Aging with Medium Toasted White Oak Chips

[stevemoony]

I am trying to to flavor a gallon of vodka using medium toasted white oak chips. What is the correct amount of chips in a gallon sized jar? 3 handfuls or more, less? How long do you usually let it age? I have been putting the jars in the freezer for a couple of days and then putting hot lights on the jars. I have read this helps with the aging process. I worry about being too heavy on the wood chips. How do you know if you are using too many wood chips? Please share any advice.

[Durace11]

Taste it every week, a small taste, to see how it's doing. Also, some have said less oak for a longer aging time is better than lots of oak for a short amount of time. The color comes out fast but the flavor is much slower to develop. From brewing beer, wine & mead I know it's really easy to over oak so I'd say less oak and taste it once a month. If you use a lot of oak be prepared to taste it more often. If you think it's over oaked than take it off the oak and add some neutral to it to even it out a little. Also remember, everyone has different tastes for oak. Your tastes may not be in line with someone who really likes oak so feel free to play around with different oak(American, French, Hungarian, used wine barrel oak) as well as different amounts for different times.

Another note, I just noticed this says chips, chips are really thin and typically the toasting process toasts completely through chips so you have no complexity of oak taste to extract. When you have a medium, heavy or charred oak there are levels of lesser toasted oak underneath the charred surface that will give a woody complexity to the product. Chips are fine for wine but are more one dimensional when it comes to liquor. Cubes, sticks or staves are better.

[Gotlikker]

This is what works for me. I buy Sugar Maple chips and place them in a stainless steel box when I grill. I really enjoy the flavor of the Sugar Maple smoke on the meats. I place the toasted and charred chips into a plastic bag and save them for later use.

I also buy JD barrel chips and place them in the same stainless steel box and toast them on the grill at +/- 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes. The risidual alcohol evaporates from the wood and the wood is beginning to turn a uniform darker color.

After I make a batch of whisky or rhum I place about 4 handfulls of the previously mentioned chips into a 3 liter Carlo and Rossi wine jug. (It is also a perk to make available the wine jugs.)

After filling the jugs with 80 or 100 proof alcohol I then place it in storage for at LEAST 3 months, while shaking them up weekly. The longest I have been able to wait is one year. Obviously, it is VERY necessary to maintain a quality control check on a regular basis, so you don't "over oak" it.

I tried the small barrel route but found it way to expensive to maintain the barrels. The chips are very reasonable and very available. When I empty the jugs I use a coffee filter in the funnel when bottling and change the filter often. The chips are then removed from the jugs and placed into a potato sack to dry. When I am smoking meats on the smoker I sprinkle these used chips onto the coals for a little added flavor.

[Prairiepiss]

Oaking Vodka usually isn't very good. A whiskey has some flavor characteristics that blend and work well with the oak. Giving you more depth. But vodka has no flavors. So it generally tastes like oak flavored vodka. Woody oak flavored vodka. Kinda like chewing on a piece of oak. Just my two nickles.

[Prairiepiss]

Oh and welcome aboard.

I see you haven't made it over to the welcome center to give us an intro yet.

And you posted another thread asking about the same thing as this one? Here.
http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 8#p7016128
It also has a reply in it. Maybe a mod can combine the two for you?