Fast barrel flavour

[Sam.]

Hey all, I know that a lot of people put a few sticks of oak in their spirit to impart some flavour. I was just wondering if you consider the surface area by volume ratio, would it be better to plane off some oak into some thin strips and then soak in the spirit?

Has anyone tried this? or is there a reason for not doing so?

[Swede]

Too thin is not desireable, you want your oak to be thick enough that you get a good cross section of charred to white through the stick. Treating your wood this way, charring the outer while leaving the inner relatively untouched gives the widest flavor profile. Chips or planed shavings would be all char, or all toast, etc, their not thick enough to give a good balance in my opinion.

But hey, wine guys use toasted chips, and it works, but then again, thats wine....

I'd take a hatchet and split up some sticks into 10mm x10mm square chunks, long enough to fit your jar easily, and char these on the BBQ, quench to rinse off ash and stop it from burning, and your golden. These are also known elsewhere as "pinto sticks" after pintoshine, the first guy to post this awesome method.

HTH

Swede

[SBB]

I was watching this utube vid the other day and it got me wondering about which way was best to cut the oak,,,,,with the grain or across the grain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTdk8lk6ZY&feature=related Its the bit were they are dunking the "giant tea bag" in and out of the vat toward the end of the video. Note that one of the bits of oak is a piece of log or branch that has been half burnt then cut across the grain Im thinking this has to allow the alc more access to whats inside that bit of wood.

[Frank]

Also as mentioned by Kiwi (via 5Star) in Oaking thread (?) elsewhere on this forum , there are noticeable differences in final flavour when soaking charred or toasted oak sticks in various ABV%....and for various timeframes! Its all a bit trial and error to me :oops: :? but I agree that 'chunky sticks' work well.

[Sam.]

Thanks for the replies guys, think I will stick yo using the sticks!

Another question, in a lot of different recipes I have read the talk about adding "a teaspoon of oak", is this referring to chips or something more in the powder form as I would have thout the measurements would have been a unit of weights (grams/ounces)?

[Frank]

could it be referring to using OAK essence (liquid)? I know various essence companies (like Still Spirits and Edwards, for example) sell 50ml bottles of the stuff. Question is.....just what is the stuff in the bottle?? :?

[Sam.]

Too thin is not desireable, you want your oak to be thick enough that you get a good cross section of charred to white through the stick. Treating your wood this way, charring the outer while leaving the inner relatively untouched gives the widest flavor profile. Chips or planed shavings would be all char, or all toast, etc, their not thick enough to give a good balance in my opinion.

But hey, wine guys use toasted chips, and it works, but then again, thats wine....

I'd take a hatchet and split up some sticks into 10mm x10mm square chunks, long enough to fit your jar easily, and char these on the BBQ, quench to rinse off ash and stop it from burning, and your golden. These are also known elsewhere as "pinto sticks" after pintoshine, the first guy to post this awesome method.

HTH

Swede

So what if you took some shavings off bare, charred and toasted and mixed them together?