Any thoughts/advice on using wood to add to a brew? Im thinking adding a sort of hickory/oak hint to a stout could be tasty. Anybody done it? Can you just use normal chips (say like the kind you get to use on a bbq) and sterilze them, should you cook them up in anyway first to bring out the flavor?
From my wine experience i'd say go to a brew store, buy some french oak chips or the like and toss em in your secondary (the beer has some booze etc by that time so it should be pretty safe). Just be careful how much ! You don't want it to dominate your beer.
IF you are really worried they may infect your beer somehow, i'd say steep em at 140 for a while in some water. Maybe denny will chime in with more insight on this. I'm assuming if you boil the wood you will extract some stuff you do not want in your beer (Mmm turpintine beer). Could also soak em in some booze i guess, a little rummy oak in your stout (i've heard of people doing that with vannilla seeds)?
I do it all the time. Gust grab a chunk, and bigger is better, and add it to the boil. This will TONE DOWN your malt and slightly your hops.
I have been doing this for the past year.
Don't sterilize them if going into the boil for 1 hr. If you "cook" them, the throw away water will be the flavor your trying to impart.
I add oak or cherry, and mostly cherry.
HTH
__Stephen
I've used oak several times, mostly with IPA's and once with a stout. It definately imparts a flavor and adds to the beer's character. About 1-2oz of chips per five gallons usually does it. I don't "cook" the chips, but I do put them into a bit of boiling water for a few minutes, just to make sure there are no foreign bits of biological nastiness in them. have fun!
JT
Do you use fine chips, along the fineness of mulch, finer than that, or larger chunks? And where do you get them? I'd imagine theres a cheap place (i.e. - not the homebrew store) to buy wood. Im thinkin about adding a little oak to a porter.
Well, I guess you could say they're expensive for wood, but not really so for a beer ingredient--along the order of a few bucks for a few ounces as I recall. What I've used for beer have been rough chips, around 1/2 to 1 inch square, thickness of about 1/8 inch or so. Any size will do, as long as youi remember that surface area is the key issue intransferring the flavor to the beer. In my first wine kit, the "chips" were literally sawdust. I remember about a year ago there was an article in one of the major homebrewing magazines about how to figure out how much you want to add, and whether you want to toast your chips. Hope this helps.
JT
Hell just chop up the furniture or picture frames. You only need a little.
Bad Steve
__Stephen
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