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Yes, another idea, heh...

I noticed in my local store here some oak chips and such used to give home-made wine that from-the-cask flavouring. I wonder if it can be done successfully with an ale as well, giving it a bit of that oak-aged flavour, such as from Innis & Gunn.

Has anyone ever tried this, if so, what was the result and how did you do it? I can only think of adding the oak in a clean cheesecloth bag or some such, or would there be a better way?

Yes, the newb is loaded with questions, I'm the experimental type I was eyeing dried Elderberries and flowers and pondering what kind of flavours I can add to a basic homebrew kit... In the near future I may make a line of 2L coke bottles, filled with a basic ale and having various and sundry things steeping in them, just to see

experimenting is fun, isn't it

i've put a few toasted oak chips in a bottle of belgian strong dark ale for a few days (poured it from secondary, and force carbonated), and it was delicious. it's just a matter of working out quantities to do a proper batch, and leave it longer. i want oak flavour to be noticeable, but not totally nuts.

Hi JoeStone,

Over winter I made an all-grain oaked porter. I had a bag of oak chips left over from a wine kit that we didn't want to oak, and the porter was may way of getting rid of them in a productive way.

I think the wine kit instructions say to tip them in at secondary fermentation. so that's what I did. The result was a porter with a distinctive but not overpowering oaky flavour. Needless to say I'm a big fan of it. Here's some advice on it:

- Use the same amount of oak chips as would usually come in a 23L wine kit (ask your homebrew shop guy/girl if you don't know, I can't remember off the top of may head how much I used)

- If you're racking to secondary, then racking again to bulk prime (as I do), tip the chips into the secondary fermenter when you rack. They will not disintigrate, so the cloth bag is not needed.

- If you're bottling out of your primary fermenter, you probably won't have any problems with them getting stuck in the tap because they float.

There's a recipe in the Brewing Crafts book that recomends a handfull of oak chips so maybe start from there. This thread has inspired me to give it a go myself

I got myself a bag of chips from rum barrels so I'm going to have a shot at making a porter similar to the Squire's Rum Rebellion. I was just wondering about the quantities.....

Two things I've heard of (but not tried) is throwing a bit of oak into the boil; or actually heating up a hooded bbq with a smoker box and smoking some malt. Might work with hickory too

timmy wrote:I got myself a bag of chips from rum barrels so I'm going to have a shot at making a porter similar to the Squire's Rum Rebellion. I was just wondering about the quantities.....

If you make anything similar please let me know