toasting and charring oak

[Frito]

I got some red oak to age with and cut it into finger-sized pieces. I'm toasting it in the oven now at 400 F. How long should it toast for? I didn't find anything on the parent site about time. Seemed like 400 was the right temp. Then I char it, right?

thanks

[BW Redneck]

I usually don't char. I just put it straight in the distillate after toasting.
Edit: On the time question, 2 hours toasting tends to work the best.

[Frito]

thanks. I toasted for about 3 hours at 400. I then charred one and it's in there now. I considered splitting the batch into 2 and doing one with char and one without. Maybe should have done. Currently it's sitting at 83% which I think is a little high. This is my first attempt.

[AfricaUnite]

Only way to know how you like it is to split the batch and try each with a different toast. This is a big game of trials until you find what you like. Lots of experimentation can take place, different toasting levels, different oaks, different maceration times, different maceration strengths. Im sure you'll find your style.

[DestructoMutt]

For some, it's the trials that make it all worth while.

Well, off to do some tasting....no, I meant testing. Yeah...that's it, I'm just testing.

[BW Redneck]

A wise person once said: "I can teach you how to drive, but I can't tell you exactly how far to push the gas pedal."
There are some things you just have to learn by experience. Your first mashing, run, and your first aged distillate will teach you more than we ever could.

[pintoshine]

I'm not a fan of toasted oak. It is good in wine but not to my liking in spirits.
I posted this by request after sharing some of my sticks with wineo and from him, some aged spirits to mntwalker2.
This is my charred oak stick procedure with com observations.

I select White Oak from which I know the origin. I buy mine near Sonora Kentucky from some Amish fellow's sawmill. I try very hard only to get heart wood. I put them out in the weather, stacked with spacing between them to use for various wood working projects.
When they are good and dry, in about a year, the top ones have aged in the weather really bad and turned gray. These are the ones I won't use for wood working because they require a lot of cleanup. But, these have the best aging flavor. A lot of the water soluble volatiles have been leached out. These can give some bitterness in a long aging.
I rip these boards into 1/2" x 1/2" X 6" sticks either in my band saw or my table saw. It depends which one has less junk piled on it at the time.
I don't pay much attention to grain because sometimes these were the crooked boards or knotty boards anyway. That's why they are the cover boards on the stack.
After they are cut, I put 40 or so on the grating on the charcoal grill. I make two rows, with an inch or two between the rows and all the sticks in the row touching each other side by side.
I use my mapp gas torch with the instant start trigger. The mapp gas is so extremely hot that it can char the outside of the wood extremely shallow. It only burns about a 1/32 inch into the wood but chars it intensely enough that it removes the smoke taste and smell from the char. The wood immediately behind the char is caramelized. Since the char is carbon, and I char it until it turns bright orange, the resulting surface has thousands of micro cracks in it. These cracks are the alligator char in miniature. This gives much more area for the alcohol contact and allows the alcohol to flow through to the caramelized wood really fast. The intense heat is what allows this.

When I am torching the sticks I do the ends first. I hold the flame on the ends until they glow bright orange. and the wood grain is intensified. I then do the topside of the sticks working from end to end of each stick and preheating its neighbor. I always move slowly but constantly so that the surface has a chance to glow bright orange. The corners sometimes ignite but go out rather fast. I know I am moving about the right speed when I leave the corners smoking and sightly ashen. The I turn each stick 1/4 turn and do the top side again. By the time the fourth side comes around it won't need much to finish it off. I then bag them up for later use. I never wash them or pre-soak them. The char is as sterile as it can be.

The small amount of ash turns black in the spirits but is easy to remove. I always polish my spirits with a couple layers of coffee filter paper before final bottling anyway.

This process for making aging sticks is easy and rewarding. In 90 day with a ratio of two sticks per 750 ml or 10 to a gallon, it makes nearly a perfect sipping liquor. I have aged some as long as three years this way and the results are great.
Different liquors react differently with the sticks too. Wheat germ, especially the second generation, comes out dry after about 3 months. The fast fermenting molasses with no sugar added seems to pull more sweetness from the wood. It is really nice over ice. Sugar wash, especially the stuff that has been mostly cleaned up in a good column, approximates cheap patent still blended scotch. All wood but not much else.

The best proof for this wood is 120. The vanilla needs a bit higher alcohol but the water soluble caramel, especially the reddish part, needs water. I find that 120 proof is a real good compromise. Of course the proof can be fooled around with if you like. The more alcohol the dryer it is and the more water the more colorful it can get.
If you keep a lot of tails in your liquor, these sticks are a miracle worker. They can make a single run with lots of heads and tails taste almost like store bought stuff. If you like collecting everything but the foreshots, the these babies are nice to make harshness go away.

You know wood usually floats. In a couple weeks these become saturated and sink. Right after they sink, the mellowing starts.
These things are great in the smoker to flavor meat. Its second use is a family secret for pulled pork. Now you know why I weigh so much...
[/quote]

[wineo]

Pints sticks are the best,by far,and I have used all the cubes ,and chips for wine,and most everything out there.Its better than the oakmore product also.It gives alot of natural sweetness in rum,and oat whiskey.{I havent tryed them on scotch yet} I am getting ready to use them in some wine that I started last weekend.It was a kit.$52 worth of chianti grape conc.I tweeked it with 36oz of concord,and 8 oz of dried bananas.the oak will go in the secondary on saturday.Im going to use 6 stixs,and see how they do after 2 months.
Ive been using them in brandys,and some macerations,with great results.
Use his method,and put them in 120proof,and it dont get no better!
Pints rum,on ice is wonderful!
wineo

[Husker]

pint, can you post your "recipe" to the sticky "distressed aging". If not, I can post it.

I like that recipe. I have tried a couple of methods, with varing results, but your explanation is by far the most comprehensive I have seen. It may not be the best for all situations, but it certainly is step by step easy enough for most home hobbiest to get right, and be consistant.

H.

[blanikdog]

I've been trying to toast oak unsuccessfully for some time now. I usually end up with charcoal. My wife suggested that I use the old electric fry pan hidden in the shed so I dusted it down, put mesh above the element area, set it on eight and an hour later I had the best toasted oak ever, IMHO

It has a distinct smell of Vanilla which was exactly what I was looking for, I think. The proof of course, will be in the tasting in a month or three.

blanik

[The Chemist]

Pinto's on the right track, for whiskies. You didn't say, Frito, what you're aging? Whatever it is, go ahead and lower the proof to around 60-65%...you'll like it...

[pintoshine]

Thank you for the compliment TC. I value your judgment highly.
A lot of people don't know it but, Dr. James D. Crow, the one who "Sour Mash" and "Old Crow" are attributed, was the first chemist for Owsley Brown, who was the son of George Brown, the Founder of Brown-Forman. In developing Old Forester as a "Standard" whiskey Dr. Crow made a lot of observations about wood and charring. I found an extremely old history of "Old Crow" brand and it had a lot of great information, except how to start a sour mash. If you can find this it is very much worth reading.

[The Chemist]

I only give praise when it is deserved!!! These kinds of threads really chap my ass because they put me in an ethical dilemma...I'm trying to figure a way to be more forthcoming...

The Brown-Forman history is really fascinating...not only what you say, but Old Forester was also the first bottled Bourbon, and made it through Prohibition because it was designated as a "medicine"...shurrup an' gimme me vit-imins!!!

[The Dean]

I tried my first oak toast last month. I am cutting some off-cuts of very old English oak floorboards into strips for pegs for pegging joints in my new garage. Any knotty bits I cut smaller ( 3/8 x 3/4 x 5" approx.)
I have been using between five and seven of these and I think six is best- five is rather pale.
I wrapped them in aluminium foil and put them on the top shelf of a non- fan gas oven at gas mk.6 (400 f) for two hours. My girlfriend came in when the time was nearly up and got very excited as she thought I was baking some delicious custardy concoction. This was a good sign.
It seems the vanilin in Q. Rhobor is not too much less than in Q. Alba as my latest batch smells very similar to Bulleit Bourbon.
I think if the oak is old and very dry and smells an awful lot like oak when cut it is good news.
I've tried charing and not charing- not much difference to report.

Just to clarify, this is practically Uncle Jessie's method of sourmash flaked corn on yeast and mash that's been going just over a year.
I've been cutting to 50% abv with soft water in 1 gallon jars to age on.
Just a note of caution ... after two hours at 400f the oak strips in the foil seem to be just about at flash point. I am carful to leave the foil pakage intact for awhile after taking it out of the oven; I leave opening and letting air into the package until the ominous whisps of smoke have stopped seeping out.

[tracker0945]

Rather than start a new thread on the same subject.
Could you please advise, is it possible to obtain similar flavours in a shorter time by having bottles of charred and uncharred 60%abv spirit stacked full of chips which one uses to blend with new spirit to obtain the desired taste, or is individual bottle ageing the only way to go?

[The Dean]

Tracker, I think you would end up with over - oaked spirit that would be also non too sweet; and that would be the strong flavour that you would be spreading around.
I think that 1 gallon minimum aging and then bottling is the only way to go. If you want to speed the process up, lots has been written elswhere about freezing and thawing. The temperature change forces the spirit in and out of the wood more quickly than would happen at a constant temperature.
50% abv is good for vanilla tastes and some oak sugars. Bringing it down closer to 40 will bring more sugars out.
Some of the goodies we want to coax out of the oak will only be disolved in water - at 60%abv you would be cutting lots of these flavours out.
Also if you char oak chips you will get a very much too high temperature in those tiny bits of wood. This will produce bitter flavours. It is much better to char larger pieces so as just the surface gets those really high temperatures.
It's always a happy thought to remember that it only takes half a gallon of shine to make one gallon of oaked wiskey at 40 - 45% abv.

[RadicalEd1]

Hey Pint,

I followed your 'recipe' for the sticks from some of the old oak my old man had laying around in his workshop for god knows how long. Suffice it to say I now have a gallon bag full of beautifully toasted sticks .

Here's a question for ya, though: can you re-use these sticks like you would a barrel, looking out for changing characteristics of the wood, or are they really one-shot deals? I'd personally love to reuse them a few times if I could; good oak can be hard to come by!

Thanks in advance!

[punkin]

I reuse my sticks a few times. Specially if you use em for the second or third time on something that takes up the oak flavours/colours quickly.

[pintoshine]

I have resued the sticks with pretty good success. but since I like sampling mine along the way what I usually end up doing is topping up some already colored spirits, which dilutes it down but leave the sticks in there it color up the diluted stuff. It seems to just keep on making great spirits.

[RadicalEd1]

Oooohhh, interesting.

I may just try the "three jar" method, where I drink from the first, fill from the second when half empty, which fills from the third when half empty. And just keep the sticks running in one jar. Probably the third jar, then.

[punkin]

Reusing sticks atm, smoking bacon and jerky using sticks that have aged bourbon, then aged rum, now flavouring my bacon beauuuutifully

[Centimeter]

After an afternoon in my friend's wood shop, I finally have 160 white oak sticks per Pint's instructions. Some questions though. I bought a board of white oak that was as close to the heart as I could get, however it was still pretty much from the outside. Why is it necessary to get it from the heart anyway? Also, the board was 3/4" thick so I cut sticks with dimensions of 3/4"x3/4"x6". The change in dimensions shouldn't be an issue right? Pint, you say that you let your wood weather a good deal to remove water soluble nasties...should I soak my sticks in water for a while before charring them or they should be just fine?

[Dnderhead]

sap wood has just that sap that is bitter not good and as far as aging"sticks" just leave covered but out in weather
( it will turn gray)

[Pikluk]

Just a note of caution ... after two hours at 400f the oak strips in the foil seem to be just about at flash point. I am carful to leave the foil pakage intact for awhile after taking it out of the oven; I leave opening and letting air into the package until the ominous whisps of smoke have stopped seeping out.

flash point is the temperature needed for something to be able to burn.(you still need to ignite it)
i think your talking about auto ignition and for wood its about 572f 300c.

[chefbootleg15]

HAS ANYONE EVER USED DOGWOOD OR APPLE WOOD TO CHARR AND AGE?

[BW Redneck]

HAS ANYONE EVER USED DOGWOOD OR APPLE WOOD TO CHARR AND AGE?

Please don't take this the wrong way, but we don't like to see posts in all caps. On the internet, it's usually considered shouting. We have, in the past, had users who had to post that way because of vision difficulties. A good trick to know is that some browsers allow you to enlarge everything on the screen but tabs and such via ctrl+scroll wheel up.

Yes, apple wood is a common aging species, as is pear, sugar maple, white oak, European oak, hickory, and a few of us have used toasted grapevine. I'm not sure about dogwood, its not mentioned around here much.