Pages: 1 2
Oaking a Scotch Ale
Here's an interesting excerpt from an article I found in a past Zymurgy issue written by the head brewer from DFH:
... a hop bag containing the wood chips can be soaked for 10 minutes in 185F water acidified with food grade phosphoric acid to a concentration of about 0.25 percent... to sanitize.
It seems a bit unnecessary but another option to sanitizing wood chips so I thought I'd share it. He alternatively suggests using steam.
Steam steam steam steam
chug chug chug chug
Alright well I got my medium toast French oak chips this weekend and unfortunately my 1 gallon jugs weren't in so I had to go scavenge a couple of Carlo and Rossi jugs from friends and neighbors. The Scotch ale has been in primary for 7 weeks or something like that so I couldn't wait any longer.
I took a gravity sample today and its down to 1.024 from 1.097; 9.7% abv. It tastes good; a little hot, syrupy and malty, a little hops presence , and an earthy, smokey character. If that smokey character are what people are trying to replicated with peat malt, don't do it. Use the Scottish ale yeast and thank me later.
Yesterday I took .25oz of oak chips and soaked them in 1oz of 12 year Jameson Whiskey and I'm about to go steam (Yes Mike, I'm going to steam them) another .25 oz for the other 1 gallon jug.
What did you do with the Jameson? 
ID
Dumped it into the beer too. I didn't want to lose any oak flavors and I heard that soaking oak chips in whiskey alone won't give you enough whiskey flavor.
I am anxious to see what flavors the chips (which personally I wouldn't use; cubes are much better and easier) bring to this batch. I have heard that the flavor is stronger in one gallon batches because of the reduced surface area. I have also only used oak in five gallon batches of mead and never in beer. No one over at the site pretty much exclusive to mead ever posts on any tasting either pre-bottling or post bottling/aging. Hence, I can never get a good measurement of how much to use other than just taking someones word for it in a recipe. Tasting something makes all the difference in recipe creation and editing.
Pages: 1 2
Search Home Brewing Knowledge Base
Custom Search
|