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The conventional wisdom seems to be to boil oak cubes for 10 minutes to remove harshness.
I want to soak French oak cubes in white wine (light toast) and red wine (medium toast). I have a couple questions:
(1) Do I need to boil the oak cubes before soaking?
(2) Can I leave the oak cubes soaking indefinitely? I might not need them for 6-8 months.
Posted 34 days ago.
I would boil them, yeah. Especially since you plan on leaving them for so long, the wine will absolutely take on all those harsh characters.
Yep! Indefinitely! I have a 1.5 year old mason jar filled with Oak chips and bourbon.
Posted 34 days ago.
Thanks! I was hoping you would respond. I think "how to prepare wood" was on my list of ideas for further exploration in your wood primer.
Posted 34 days ago.
Edited 34 days ago by chino_brews
Yep, it totally was! I have that list saved, I'm particularly engaged with that idea and the idea of a faux solera using staves/honeycombs
Posted 34 days ago.
I was just reading about Steve Piatz's way of transferring lambic culture from batch to batch when using glas/PET carboys. It involved a piece of oak, soaked for a long time to remove any oakiness in water + sulfite, and then put into the fermentation. After each batch, the wood gets rinsed only in hot water only, and the yeast survive on wood until the next batch. Seems like a honeycomb would be perfect for that.
Posted 34 days ago.
In terms of soaking the chips in wine for long times, is there any concern about the wine getting vinegar-y like when you leave the bottle out for too long? Or should it be fine if you put it in a jar and fill essentially to the brim with wine? I've thought of using red wine soaked oak chips before, but haven't yet tried it out.
Posted 34 days ago.
The wine could get vinegary if you just left it out. Minimizing access to oxygen should help, acetic acid bacteria require oxygen to survive. You could always boil the wine and cubes briefly before you added them to your brew if you were concerned. That would at least kill any infection, but you should also taste the wine first to make sure you're not adding wine vinegar. ;)
Posted 34 days ago.
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