ambrosia black label oak chips

Treatment and handling of your distillate.

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Watershed
Swill Maker
Posts: 321
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 9:55 am
Location: UK

ambrosia black label oak chips

Post by Watershed »

have I wasted my money here - I ordered a pack assuming that it would be a bag of oak chips. What I've got is a small sachet about the size of a yeast packet with instructions in Swedish. As far as I can make out I'm suppsoed to add it to neutral spirit, leave for an hour then filter.

With my limited language skills I can see that's it's got caramel in there - something I never add as a colouring, just as a flavour modifier. Also 'whiskyaromer' - well I can guess what that is.

Have I just bought a packet of artificial flavouring? is it even worth trying on a pot of neutral spirit?

Looks like I'll have to wait for another branch to come down - I'm running short on my own pieces of oak.
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Grayson_Stewart
retired
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Post by Grayson_Stewart »

Sounds like hocus-pocus magic pixie dust to me. :wink: You have white oak trees in the UK? I thought trees were hard to come by over there?
Light travels faster than sound. That is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
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Watershed
Swill Maker
Posts: 321
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 9:55 am
Location: UK

Post by Watershed »

English oak - Quercus robur which does the job fine. I wait for trees to blow down or branches to fall and collect some of the heartwood. I split it into pencil thick staves to add to maturing spirit. Each piece gets individualy toasted before use.

It is used commercialy - Glenlivet uses Q.robur as do most cognacs, it's got about twice the level of alcohol extractable compounds. Apparently is becoming fashionable for a lot of the high end malts.
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Watershed
Swill Maker
Posts: 321
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 9:55 am
Location: UK

Post by Watershed »

Not so much pixie dust as pencil shavings soaked in snake oil- the wood is clearly there just to make the claim of 'real oak' it's soaked in a highly alcoholic solution of caramel and something that smells like the dried out dregs from a bottle of cheap blended scotch.
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JoeNewbie

Oak chips

Post by JoeNewbie »

What you bought is a "Prestige" brand scotch essence with oak chips soaking in it. It makes about 500ml of great scotch.
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Watershed
Swill Maker
Posts: 321
Joined: Fri Nov 04, 2005 9:55 am
Location: UK

Post by Watershed »

Description on the web site was less than accurate it just read 'Ambrosia oak chips'. I'm chucking it - I didn't start distilling to use synthetic flavours.

I was hoping for wood chips that I could use a few times then shove on the smoker ( when I've built it )
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