Misc addition
French Oak Spiral
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
French oak is the subtler of the two: more spice, clove and dry tannin, less coconut. 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. A spiral is cut to expose a lot of surface at once, so it works faster than cubes for its weight and is easy to pull on a schedule.