Looking for best practices here for oak spirals used in a secondary. Does boiling make them lose potency? Or more prone to extract harsh flavors?
No bourbon/vodka soak solutions please. Not looking for that in this beer.
I like to get medium toast and put it in the over at 400 degrees until I get the color I want. I like the vanilla character you get out of that dark of a toast. That’s the best way to sanitize them too, if you are worried about that. I have also just thrown them straight in the fermentor with fine results (though I did get an infection doing that with chips once.)
I’ve been looking into this too because its sour season for me. I’ll end up with 4 batches, each getting a spiral. Im not sure what I’ll do this first go around, probably just a quick soak in starsan. I might just give them 5 minutes in a steamer.
But I’ve been thinking of reusing my spirals the way sour brewers use barrels. Either I’ll store them as is for a very breif time and let them help inoculate the next beer. Or I will rinse them off and store in a zip lock full of potassium metabisulfate and citric acid solution. Then rinse and use when I need them again.
Most likely the storage solution route…
I didn’t think of the ole oven. If they’re already medium toast spirals, I’m assuming a bake at 250° or so wouldn’t change that much?
I thought about reusing too, wonder how much oak character will actually be left after 4 months in a carboy of beer?
I would assume you would need at least 40 minutes at that temp, but I’m not sure exactly on the time for sanitizing, but I’m pretty confident that would work. Depends on what you want. Check this chart out though
Thanks, are there times that go with that chart or does it assume a constant time?
I go by smell, at 400 you will get some eye burning smoke so have some fans going. I have let it go as long as 2 hours before.
No idea, I guess it depends on what oak character we’re talking about. Partly why I’m thinking of using it primarily as an inoculation source. Maybe oak tannin secondarily
If the oak is going into sour beer then there’s not much reason IMO to sanitize the wood. Whatever is growing on it will either die in the presence of alcohol or acidity or make a small contribution to the complexity of the beer. For a clean beer you should do something to try to reduce the population in and on the wood.
How you go about trying to sanitize or sterilize the wood depends in part on how much of the rougher oak character you want in the beer. Any liquid method is going to leach out some of the tannins and other compounds that will give you a more gentle oak flavor. That may or may not be your goal.
While there is Brett in this saison, sour is not the goal.
After about 4 months I don’t think you will have much desireable character left in the wood. If you take a spire or cubes or chips and put them in a clear spirit you will notice that the spirit will darken very quickly for the first week or two then slowly darken more over time.
I wonder if oak aging Brett beers, sour or not, is a different think than oak aging regular beers. Perhaps some different long term outcomes are possible?
For Brett I use a more neutral barrel generally and will go a lot longer. I do have a beer that I aged with a spire that is a brett and lacto/pedio beer that I aged in a carboy for years and it is less oaky that you would suspect so there may be something to that.
The way sour beer is booming I’ll bet there’s more info to come in the next few years. Me personally, im trying the spirals just to try it. I’m not wanting blam oak, actually I just barely expect a subtle intangible. At my scale im not going to bother with little barrels. I think that would be too much wood. And im not going to spend a week boiling up a full barrel just to do it… so that leaves spirals. I might try a batch timed at bottling day and use my spirals as the inoculation, just to see how it goes.
It should be quite different as Brett eats the cellulose of the wood. I am sure there are biotransforms occurring as well as the Brett further attacking dextrines and polyphenols. My saisons go into a barrel at 1.004 and usually out under .98. Taste as it ages and the variation is incredible.
I have some chips I used in one of my first Brett beers. Been saving them in a mason jar in the fridge. Some of the chips are now little more than sponges after two years.
I toasted some cubes yesterday and timed it. It took about 2 hours to go from light/medium to medium/dark toast @ 380 degrees. I can post some pics later if you are interested.
Thanks major, this is good info to have. My spirals are already medium toast, I’m more wanting to heat them for sanitation purposes.
I’d guess 30-40 minutes should do it without increasing the toast level much.