Influence wood ageing (chips) on ABV

[Odin]

Hi there mentors,

I have a question, but cannot find the answer with the search function. Hope the mentors can help. My question is: how (if at all) does ageing on wood chips influence an ABV measurement? I am not talking about whiskey in a cask, angels share, etc. I am thinking in the following line ... When I put my ABV meter in a wash that is almost finished, it does not give an acurate reading. Especially sugars throw the reading on any alcohol content off. Now if I mature UJSSM on wood chips, especially Jack Daniels, there should be wood sugars left in there. Do those sugars "travel" over into the booz and can they make for an off reading with ABV again? I just measured my UJSSM that is on wood now for 3 weeks allmost. It went in at 60%. Now I get a reading of around 55%. A have a cap on top, so evaporation should be close to nill. Same seems to happen to my gin. Put in on oak a week and a half ago at 50%, now I read 45%. I took a measurement on the booz without filtering the wood or wood particles out, I must say. And temperatures are the same as one or two weeks ago ...

Any thoughts?

Odin.

[blind drunk]

Some alcohol must be getting sucked into the wood. Happened to me with pineapple and rum, lost a little abv to the fruit. It's all I could think of, all the other variables being equal, as you say.

Edit to add - Or it could be the wood sugar, as you suspected ...

Edit again to add - You beat me to it ...

[Odin]

BD, cannot the wood sugars sweeten the likker and throw the reading of?

[rad14701]

Your losses don't sound all that abnormal, and here's why... With a charred oak barrel you have a lot of square inches of surface area, but you also have a large volume of aging proof spirits in the barrel as well... Those barrels lose roughly 3% of their volume annually along with a small drop in the %ABV... Now with charred oak chips, cubes, or sticks, you're going to have a slightly different reaction rate... The lightest alcohols are going to be the first to enter the wood, those being what came off the still at the lowest temperature - closest to ambient temperature... The alcohol soaks in and only the lightest components in the wood are forced out... So you get an initial drop in %ABV and perhaps more of the undesirable flavors imparted from the charred oak... Over time this mix changes and some of the alcohol comes back out of the wood and some of the rougher flavors get reabsorbed into the wood... Hence the motto, less oak longer... That's the condensed version...

Also, when testing the %ABV you cannot have any of the wood chips in the sample...

[Odin]

Rad, BD,

Thanks for stepping in and explaining!

Odin.

[Odin]

Just to be sure, I did a test on wood sugar. I took the booz' of the wood, and put my hydro (?) meter in (the one that states how much sugar is left: 1.090 - 0.995). Just to see if I got any sugar (wood sugar) reading that might (partially) explain for the loss in ABV. The measuring rod gave me a nice 0.995. So it wasn't wood sugar causing an off reading, I guess, but must come pretty much entirely from ABV absortion in the wood and wood particles entering the likker.

Odin.