Preparing Oak For the American tripel

"I'm getting wood from this beer."

I literally had to spit my beer back into the glass; it was all I could do from choking on, or spitting my beer out over a host of other beer drinkers.

"I'm getting wood from this beer.", is definitely not something you want to hear at a beer tasting filled with dudes, but the Australian at the local bottleshop beer tasting felt very strongly about his statement of "getting" wood from Red Oak Boutique Beer Cafe's "Special Reserve Barleywine". I stood there coughing, while others around me chuckled. The Australian turned a nice shade of "embarrassed" red, while the gentleman leading the tasting tried to recover as best he could with reassuring words of, "You're somewhat right, there are slight hints of oak in the aroma, and the 2 years of aging on oak adds a slight hint of vanilla."

After recomposing myself I thought, "God! Where were all my friends for this one? They're never going to believe me when I tell them this story." The I thought, "I'm getting wood from this beer. Damn! Why didn't I think of it first!"

I've tasted and brewed quite a few wood-aged beers, but never have they given me a "straight wood" (Hahahahahaha!!!) flavor, most often light hints of vanilla, cocoa, caramel, toffee or even a slight fresh oakiness. However, I've never had the patients to experiment too deeply into the realms of wood-aged beers, mostly because the thought of having to wait months on end for the flavors to develop, which is just way too long. Plus, I've heard horror stories of homebrewers overexposing their beers to oak and ending up with beers that taste like you're chewing on tree bark. Bleh!!! However, with breweries like Firestone Walker, Jolly Pumpkin, Captain Lawrence, Russian River and my favorite, Dogfish Head, which has their "Palo Santo Marron", pumping out some beautiful, full, rich delicious barrel aged beers, my desire to experiment with wood-aging has been rekindled.

Having just brewed an American Tripel, I figured now would be the best time to experiment with wood-aging. My goal is to simulate a wine barrel aging using medium toast Hungarian oak cubes. Now, it will be a month before the American Tripel is ready to be transferred to the secondary, and I'm only going to age three of the six gallons total on the oak, this gives me enough time to let the wine leech into the oak cubes before I add them to the fermenter. Perfect!!!

I usually use two ounces of cubes for a five gallon batch of brew, about .4 ounces per gallon; for the three gallons I weighed out 1.4 ounces of cubes. The cubes smelled a bit intense, to remove some of the intense oakiness I added the cubes to a Pyrex measuring cup, covered them with water and heated them in the microwave until the wood-water mix began to boil.

After the boil I let the cubes steam for a total of two minutes and repeated the process once more. As soon as the cubes were finished steaming, I added them to a small Mason Jar and covered with wine. I went with a favorite of mine, the 2006 Syrah from Hazlitt's 1852 Vineyard, which has bold notes of Black Pepper and Black Currants, this should be quite interesting! I'll let the wine and oak cubes infuse for the next month, then introduce the cubes to the beer and age for a year, tasting every so often, until the flavor and aroma meet my taste preference.