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Re: Oak, oak, and more oak...

I recently have tried one of the "Oak Spirals".

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An interesting website. Thanks, Paul.

It seems to be doing a VERY good job (French oak). > I am using one of the spirals that is suppose to > be good for three gallons of wine but I am using > it in a 15 gallon demijohn. I am using another > one in a spent 10 gallon barrel. It seems to be > imparting enough oak for me. The thing about the > spirals is that they will impart the oak very > fast as they say in their advertisement. For the > barrel, I screwed a stainless steel hook into the > bottom of the silicon bung and used a thin piece > of stainless steel wire to attach the spiral to > the hook on the bung. This way, I can remove the > spiral anytime I want.

Thanks for this information. The price seems in line with oak chips. It appears that one needs to Quality Assurance Test ever few weeks to decide when the oak flavoring is right.

Dick

Reply to
Dick Adams
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Yep, one of the advantages - need for more quality control :)

It is also possible to attach a small stainless steel wire to one end of the spiral and thread the other end up through an airlock. This way you don't have to fish it out of the carboy.

Stainless Infusion tubes are also made but they are a bit pricey (about $50 but a one time expense) and they are too large in diameter to fit into a small barrel or carboy - I have tried this approach also. I believe they will fit into the opening of a demijohn.

Of course if you have a large enough diameter bung hole (my 30 gallon barrel does) you could put the spiral into the infusion tube. That way you would not have to fool with adding a hook to the bottom of the bung and hang the spiral with a stainless wire. Infusion tubes are too long for 30 gallon or smaller barrels but you can cut off the excess length with a hack saw.

Reply to
Paul E. Lehmann

I personally haven't been able to tell the difference between French oak in various forms (cube, chips) and Hungarian in chip form. Both added a pleasant round/smooth vanilla character to mead. The US oak was a different matter althogther, though I don't know what form the meadster used. based on that one experience, and having tasted beer aged on American oak, I wouldn't use it myself.

Reply to
Joel

Check out some distilleries in Scotland for oak staves.

Reply to
Nick Cramer

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