my reading of previous posts/ google- this amount of oak will be noticeable after a few days in secondary, at which point I will rack off of the beer.

So- here is the question: in terms of the oak effect on flavour, is this likely to be more pronounced at fermentation temperature than at crash-chilling temp? In other words, if after 3 days at fermentation temp oaking I'm happy with the oak character, will it continue to get more oaky during the subsequent 2 days of crash-chilling prior to racking off? Or should I just add the oak once I've already crash-chilled and then rack off when happy? Should my dry-hopping schedule change from my usual practice?

Thanks for any tips...

Remi

 

[Bizier]

I added some oak to a brown last year and I found 40g for 3 days in one keg at fridge temps really rounded out the malt and gave a very nice little touch of sweetness, though it was subtle. I am really happy with how the oak behaved at these temperatures.

So, yes, I would suggest that your oak contact time during crash chilling will firmly count towards overall oakiness.

Or should I just add the oak once I've already crash-chilled and then rack off when happy?

I would say yes.

 

[remi]

Thanks for the replies,

I'm going to add pressure-cooker sterilised oak chips to my chilled fermenter today or tomorrow. One thing I couldn't really gather from searching was whether people are dumping the oak chips into the fermented wort as is, or whether they need to be bagged?

Remi