Oak Preparation Experiment - Part II

Over the last several years I have been making attempts to replicate the Bourbon Character of Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand Stout on a small scale using oak cubes rather than a second use Bourbon Barrel (which are difficult to come by).  I have felt like my results have continued to improve as I've refined my process.  Some details on how I proceed with this:  

• I buy my own White Oak lumber for this and age it outside for a year or two to allow the wood flavor to be "softened" - this is traditional in barrel making but I have not tested this claim myself.
• I believe that a critical part of the bold Bourbon Character in BCBS is due to bourbon remaining in the barrel which is Cask Strength (58-63% alcohol).  To get a white spirit at this strength I have been using 95% ABV Everclear which I water down to 62% ABV.  I age the oak in this spirit (this also creates a product that I find worth drinking as a Bourbon Substitute)
• Bourbon makers toast and then char their barrels to make Bourbon.  The exact process is a guarded trade secret.  I did an experiment a couple years ago where I assessed various levels of Toasting and Charing of oak cubes to get a Bourbon-like character (more vanilla forward than caramel).  I found that a particular level of toasting followed by charring to "alligator" char levels was necessary to get close to the flavor profile (not toasting enough or over toasting produced flavor profiles wide of the mark).  This was a very helpful discovery.  Check out this experiment for the details
• Aging the beer with enough oak to approximate the surface area exposure from a barrel (56 sqin per gal) is critical for getting the flavor profile right in terms of intense Bourbon Character.  For 5 gal of beer this is 280 sq inches of oak (11 sticks of 1x1x6 inches).  In preparing the oak, I have been aging at a 3x higher oak to spirit ratio than is the case in a Bourbon Barrel in an attempt to not use as much Everclear.  This creates a spirit with a different flavor profile than real Bourbon and that this contributes to the beer tasting unlike a real Barrel Aged Beer.  I believe this is an area where I might improve my process and is the reason for this new round of experimentation
  

I hypothesize that doing a pre-boil of prepared oak could reduce the flavor intensity of aging the oak with 3x higher amount of oak as is used in real Bourbon Making.  How much of a boil would need to be performed is the variable I would like to test.  Additionally, I will test whether dehydrating the boiled oak (assuming the oak absorbs a meaningful amount of water during the boil) makes any difference.

So, I will test as fallows (all prepared per the results of the previous experiment's winning method):

1. Age 1 piece of oak (1x1x1.5 inches) with 16 oz of 62% white spirit (Everlear) - 56 sqin per gal ratio of oak to spirit.  This is to repeat the previous experiment's results hopefully
2. Age 3 pieces of oak with 16 oz of the spirit.  This is the method that I used to create the oak in my last Bourbon County Clone which is not bottled yet but which I feel the Bourbon Character is a bit off the mark still
3. Boiled 3 pieces of oak for 5 min before aging them in the spirit
4. Boiled 3 pieces of oak twice, for 5 min each time, before aging them in spirit
5. Boiled 3 pieces of oak for 5 min and then dehydrated them for 1 hr before aging them in spirit
6. Boiled 3 pieces of oak twice, for 5 min each time and dehydrating them after each boil for 1 hr before aging them in spirit

I will age these samples in a cold place in the house which is also near a heater that will cycle off and on through the day.  This will help the spirit travel in and out of the wood and speed up the maturation of both.  I expect it will take a couple months for the samples to be worth tasting

Experiment Notes:

• 12-28-24
• Cut up 16 pieces of aged White Oak for the test (all about the same size but with a bit of variability)
• Toasted the oak for 5 min on each side on a cast iron pan at 2/3 of the way towards medium
• Charred the oak in three passes to get an alligator char
• Did the first boil in 1 gal pot with 12 wood samples.  I waited until a rolling boil was achieved before adding the wood and then boiled for 5 min.  The liquid has a fairly dark yellow color after this
• Dehydrated 6 of the samples for 1 hr
• Did the second boil with 6 of the samples following the previous process.  The liquid wasn't as dark this time but it still had a fair amount of color left
• Did a final round of dehydrating on the remaining 3 samples for 1 hr
• Added spring water to Everclear at a ratio of 10.5 oz of spirit to 5.5 oz of spring water to get the 62% ABV spirit for aging.  The amount of spirit was approximately the same for each sample but I didn't go to the trouble of accounting for the wood volume differences between the sample with the 1 piece of oak and the others

Sample 1-6 L to R - Boiled sample 3 and 4 are all sunk (interesting)

• 12-31-24 - I have been aging the spirit on the kitchen counter the last few days.  Moved them into their final aging place.  The samples are already getting a fair amount of color.  The differences in the samples are interesting:

Sample 1-6 L to R - sample 2 and samples 5 & 6 a bit darker