Misc addition
American Oak Chips
Representative The maker publishes no figures for this product, so these are class-typical values instead.
- Type
- Other
- Added at
- secondary
- Form
- solid
- Formula
- n/a
- Concentration
- sold as the pure compound
- Typical dose
- 2-6 g/L, tasted out rather than timed out
- Timing
- Added to the conditioning vessel and tasted weekly until the oak is where you want it, then removed.
Before you use it
Oak is the one addition that cannot be taken back out, so taste weekly and pull it early. A beer that is barely oaked can be dosed again; one that tastes like a plank cannot be rescued.
Description
American oak runs to coconut, vanilla and sweet toast, from the lactones the species carries. Sold in light, medium, medium plus and heavy toasts, and the toast decides the character far more than the format does: light leans raw and tannic, heavy towards caramel, smoke and char. Chips give up their flavor in days rather than months, which makes them the format to use when a beer needs oak now and the format to watch when it does not.