Vapour Oak ageing

[Tony1964]

Just throwing this out their.

Couldn't sleep last night, to hot, figured out the heating was on, this was after I'd opened the window and put the bedroom fan on, but, I got thinking about the various rapid ageing on oak, I've done the Nuclear process and it works well, I'm playing with ultrasonic's, but, I got my head in to looking at using my carter head variation I use for my vapour infusing gin, filling the basket with charred oak, maybe with some vanilla pods, and running the same way as I would a gin run.

Anyone every done this before? I'm kinda thinking high proof vapour is going to pull a lot of flavour out the oak given its would be in their for 4 hours.

Thoughts.........

Cheers

Tony

[fizzix]

Here is an interesting thread on the matter: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=35327

[Tony1964]

Fizzix,

Thank you for your reply, I've read the post you pointed out, not wanting to fall in to the "you seem to have made your mind up" as pointed out in the post, firstly, it never seemed to go anywhere, kinda make me think of the positive things regards to exposing the wood in a distillate and then giving it several further exposures to microwave energy.

I have a cage that the botanical s go in to, blocking the carter head is not an issue, I guess my concerns are more in the contamination, we don't have the equipment to analyse what actually really ends up in our gins per say, outside of they start as organic matter.

It just seem to make some sense, what I tend to find with this is we try a lot of things and base the results on the taste, smell and mouth feel rather than % of possible toxins, its a parody, i'm trying to remember one of the gin botanical s that contain arsenic, nope cant remember it.

I have to say, I did feel the guy got a slight hard time with the concept to be far, almost like the list of compounds in the wood, would actually put people off putting the stuff in oak barrels to start with, never mind leaving them in there for years.

It's almost again like, a warning on the long term effects of drinking it.

Don't know, again, high ultrasonic exposure at high level breaks down cell wall structure.

I guess what I'm getting to, is, on a hobby level how much of the out of the norm things we do given proper analysis would never find there way in to the real world, i'm again just surprised at some of the comments.

Again, thanks for the reply, ill give it more thought.

Cheers Fizzix

[Tony1964]

I did further reading, looking for the chemical content that Dunderhead published to find out more before I go near this, came up with the same or at least very similar analysis of compounds in wood, see link below:
http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5555E/x5555e ... 20analyses" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

Interesting that the various compounds come out dependant on temperature, this does not actually conclude anything, but, a very good read never the less, whilst we have to take in to account the solvent aspect of what is pulled out of the wood, as far as temperatures go, the vapour path is below 80 degrees C, if you look at the temperature required to start pulling the various tars out, the main concern would be the solvent aspect of compound take up.

Anyways, gonna read some more me thinks.

Cheers

Tony

[NZChris]

I doubt it would be much different to having oak in the boiler, note that none of the naysayers had actually tried it.

I've steeped dominos then ran with them in the boiler several times. I haven't noticed anything nasty about them, but then I'm not trying to drink them soon after the run, mostly using them for blending once they've aged a couple of years.

[fizzix]

Yeah, Tony, it's odd no one comes back and says "It works GREAT!" or "Don't do it!" Kinda frustrating when you get an idea and there's no resolution to it.
However, as usual, NZChris chimed in with some wise words. Heck I never thought you could put chips in a boiler or infuser. Learn something new everyday.

[Tony1964]

Fizzix

First opportunity I've had to put a wine fermentation on for the Brandy, its been in for a week, 15 to 20 days before finish, I've also made a wider diameter copper basket for the oak chips to go in the gin section of the still.
So T minus a few weeks or so.

Cheers

Tony

[Max_Vino]

Hi Tony,

Keep in mind there are compounds in oak that are water soluble and those that are ethanol soluble. Having a basket suspended in the vapor stream would favor the ethanol side.

Try it ! If it doesn’t work you can always redistill it.

Hail Britannia !
Max

[Tony1964]

Max

Cheers for that, I do intend to also age on Oak in the traditional way, as the vapour stream would also not carry colour.

Cheers

Tony

[MtRainier]

I have a 4 inch carter head on the way with a three gallon boiler for small experiments (going to try making gin from neutral in small batches) and some jack Daniels barrel chips in the cabinet. I will give it a try with some chips in the infusion basket to see what it tastes like. I kind of think it won’t have a big effect, but it will be interesting to try.

[Tony1964]

Hello their

So finally the red wine was ready for the still St Emillion grape, nearly 3 weeks from start to finish to ferment.

Pictures, or at least some pictures, should have done more.

23 litres total for the still, started at around 90% quickly dropping to 80% proof and ran off 300mL at 800 watts of power, for fore-shots to use as BBQ lighter fuel.

French Oak in a baking tray and torched to char, that's one of the missing picture, but the pre-char is pictured.

After running off the first 300ml turn on reflux condenser to allow me to insert the copper basket containing the oak.

Turn of RC to run in pot still mode and increase power to obtain a steady slow stream.

Always a difficult one this, as I have no reference sample to gauge the difference in flavour, from oak in the vapour flow, as I ran it all.

There are 2 collection methods on the still, one at the shotgun and the other at the bottom of the Carter Head, which for Gin, I usually return directly to the still during the run, but, as you get product that condenses naturally here from condensing on the basket and immediate area, I was expecting this to be coloured by the oak in the gin basket, but, it was not as coloured as I expected, I would collect this anyway and add to the total collection.

Obviously during fore-shot collection this would not be used and drained off.

The taste was quite remarkable to be fare, you can certainly taste very easily the oak even at high ABV straight out the PC.

Ran by taste till around 45% where I started to get in to the tails, total collection was around 3 to 3.5 liters, did not measure the collection ABV as an average, but, hovered for quite some time at 70 to 80% for the first part of the run and then 60 to 70% for the predominance of the mid section if that is not obvious.

Cut the product down to 55% and took out the oak from the Carter Head Gin basket, as you would probably expect, the oak was completely dry.

Ultrasonic at 50 degrees C ina 240W Ultrasonic cleaner for 30 mins, this works well for my other spirits, and in to a Glass Demi jar with the Oak from the gin basket, no to rotate warm cold for a few months.

First taste after only 24 hours, was very pleasing, the wife would have been happy white it was that good, but, I'm hoping if its this good after just a day, we should be in for a good Christmas.

So, what did I expect, 2 things.

Vapour extraction as you would in a Carter Head for Gin, I really have been very happy with the results a really nice flavour with no real big bite even at 55%, you can tell its green.

No using the same Oak, I'm going to let the process pull the more water based time based flavours out.

Pictures attached.

Cheers

Tony

[Single Malt Yinzer]

Even beyond extractability there is a factor in that some of the compounds in wood that are too heavy to be carried over in the vapor path. e.g. The sugars found in the wood won't carry over even though they are soluble by water.

It's still an interesting experiment, let us know how it turns out. Maybe try a couple different types of wood to see if you can notice any changes to flavor profile.

[Tony1964]

Single Malt

I'm also using the same Oak that I put in the basket to hopefully pull out the compounds that are soluble in liquid, at the same time, the compounds that may have become soluble during the distillation and perhaps have been collected in the glass section of my Carter Head I also added to the overall mix.

Hoping to catch all.

We will see.

I was only thinking at the start of the process, as in making the wine, at a hobby scale, there is some time lag between tests, I only really run Brandy once a year, I'm more of a Gin and Vodka guy, next in the fermentor is Barley Vodka.

Cheers

Tony

[Tony1964]

Hi all

How do you do this? This is the second time I've made Brandy, the first was last Christmas, the amount of time it takes to do some of this makes it a sport nearly, I've got a dead line of the 20th December, it has been on the radiator and off the radiator every day for the 2 months, how are you supposed to compare this to a variation when it takes 2 weeks to ferment, then distill, then months to achieve some age.

Improvements from last year? different world of improvement, if that's even a phrase, and to be fare not a comparison, as you learn more and more and your technique improves it becomes virtually irrelevant to do a side by side.

I've got 3.5 litres from the initial 25 litre wash of St Emillion grape.

I've had a few tasters along the way, and have to say, I like it a lot, quick picture so far with 8 days left before I run it through filter paper, I have been thinking about running the Brandy through the blender to originate it before bottling.

I have sampled the difference from the first weeks sample that I have and you would not know its from the same bottle, but, that's obvious. I'll put up some tasting notes when I get to the deadline of finishing.

Also, I cannot for the life of me see how it is possible, especially given the short amount of time I have that you can achieve any deep colour, the best it got was more of a whisky colour, that gold yellow colour, and decided to make my own caramel, I took the calculations from somewhere and have inserted them in my calculations spreadsheet to allow me to do the same with varying volumes if I decide to make next years, and to be far, might start next years in February, circa 59g of caramel in 3.5 litres. really makes a big difference to the colour, and adds a fruity background note to the flavour, I read that this is common practice and most Brandies contain up to 3% Caramel (Burnt Sugar).

Cheers

Tony