Oak Cubes

[hill1649]

Has anyone used Oak Cubes in a stout? Any advice for best way to use etc?

My recipe suggested soaking the cubes in rum for 24 hours and then adding the rum and cubes at flame out and then leaving for 30 minutes before chilling and decanting into the fermentation vessel.

Some questions:
Should I sterilise the cubes before using or should soaking in rum do the business?
Is 30 minutes in the wort at flame out enough to impart a smoky, oaky flavour?
Should I add the cubes to the barrel once fermentation is over?

Any other advice or suggestions?

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[MyQul]

I've never used oak cubes but have read about using them.

The point of oak cubes is to simulate barrel aging in wooden casks or kegs. You extract the flavours from the oak cubes whilst conditioning in your keg so I don't really see the point of putting them into the boil at flame out as it takes weeks to extract the flavours. When you extract the flavour and make a tincure from say vanilla you soak it in vodka for a week. So the oak in the rum for just 24 hours may not do anything. Simply putting the rum in at flame out should give you rum flavours - maybe I'm wrong and the oak flavour can be exracted in 24 hours, like I say I've never done it myself before.

My book states it will take 2-6 weeks to extract the oaky flavour into your beer using cubes.

As for sanitizing, It's up to you. The author states that sanitizing the cubes is likely to remove flavour compounds from the wood. But not sanitizing risk infection. To paraphrase - Treat the cubes like dry hopping. If your afraid to dry hop, sanitize. If not drop them into your barrel and good luck.

 

[hill1649]

Thanks for your reply