Oak Or Wood Aged Beer

[dan_pilbara]

I've bought some plantation rum oak soaker chips, a tin of porter, some crystal malt and some hops. I've seen a few suggestions for what is about to be created but has anyone actually tried to make their own Oak or Wood Aged Beer? what have been your results and what have you used?

 

[pint of lager]

Hi Dan,

There have been a number of posts about oak in beers. Try searching the board for the keyword oak.

Also, there have been recipes for your beer, try searching on the keyword rebellion on the board. Don't try putting porter in, that will have too many hits.

 

[Geoff-Donnellon]

I've bought some plantation rum oak soaker chips, a tin of porter, some crystal malt and some hops. I've seen a few suggestions for what is about to be created but has anyone actually tried to make their own Oak or Wood Aged Beer? what have been your results and what have you used?

Haven't tried beer yet but had some success using port. Got a 2 Litre cask of cheapish port + 100 gram of chared french oak chips and let them soak for about 3 months - The results were good, the port had got a lot smoother and developed some complexity it did't have before (kept a bit aside for comparison)

Cheers

Geoff D

 

[newguy]

Hope this isn't too late - just noticed this thread.

Our homebrew club purchased a used rye whisky barrel and then filled it with porter. This barrel holds approx 200 liters. One club member has an 80 liter system, and he brewed 2 batches back to back, while I have a 40 liter system and brewed the other bit. We used identical recipes, grain bills, hopping schedules, and yeast. Once the beer was finished fermenting, we transfered it all into the cask. This was last August.

Initially the beer seemed to gain new life from the cask and rapidly got quite delicious. Then after about a month or so, it started to sour. Another club member had about 5 liters of 'swish', which we added to the barrel to try and stop the souring. Swish is made from used whisky barrels. Some water is added to the barrel, which is then resealed, and 'swished' once a day for several weeks. Reasonably strong pseudo-whisky then comes out (approx. 40%+).

At the moment the beer almost defies description. It still has a sour edge, but it is less noticeable now. It has picked up a rye whisky note and there are oak qualities as well. It's quite good, but a drawback is that it is quite thin bodied - not surprising given the infection it picked up. We're going to take it out of the cask in about a month to 6 weeks from now.

If you want that oak character without the infection, try adding steamed oak chips. Steaming them for at least 20 minutes should adequately disinfect them. If they are added in the secondary, the alcohol in the beer will help to inhibit infection as well. If you're keen to experiment, I can heartily recommend adding some quality Scotch to beer too. A good starting point is 1/2 oz in 500 ml. Besides the Scottish Ales, Scotch goes well in old ales, barleywines, porters, and sweet stouts.

 

[kook]

I can heartily recommend adding some quality Scotch to beer too. A good starting point is 1/2 oz in 500 ml. Besides the Scottish Ales, Scotch goes well in old ales, barleywines, porters, and sweet stouts.

It can indeed. I know some guys in Denmark who added 2? bottles of Lagavulin to about 30L of Limfjords Porter and left it in a barrel for a few months. Really tasty stuff.

 

[dan_pilbara]

Ok, so on the weekend i finally kegged the final product.

I ended up using a dark ale kit, 1kg dried light malt, 500g chocolate malt, 12g fuggles, safale and 1/4 cup steamed rum oak chips. Looked ok coming out of the fermenter, need to perfect my mashing technique though as i am getting a lot trub.

Into the keg i added 1/4 cup bundaberg rum which was also soaking on oak chips. Smelled good in the keg, have to see how it goes in a couple of weeks.

 

[brettprevans]

It can indeed. I know some guys in Denmark who added 2? bottles of Lagavulin to about 30L of Limfjords Porter and left it in a barrel for a few months. Really tasty stuff.

That guy in denmark should be shot, drawn and quartered for wasting 2 bloody good bottle of malt whisky. esp as they retail at AUS$70-80. Putting on my whisky drinker's hat, its paramount to tossers mixing Johnny Blue with coke (or anything for that matter).

I could understand if it was a $30 of Johnny Red or other Scotch for a scottish ale but not Lagavulin. esp as the tasting notes are wrong. For a porter I would have thought you want something stong but mello, not sharp, salty and peaty like Lagavulin.

Anyway. back to beer. As Pint-of-larger said ' try searching under oak chips'. Theres plenty of threads with great recipes for oak chips.

 

[Trent]

Dan
Did you mash just the 500g of choc malt? I think you may wanna add in some pale malt if you are going to all that trouble. In your case, I would probably just steep the specialty malts in some 65C water, and add the kit into the fermenter later, along with the DME and steeped water. Unless I am misreading your procedure, of course.
All the best
Trent

 

[kook]

That guy in denmark should be shot, drawn and quartered for wasting 2 bloody good bottle of malt whisky. esp as they retail at AUS$70-80. Putting on my whisky drinker's hat, its paramount to tossers mixing Johnny Blue with coke (or anything for that matter).

I could understand if it was a $30 of Johnny Red or other Scotch for a scottish ale but not Lagavulin. esp as the tasting notes are wrong. For a porter I would have thought you want something stong but mello, not sharp, salty and peaty like Lagavulin.

How was it a waste? It wasn't as if they were blending it with some cheap soft drink, it's one of the worlds best baltic porters. Why would a crap blend be more appropriate?

Have you tried Limfjords Porter to start with? It is a baltic porter that is quite smoky with loads of liquorice too. They blended perfectly IMO, the saltiness complementing the anise and the smoke flavours melding.

I don't see why they should be "shot, drawn and quartered" for innovating and experimentation with beer and whisky? I can see why J.W. Lee's would deserve being shot (considering they pasteurised their Lagavulin cask barley wine), but this was live beer going into oak along with the whisky.

 

[facter]

hmmm. i looked for recipes in amongst those posts but wasnt able to find any .. was wondering if anyone could point me to one specifically?

I was planning on making a porter after my iirsh red was done on the same yeast, so would be great to give this one a shot - it was a huge hit with all my mates and ive got some oak chips siting around doing nothing

 

[boingk]

Try a Country Brewer Wetpak! www.countrybrewer.com.au is the site, then just navigate to the wetpaks from the main page - they have an Oak Aged Porter [or similar] that is supposedly very good. Requires some minor grain steeping, but thats the most technical thing there.

Good luck!

EDIT: Make that 'Classic Oak Ale'...just got a Wetpak of it for myself. Comes with 3kg malt, 150g flavouring grain, loose hop pellets, a Safale yeast, and oak chips all for around $30.

 

[sinkas]

A recent Brewing Network Sunday Brewcast is on this topic, might be wort a listen, not 100% informative, but you might get a few moresels out of it.

 

[facter]

Okay well, this next weekend is when I am goign to give a Rum Oak Porter a shot ...

Can anyone comment on the following recipe for me? I dont have too many brown/dark malts, but am going to use what i have - i think the chocolate wheat might be a nice addition as well, and ive put in a fair few different malts to try to get a more complex flavour. This is my first porter so hopefully it looks okay.

One thing I'm worried about is the amount of rum/oak chips! So I did a bit of research and came up with the following amounts jsut as a starting point. If anyone has actually done this style before, let me know - i dont want the oak or rum over powering the beer! Not quite sure how long to put it into secondary with the oak chips either


Any guidance would be great - I'm making this for a mate whose gone through a rough time lately as the Rum Rebellion is his favorite beer.

Recipe Specifics

----------------



Batch Size (L):		  22.00	

Total Grain (kg):		 5.50

Anticipated OG:		  1.064  

Anticipated EBC:		  70.7

Anticipated IBU:		  31.5

Wort Boil Time:			 60	Minutes









Grain/Extract/Sugar



   %	 Amount	 Name						

----------------------------------------------

 30.9	 1.70 kg.  Generic LME - Amber  

 18.2	 1.00 kg.  Maris Otter			   

 18.2	 1.00 kg.  Munich Malt				

  9.1	 0.50 kg.  Generic DME - Light	   

  9.1	 0.50 kg.  Pale Malt(2-row)		  

  5.5	 0.30 kg.  Crystal			

  5.5	 0.30 kg.  Chocolate Malt		   

  1.8	 0.10 kg.  Flaked Oats				  

  1.8	 0.10 kg.  Chocolate Wheat Malt	   





Hops



   Amount	 Name							  Form	Alpha  IBU  Boil Time

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 50.00 g.	 Goldings - E.K.				   Whole	4.75  30.2  60 min.

 10.00 g.	 Goldings - E.K.				   Pellet   4.75   1.3  10 min.





Secondary -



 2 1/2 cups Inner Circle rum

 15grams oak chips; steamed then,lightly toasted, and then soaked in said Rum for three weeks

 

[chris.taylor.98]

Okay well, this next weekend is when I am goign to give a Rum Oak Porter a shot ...

One thing I'm worried about is the amount of rum/oak chips! So I did a bit of research and came up with the following amounts jsut as a starting point. If anyone has actually done this style before, let me know - i dont want the oak or rum over powering the beer! Not quite sure how long to put it into secondary with the oak chips either
Any guidance would be great - I'm making this for a mate whose gone through a rough time lately as the Rum Rebellion is his favorite beer.

facter, I recently did a rum porter for my wife and its my favourite beer at the moment.

I used 275ml of rum ( just cheap bundi )

and 40gms of oak shavings

in the secondary ( 22.5L ).

My only comments are that I would probably boil the rum to get the rum to get the alcohol off it first, as it has a hot alcohol flavour. Note it is not very prominent in this beer, and you could probably go more if you want a more assertive rum flavour.

A good way to gage it is to pour some wort into a measured cup after the primary has finished, and using a dropper, add a measured amount of rum until you get the flavour you want. Then its just a matter of multiplying the amount of rum up to match the amount of wort in the fermenter.

One suggestion on the recipe is that I would probably go the black patent malt in place of the chocolate malt.

Cheers

Chris.

I left it on the oak for about 5 days which in hindsight was not long enough. I would suggest that you taste test it every day after about 4 days to make sure it is not over oaked.

 

[facter]

chris - thanks for that. I think the alcohol taste you mention may be from the Bundy itself! It has a very distinct bite to it! Inner Circle is extremely mild in comparison, but I like your idea of upscaling a small amount after primary and thne doing it. I amg uessing that as I wanted to age the porter for a bit then I'd probably rop the oak in later in the secondaary fermentation then, if it really doesnt take that long for the oak to start to affect the beer - i thought it would take a fair amount of time!

I was also thinking, maybe I could start soaking the rum in the oak now and actually add THAT rum with the oak soaked into it to the porter, but again,t hat might be guestimating things a bit - id think that by doing that it would probably extract a lot of the oak flavour out of the chips.

Black patent hey ..dont say as I have or have used that before. I dont suppose I could throw some chocolate into the oven and turn it into black patent could I? hahaha, not much hope of getting hold of any I dont think before I make it this weekend

 

[chris.taylor.98]

Yes I think next time I will go with a better quality rum. Seeing how it was going into the beer didn't think it would make that much difference ( plus I wanted to save my money for more beer ingredients )

As far as the oak aging is concerned, from what I have read I don't think that it makes a lot of difference how you get the oak and the rum in there. If you end up over oaking it ( it is mostly the tannins that you are extracting ), they do fade with time, and this beer definitely gets better over time.

I have some black patent malt spare if you are anywhere near Moorlbark in Melbourne.

Its about as close to roast barely as you can get while still being a malt. Has an almost charcoal like quality to it.

Cheers

Chris

 

[dan_pilbara]

I did an early taste on my brew and cannot really make out any distinct flavours compaired to my usual dark ales. I know bundy is cheaper than inner circle but after soaking it on the chips for 2 weeks it tasted like bundy black (maybe another idea there).

Next time i would soak more chips on more rum maybe a jamacian

 

[QldKev]

If you want the run taste without the alcohol get some rum essence from the homebrew shop; the stuff they make the home made rum from.