Home Distiller

wow, I totally underestimated how fiddly it was going to be tweak small quantities of hooch to precise abvs. anyway, done now. I pilfered some specimen jars from from a biology lab. they're a type of plastic, but the lab tech assures me they're fine with solvents. To be safe none of the samples will be consumed, just checking colour and smell, and maybe a taste/spit. I have one jar that is filled with neutral at 70% to check to see no flavours come from the plastics. as soon as I finished double checking the abvs, I broke my favourite hydrometer . SO not happy about that.

There is 100ml in each sample jar. I have cut up some oak cubes from my barrel staves, all have the wine penetration buzzed off completely. 5 cubes are in the toaster right now @ 200*C for 2 hours, and the other 5 have been given a heavy char over gas, then quenched in water. they're drying now, will put them in when the toasted have cooled.

Fun and games,
Kiwi

I think it depends on the oak stick, the exact level of charring , and the abv. I dont know abought every one else but none of my oak sticks are exactly the same.

I just start with a little and if it needs more i'll add more in three months or so, I can alwase put more in but I can't take it out.

Look at how much oak is in a 30 gallon barrle thats a lot of booze to a little oak and a lot of time.

rubber duck is right. My first oaking experiments were terrible because I used way too much oak. Less oak aged longer is definately better than more oak aged for short time.

kiwistiller wrote:There is 100ml in each sample jar. I have cut up some oak cubes from my barrel staves, all have the wine penetration buzzed off completely. 5 cubes are in the toaster right now @ 200*C for 2 hours, and the other 5 have been given a heavy char over gas, then quenched in water. they're drying now, will put them in when the toasted have cooled.

I think I've buggered something up. the toasted jars are colouring up faster than the charred. I thought it went the other way?

Having never done this, one theory might be that the 'char' doesn't colour the spirits much in it's self but that the wood half way to char does.
Toasting leaves some half-charred wood on the outside, a thinner layer than is beneath a layer of char on the charred sticks.
That would mean more half charred wood on the charred sticks but taking longer to diffuse through a layer of char than not having to diffuse through a layer of char (as in the toasted sticks (which might still be absorbing spirits for a good long while before diffusion can start out of the wood)).
Therefore charred = darker but longer to get going than toasted.

If course, I know nothing about this.
It may be that you just buggered things up

Sounds reasonable logic to me, FSS. I've not used charred oak but, he may have buggered it up.

blanik

this is oak at different temps http://homedistiller.org/graphics/oak_aromatoast.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

I'm thinking that maybe it has something to do with using a small cube instead of my normal sticks - less interior uncharred wood perhaps. I think I'll disregard the charred / toasting side of the experiment and just look at the different abvs. next time I have something lying around in the white I'll do a bigger scale toast vs charred.

That chart is great tater. I use it to pick my toasting temps. I wish I new how the interior of the wood matches a set temp on an oven.

Update on this, I no longer think I have buggered it up Interestingly, the charred is colouring up better at higher abvs, and the toasted at lower. the oak in the 70% charred dropped first, yesterday morning, followed by the 70% toasted yesterday evening, and this morning the 65, 60, and 55% charred had sunk as well. After it's been in for a week or so and all the samples have had the oak sink, I'll open them up and give them a smell etc. I tried to take a photo showing colour progression but it didn't really come out on my crappy cell cam. My real camera has been borrowed by someone, but good pics will eventually turn up.

Day four and some marked differences are emerging... If a mod feels this is cluttering up the wrong thread feel free to move it, or just tell me to shut up and I'll post it all when I'm done.

On colour, for a start, the charred, on average, is significantly darker and redder than the toasted. I've tried to snap a few pics of the range with a crappy cell camera, with the setting sun as a backlight. The arrangement is charred along the top, toasted along the bottom, 50 abv left, 70 abv right, 5% steps. another with more backlighting and contrast The camera seems to (as compared with the naked eye) make the center jars darker. difusing the light with opaque plastic seemed to help a little: As you can see all the oak is now sunken. Anyway, the darkest jar to my eye (in real life not the pics) would be a dead tie between the 65% charr and 70% charr. Very hard to tell the most colour toasted as yet, but I'd have to say it's probably a tie between 60 and 65%.

It's really way too early to talk about taste and smell, but I opened them up anyway the best, by FAR is the charred 70%, which is very strongly vanilla. the 65% charr, slightly less so, and all the other samples still just taste like slightly woody white dog. Needs more time. but they looked really pretty in the sunset

Interestingly, I hear Jack Daniels is ages in charred barrels at 70% (to start with). I'm enjoying this experiment, it will be very interesting tasting when further along.
Kiwi

Keep us posted Kiwi, this is interesting. I have some 75% charred oaking at the moment, certainly more vannilla than at 65%.

I'm wishing I'd gone one higher now, dropped off the 50% and done a 75%

This is seriously useful information Kiwi.

kiwistiller wrote:Update on this, I no longer think I have buggered it up ...

I was a bit surprised that you would have buggered it, Kiwi.
Me, YES.
You NO!!!

blanik

blanikdog wrote:I was a bit surprised that you would have buggered it, Kiwi.

haha I wasn't. just another failed experiment, I've got a shed full of em
I'm sure this test has been done before in many places, but I really wanted to do it with my own shine, oak, and most importantly with my own tastes. thought I might as well document it.

update on the oaking...
pic from the 5th pic from the 7th It's very hard to tell between the toasted samples by sight. the charred are dramatically different, even more to the naked eye than through the camera. the colour in the higher abv charred samples is just fantastic. very little variation in the toasted samples, I couldn't really tell them apart with the naked eye.

as far as taste and smell goes, 70% is still best for charred I feel. I'll definately be aging my first all grain bourbon like this. toasted seems to be best at 55-60 at the moment.

Enjoying myself with this one, I like having experiments to look in on.
Kiwi

pic from the 9th. Day 10. damn those charred ones are looking good. I reckon the best colour is the 65% char, but the 70% char tastes better. the best tasting toast would be 55-60 still.

quite cool how there is so much more contrast in the charred oak across abvs.

quite cool how there is so much more contrast in the charred oak across abvs.

Also be interesting to see if the differences got less the longer you left the oak in.

Yeah I'll probably keep the experiment going until mid janurary when I will have to shut up shop (*sob*) for a month and a half of house sitting before moving cities. I'm going to miss my shed

Does anyone know what chemical it is that gives the redness to charred oak? is it carmalised sugars?

I remember the days of trying to get oaking to work! I did this exact experiment and then some. I tried un-toasted, steamed, light, medium light, medium, dark, very dark, charred, heavy charred, chips (various toasts), squares, 3/4"x6" sticks, wine staves, etc.

I couldn't get a damn thing to work ever. I used gallons and gallons of whiskey (both all grain and grain+sugar), and spent about a year trying to figure this out and never got it. I don't know what you guys are doing, but I sure can't get good results doing this. I ended up having to build a VM column just to clean up all the gallons of crap I made. I don't think I'll be giving whiskey another try until I've got the conviction to fill a real cask.

Meh, maybe I'm just a whiskey snob.

I have never been entirely satisfied with my toasts, especially RE colour, but the charred, for a bourbon, is just great. I'm looking into a charred barrel now, destined to be filled with 70% bourbon as a result of this. Then while that's aging I'll have to repeat this with different toasts as well as preused charred, because after bourbon in the 'all grain I wanna make' list is scotch. That one will be interesting.

I find my booze to take on color much faster. I think I use about the same amount of oak, but mine has the nice amber color after 2 days already, and most of the time they do not improve much further.

I'd love to hear how much oak do you use, what have you done to it, and what %?

Next time I will take some pictures of everything. No cam here now say I will try to describe.

I use very thin sticks (would like them bigger, but they were a gift so no complaining) of around (and now I'm really guessing) 0.3cm * 1 cm * 5cm. I now have 2 in 1L, because they are very thin, but because of the rapid effect I will reduce to 1. Do I over oak?

They are wrapped in thin foil and toasted at a temperature higher then 200 degrees Celsius (i cant really control the oven, its on or off....) for about 1 h, 1.5 h. I tried one batch with light charring, and it takes color on even faster.

I oak on around 65% abv (what comes off after a thumper run)

I'll try to post photo's when i'm home

Centimeter wrote:I remember the days of trying to get oaking to work! I did this exact experiment and then some. I tried un-toasted, steamed, light, medium light, medium, dark, very dark, charred, heavy charred, chips (various toasts), squares, 3/4"x6" sticks, wine staves, etc.

I couldn't get a damn thing to work ever. I used gallons and gallons of whiskey (both all grain and grain+sugar), and spent about a year trying to figure this out and never got it. I don't know what you guys are doing, but I sure can't get good results doing this. I ended up having to build a VM column just to clean up all the gallons of crap I made. I don't think I'll be giving whiskey another try until I've got the conviction to fill a real cask.

Meh, maybe I'm just a whiskey snob.

Yeah, This is what Im worried about. Im yet to have any luck with oaking. I currently have 10ltrs of 3rd gen UJSM waiting to be oaked but Im scared to waste it again with crappy oaking methods. I need one of you west aussies to hold my hand!
My last effort tastes like laphroig whisky cause I charred the buggery out of it, Yuck!

Robsta if your anywhere near 6030 I may be able to help.

Pictures as promised. So these are on oak for 1.5 days. I oak small batches, well because I don't need that much. These sticks are about 7 cm long. Could be I'm using too much oak?

This is my oaked stuff after 2 weeks. Sitting at about 62% ABV

This is 3 sticks..2 new and 1 used...
This is 1 of the sticks i use...used the cutting slots method.... Sticks were made in the oven at 400 for 2 hours wrapped in foil.

I had tried 4 new sticks but found it to be too much oak so switched to 2 new and a used...finding less = more. It was a full jug but i cant stop "testing"

This is a simple overview of aging in wood. I was really looking for the role played by oxidation and color. Seems like time is hard to cheat. bd.

All barrels have one thing in common they are relatively porous. This plays a part in another aging factor, oxidation. This very gradual oxidation results in decreased astringency, increased color, stability and the formation of complex fragrances.

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