EBay Oak Sticks

[brudda]

Was doing a bit of searching around to get some pre-cut French and American Oak sticks for some rum aging and came across this bloke on ebay who cuts up different types of wood to make ?pencils. Anyway, he's in SA and sent him an email and he got some french and american oak barrels which he's been cutting up and selling for spirit aging. I got about a dozen of each and he added in a few extras and while I probably paid too much, they're pre-cut and ready to drop into a bottle or demijohn, all I have to do is char them and they're ready to go! For someone who doesn't have a lot of time on their hands, it was ideal, and the smell when I opened the bags was sensational, especially the french oak! Heres a picture of what arrived and his description of the barrels. IF you search ebay for "French oak pen" contact him and he'll hook you up.

oak.jpg

From his ebay site:
"Even tough, I specialise mostly with/on local timber species, these 2 Oak barrels that I've got from a friend, in exchange for a fair size trees trimming job that the wife and I (as always), done in this friend's huge back/front yards, in September 2011.

Out of some other timbers species that we didn't have, he's got contacts with one of the major wine producers in the region, that imports these Oak barrels (new) from France and the USA for the curing off their Port wine.

After these barrels are used once, and for whatever the time that takes for each barrels to cure its contents, the barrels are never used again and put a side. He got a few and while most are from the American Oak, I spotted this one that had the burnt brand from France so that meant that I had some very good stuff in there.

While both French and American Oaks do an identical job at curing the normal wine into Port, the wood is slightly different, and you will be able to see that, in the French -Oak samples and the American-Oak samples...!"

[Dominator]

I got some of those american oak sticks. Toasted them in the oven and they worked a treat in my rum. It was a pain in the arse to get the wax off though. ~x(

[brudda]

These ones are all cleaned up, I think cause I told him exactly what I wanted them for, I'll see how they go!

Definitely will job on those group buys in the future, these will cover me for a few brews though!