Misc addition
Hungarian Oak Staves
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
- One 20-30 cm stave per 20 L, or by the maker's surface-area rating
- Timing
- Added to the conditioning vessel and tasted weekly until the wood 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
Hungarian oak is the third traditional cooperage wood and sits between the other two: subtle vanilla like American, but with roasted hazelnut and a pronounced baking-spice lift that neither of the others gives. 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 stave is the slow format and the one sized for a vessel rather than for a batch: months of contact, and the closest a tank, carboy or keg gets to the inside of a barrel.