Home Distiller

Also I know 6 weeks is very short time for oaking I had planned minimum of 6 months, I just wasn't expecting it to taste so green and sap like. I also have a gallon of 9 month old ujsm that was on 2 3/4" x 3/4" x 5" charred sticks that has the same green woody sap lumber type taste. I thought it was way over Oaked but it was also in sealed bottle for the entire aging, maybe it all just needs some time with the caps off to air out.

Airing isn't going to get rid of the oakiness.

Antler24 wrote:I also have a gallon of 9 month old ujsm that was on 2 3/4" x 3/4" x 5" charred sticks that has the same green woody sap lumber type taste.

Was it toasted too? Toasting brings out the flavors by carmelizing the sugars in the wood. Otherwise I would think all you have is some burned wood in there. I could be wrong though.

Those of you that only char your oak without toasting, what was your own personal experience?

tp

no matter how many times i do this I find there is an awkward stage.

the first week tastes like whitedog oak tea. the next four weeks gets more and more drinkable. after about a month or so on wood, my drink goes downhill in such a way that i really wonder what the hell goes on.

another month or two on wood it starts to come out of the ditch. At six months the likker has smoothed out to the point that it is quickly metabolized to urine.

T-Pee wrote:Those of you that only char your oak without toasting, what was your own personal experience?

I have noticed, that all of my with sticks flavoured spirits have the taste how barrel sellers describe middle or dark toasted wood. Perhaps the all around charring of sticks brings much additional toast in the wood too, different to the only one side barrel charring. My sticks are 1-2cm thick, made from JD-smoking blocks, are different toasted and are charred. So my next try will be no toast but char, because I want try to get the tastes of light toasted wood too. Perhaps you remember, there was a thread about coconut taste recently.
I will do this experiment in a few months with rye. Before that I have to learn to mash rye... And then it will need time... So I can tell more in one year...

der wo, Try freezing your sticks after toasting and before charring. Be quick and throw them in cold water after charring.

Might make a difference

Antler, was that wood well seasoned before being used. Green and sappy says that maybe it wasn't. Without proper seasoning, the wood will still have a lot of the nasty stuff that would have normally been leached out with exposure to the weather.

Whatever comes out of the wood early on needs aging time to go through the molecular changes that will give the likker it's best flavor. Sometimes those changes can be very dramatic.

I use a blue flame and throw them in water after charring. But freezing is a new idea for me. I will try that. Thank you!

It may be my under developed palate, but I don't notice a difference in mine when I just char to when I toast and char. I use a big rosebud torch for charring, and cutting one in half after charring shows that the wood is darker between 2-5mm deep. I reckon that the high heat from charring is toasting the wood deep enough that the alcohol doesn't permeate any deeper.

S-Cackalacky wrote:Antler, was that wood well seasoned before being used. Green and sappy says that maybe it wasn't. Without proper seasoning, the wood will still have a lot of the nasty stuff that would have normally been leached out with exposure to the weather.

Whatever comes out of the wood early on needs aging time to go through the molecular changes that will give the likker it's best flavor. Sometimes those changes can be very dramatic.

The gallon of 9 months old ujsm I can't say. The 2 sticks were bought from a homebrewin supply and was toasted, I charred it myself. The 6 week old stuff I have on oak sticks was weathered correctly according to the guy I got it from on eBay. He's a professional chef that sells oak products to home distillers on the side. He's sold a lot of oak and has 100% feedback rating. It was toasted for 4hrs at 350 and then charred in a commercial broiler.

T-Pee wrote:

Antler24 wrote:I also have a gallon of 9 month old ujsm that was on 2 3/4" x 3/4" x 5" charred sticks that has the same green woody sap lumber type taste.

Was it toasted too? Toasting brings out the flavors by carmelizing the sugars in the wood. Otherwise I would think all you have is some burned wood in there. I could be wrong though.

Those of you that only char your oak without toasting, what was your own personal experience?

tp

Yes it was toasted

Monkeyman88 wrote:It may be my under developed palate, but I don't notice a difference in mine when I just char to when I toast and char. I use a big rosebud torch for charring, and cutting one in half after charring shows that the wood is darker between 2-5mm deep. I reckon that the high heat from charring is toasting the wood deep enough that the alcohol doesn't permeate any deeper.

Yes. Perhaps it needs longer aging (it needs time to permeate) and perhaps thicker wood to get more light toast flavours.

I use sticks that are 25x25x155. I heat it until the whole stick is glowing a nice red/orange. Then it gets put straight into a bucket of water while it's still burning. They end up with a nice really deep "alligator skin" char.

Monkeyman88 wrote:I use sticks that are 25x25x155. I heat it until the whole stick is glowing a nice red/orange. Then it gets put straight into a bucket of water while it's still burning. They end up with a nice really deep "alligator skin" char.

And how long was your longest aging?

8 months.

Thanks.
2-5mm toast, 8 months and no difference to completely toasted. That is interesting for me. Taking this in consideration, it's more and more probably, that I will leave out the toasting in future and try the freezing, what bearriver told me.

Yea. I have only been doing this for ~3 years. I used to toast and char everything until the wife decided she had had enough of the hot wood smell. Lol. So I stopped toasting and have not noticed any difference.

I once (only once!) tried to hoover the smell, because I tried out a really dark toast. It worked not so bad. But after a year now, still every time someone is switching on the hoover, what can I say... the smell will last longer than the spirit, which was aged with the sticks...

Fast char raw oak tastes like burnt stick, years later it still tastes like burnt stick. I got single malt from maybe 4 years ago that is no use for anything, spent a week or two on such wood and can not be salvaged. I only keep this 1.5 LTr bottle to show ppl what not to do.

thecroweater wrote:Fast char raw oak tastes like burnt stick, years later it still tastes like burnt stick.

I have to say this was my experience, too.
I had a whiskey that had the burnt stick taste from quick char. I didn't understand why you would toast if you were just going to char after that. Then I did an experiment and cut sticks in half during toasting. The toast goes all the way through the oak, uniformly, not just the surface.
I added the toast sticks to the quick char jars and it got much better.
Been toasting before char ever since.

I agree 10000% toast for sure.. I like char'd but lightly chard...

Without the char you are loosing out on some the caramel flavors.

B

MichiganCornhusker wrote:

thecroweater wrote:Fast char raw oak tastes like burnt stick, years later it still tastes like burnt stick.

I have to say this was my experience, too.
I had a whiskey that had the burnt stick taste from quick char. I didn't understand why you would toast if you were just going to char after that. Then I did an experiment and cut sticks in half during toasting. The toast goes all the way through the oak, uniformly, not just the surface.
I added the toast sticks to the quick char jars and it got much better.
Been toasting before char ever since.

Every member here has a different opinion about that. It's crazy.
I noticed too, that toasting in an oven goes all the way through the oak. But I want to avoid this. I have read here, that members here think, this causes a monochrome taste. It sounds logically for me. Of course you can combine different toasted sticks. Thats what I did so far. But the differences I achieved are poor. Exept with one really dark toast, but it was the worst attempt, it was smoking strongly while toasting and finally I got burned sugar taste and less color. But I'm happy, that I tried this, one question less.
So I think, once I have to try a no toast and fast char...

Most coopers sell tank additives like vats planks and Mimi staves which they toast to a range of specifications in convection ovens. I have had outstanding results with some of them. Google A P Johns coopers to see the products I am taking about paying attention to their H V and mocha toasts

bearriver wrote:der wo, Try freezing your sticks after toasting and before charring. Be quick and throw them in cold water after charring.

Might make a difference

Interesting Bear...is that how you treat your sticks..?
I assume the wood expands with the heat, and freezing makes it contract so the flavours wil be trapped inside..?

This maybe sacrilegious, but after charring (getting the wood black and peeling), I lightly wire brush off the peeled ash then soak and use. Am I losing any flavor profile?

You brush off a part of the charcoal?
You loose something of the cleaning effects of the charcoal. You don't loose something of the taste the wood adds to your spirit. The toasted wood adds taste, the charcoal removes/mellows some of the taste.
So in theory it's not good to do that, but in practice who knows...

+1 der wo, Charcoal is a strange substance, whether from char or activated. It seems to selectively absorbs organic compounds from liquids, in our case ethanol. It has something to do with the expanded structure that had been the wood calls. These "holes" for lack of a better word, capture and lock chemical bi-products made be the yeast during fermentation. In some instances it's believed, that the carbon in the char acts as a catalyst and actually changes the compounds to substances we expect to find in well aged products like bourbon, scotch or rum. If you brush off some or all of the char your not hurting the spirit as much as you are possibly slowing the aging.

I think rinsing or soaking inwater at minimum is needed, or you could end up with a blackish colored drink. I soak then roll the sticks together in my hands under water for a couple seconds. I wouldnt wire brush the char off tho. You want char, just good stuck char not loose char that muddies your drink.

That's excactly what i do too, Jimbo.
The water just takes all the soot away that is loose on the surface.
Otherwise i would have all the black residue in my spirits, wich i figure would give a off colouring in the finished product.

Fwiw, I do a quick, simple rinse without a bunch of scrubbing and drop the wood in the jug for a while. When it's time to bottle I run it through a paper towel and call it good. I have never tasted anything sooty or have any black stuff at the bottom of the bottle.

tp (KISS)