Making oak additions

I'm trying to get a handle on the amount of oak to put into wines this year, as I haven't quite figured it out yet from years past.

Is there a simple approximation of the amount of oak beans per gallon that would compare to the oak flavor developed off of a full sized barrel? Is it as simple as equivalent surface areas?

Rob

Reply to
Rob
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For reds, maybe start with 1/2 ounce per gallon, I use twice that. The toast matters, an extra heavy toast does not impart as much as medium or heavy.

For whites, about 1/5 of what you use for red.

Joe

Reply to
Joe Sallustio

Stavin gives the formula: 2.5 to 3 oz./5 gal = new oak barrel

In my experience this seems pretty accurate.

Ed

Reply to
Ed Marks

Boy, that is a tough question. It is a mater of taste. You can use Stavin' suggestion as a start. I find that I need more. One of the problems is that oak flavor will fade with time. At the end of a 3 month soak you may decide you have plenty of oak. Then a year later there may be very little oak flavor left. Also, what do you mean by a new barrel taste. Are you talking about a 10 gallon barrel or a 60 gallon barrel? Very different. Are you talking about 1 to 3 months in a new barrel or a year in a new barrel?

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

I know I'm not asking an easy one!

I'm using 6 gallon carboys, and am trying to get some oak flavor into the wine (Pinot, Zin, etc.). My wife and I both are terribly troubled by overoaked wine - where you take a sip and need tweezers to take out the splinters. So I'm not going for full-on 100% new oak flavors. What I think I'd like is the equivalent of 25-35% "new oak" aged wines, in standard 60 gallon barrels, for standard red-wine aging (a year/18 months). How's that for a target?

Last year I had a Merlot that was, well, apparently not the best juice I could get (I bought it as juice, but it appeared to be at about 1/2 concentration), and 2 oz oak cubes turned it into a tree trunk. This year's Zin and Pinot are better, both with about 2 oz/6 gallons, but instead of floundering too much, I figured if there was a intelligence shortcut I could take, it'd be found here.

Rob

Reply to
Rob

This is on the things that's really hard to quantify, it depends on personal taste. I'm in your camp - I did some pretty big reds last year with the Stavin recommended dosage and find them generally overoaked at this stage (1 year). So my suggestion would be to start easy, say 1 oz / 6 gals and add more later if you find the oak light. Or use more but monitor the development regularly and pull the cubes out when you've gto where you wanted. But as ray said, this might change as the wine ages, so it is something of a tough call.

In any case, better less oak than too much.

Pp

Reply to
pp

Whatever floats your boat. ;^)

It's too late for this batch, but in future I recommend that you add oak to the fermenter, right from the beginning. The fermentation tends to fine the harsh tannins in situ, and the result is oak character that is much better integrated with the fruit. That's one of the reasons that barrel fermentaions are so desirable for oak aged white wines.

For this years batch, I'd suggest that you pull out a gallon or so, add a weighed eyeballometric amount of oak to it, let it sit for a couple or three months and taste it. If that's about right, treat the rest of the batch in the same proportion and duration. If it's overoaked, titrate it with some of the unoaked wine until it tastes right and calculate from the added volume of wine what the correct oak addition for the remainder of the wine should be. Simple, no?

Basically, it works analogously to conducting fining trials. Run a test on a small portion of the batch and then scale things up to treat the entire batch. Be sure to check your numbers though. Better still, especially if your math skills aren't so hot, get someone _else_ to check your calculations.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Thanks everyone - this has been very helpful.

I just tasted last year's pinots (two different clones) prior to bottling to get them out of the way of this year's harvest. Both received the same (~2-2.5 oz oak/6 gallons) oak, for about a month and between primary and secondary fermentation. One is obviously overoaked, but interesting, the other is oaked properly but bland. Hmmm....

Think I'll go find one of those eyeballometers that Tom speaks so highly of....

Thanks again, everyone!

Rob

Reply to
Rob

I remmeber last year my garage had a swarm of fruit flies.

I keep everything very clean, but they still appear.

With my garden dying down, I am noticing some already, in my garage.

Any type of pre-treatment I can do before I start fermenting wine?

thanks

Reply to
Fishhead

You can't stop them from coming. Just keep your fermenter tightly closed (plastic sheet tied over a open fermenter helps very well).

And build a fruit fly trap. A half full bottle of wine works well. They fly in, get stuck due to the neck and then drown.

Reply to
Droopy

Fishhead, I get the same problem each year. I don't know any techniques for prevention or extinction, but the homemade flytrap approach significantly reduces the population. I remove some of the grape juice before I add yeast. Put the juice in a wide mouth containter (I use an old tupperware bowl) and add a drop of dish soap. While you'd probably trap some w/ the juice alone, the soap seems to improve the results. Probably due to the increased surface tension of the soap addition. I like using juice instead of wine b/c I don't want those buggers carrying acetic acid bacteria into my fermenting juice....not sure how sound my logic is though.

A good prevention measure is to crush/destem outside, so that all of the ones already hangin' out on the grapes don't get invited in. When you press, immediately remove the pomace from your winemaking area. Keep your area clean and free of exposed juice and wine. Like Droopy, I use a plastic sheet over my fermentor....kinda like a big shower cap. Happy Hunting, -David

Reply to
David D.

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