Rookie mistake…
I am working on a Old Rasputin clone recipe (w/ extract) that I am “barrel-aging” with wood chips soaked in Maker’s Mark. However, I’m afraid I have over-oaked it (4 oz. of woodchips in secondary for two weeks). Any way to remedy this or am I going to be drinking 5 gallons of tree bark for the next couple months?
I was considering making an identical batch of the recipe without the wood chips and mixing it and just having two kegs of it, but I didn’t know if that would work…
I believe the barrel character will fade a bit over time. However, brewing another batch and blending to taste would be a viable solution. I’m not sure you would have to blend 1:1. Taking a sample of the over oaked beer and blending in measured amounts then scaling to the full volume would be best.
Usually with barrel or oak aging you want to go just past the point where it seem to be overpowering (especially when oaking a big beer like your RIS) because as stated above, those flavor contributions will fade over time nicely as the beer ages itself.
Oak goes through some weird phases in beer (and distilled spirits) in the first few weeks. Don’t necessarily assume what it tastes like after a week or two is what the beer will taste like in a few more weeks.
I assume this is a five gallon batch. 0.80oz/gal is not an unreasonable amount of oak. If you wait out five or six weeks and feel it’s too oaky then yes, you probably want to blend it down with an unoaked portion or a different unoaked beer. As mentioned in another comment, you may not need to blend out 1:1.
tl;dr: your beer will probably be fine
OK, thanks for the replies! How long do you reckon I should age it? I was thinking three months.