6 Guys Brewing

Sometimes you get an idea and build a recipe and brew a beer, and you really don’t know if it’s going to be terrible or awesome! And I’m not talking about conventional recipes with suspect execution, I’m talking about something a little bit more… Xtreme. This past weekend we made up a batch of Throwback Mountain Brew. I took a simple pale ale recipe, used the lightest malt I could find, and added 4 liters of Throwback Mountain Dew (recipe).

We started by reducing 4L of Dew down to about 2 pints worth. It was amazing how quickly this reduced. It made the entire kitchen smell like Mountain Dew!

Assembling the rest of the ingredients.

It was a cold day; ~5F. Even with the propane burner, a small electric heater, and the garage door almost shut, it barely made a dent in the heat. I’m hoping we get the electric brewery built up in the basement before too much longer!

Initial impressions of the day are very positive. Everything seemed to go very smoothly, we hit our target OG pretty spot on, and we had a pretty short lag time of about 6 hours. I, for one, am pretty excited to find out how this will taste!

We’re not dead.

I know it’s been a while since we posted, but we kind of took a little time off for the holidays, and we’ve also been working on some new exciting projects equipment wise. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but we’ve decided to go electric! We’ve been buying lots of equipment in the past month, and should be starting construction soon. Glen should be working on some posts about it, so keep an eye out for his post in the (hopefully) near future.

Ok, on to today’s brewing notes. Travis and I each brewed a batch this afternoon. He picked a scotch ale and I picked a cream ale. Neither one of us have brewed either of these styles before. Because our equipment and setup are in a little bit of flux right now we decided to make things a little simpler by doing 5 gallon extract kits that we purchased from Austin Homebrew Supply. This was actually a nice little change of pace I thought. Although we brewed two batches, things went really smoothly. It never felt rushed.

Even so, we still kept moving forward in our quest to learn and expand our process. The focus today was all about the yeast. Up until now we’ve kind of been a little lackadaisical in this regard. You become really focused on the early parts of the process; mash, sparge, boil, hop schedule, etc…; and when you’re done with those steps you’re maybe a little tired, and you just want to pitch the yeast and clean up. At least that has been us. Some of our recent beers seemed like they maybe didn’t ferment as vigorously as we thought they should, the lag time between pitching and noticeable fermentation were high, and we’ve also started to notice small off flavors that could be a result of the yeast not fermenting efficiently enough. When the yeast is doing it’s thing well, it is converting the sugars in the wort into alcohol. If the conditions are off, and the yeast isn’t performing efficiently it converts sugars into alcohol but leaves some byproducts around. We mostly use White Labs liquid ale yeasts in our beers. This is better than many dry yeasts, but that doesn’t mean it’s a free pass.

The things we did different today are:

1. Let the yeast warm up to temperature earlier. Bring the yeast vials out the fridge either first thing in the morning of brew day, or even the night before. Anywhere up to 24 hours in advance of pitching is ok. The idea of making a yeast starter was suggested, and we might try this in the future. The reason we decided against it for today was because liquid yeast starters are usually done by making a mini-wort (boil water, add DME, maybe a few hops, chill) and pitching the yeast into it. This needs to be done a day or so in advance and I didn’t have any DME, or the right equipment. It is also suggested that the mini-wort be as close as reasonably possible to the wort that it will pitched into, i.e. it’s nice if they can be the same styles, similar gravity, etc…

2. Yeast fuel. A little capsule containing nutrients that the yeast can use to help them along during the initial stages of fermentation was added to the boil with 10 minutes remaining.

3. Aeration. Oxygen is a critical ingredient to yeast metabolism early in the fermentation process. Yeast is pretty unique in that it is both an aerobic and anaerobic micro-organism. Aerobic organisms are living things that use oxygen in the metabolic process (Humans for example); anaerobic organisms don’t require oxygen. While yeast are both, they are more efficient and faster when there is oxygen. When the wort is boiled, it drives out the dissolved oxygen. We need to put it back in somehow, this is why you slosh the carboy a bit after pitching the yeast. Well, we think even that isn’t enough, so we bought an aeration system. This is a small device with a small pump that pushes air through a hose with an aeration stone attached to the end. The end with the stone goes into the wort and air is dissolved into the wort through it. Each batch was aerated for 30 minutes in the carboy before the yeast was pitched.

Hopefully these steps will lead to a more efficient fermentation, and ultimately better beer. We’ll let you know in a couple of weeks!

Well, in the cream ale at least. The plan for the scotch ale is to actually condition it by letting it age in the keg for about a year. Not going to lie, we’re a little concerned we won’t be able to wait that long.

Glen got the ingredients for a Blueberry Chocolate Stout and so we brewed again on Sunday.  As winter approaches we’re all starting to crave darker, heavier, beers just a little bit more; and this should fit the bill quite nicely! Now that we have the equipment this too was a ten gallon, unmilled all-grain, batch.  This is quickly becoming our standard operation.  The recipe also called for toasted oats, so that was a nice change of pace, and something I have never used in beer before.  However, the big change this time around, and the theme of the day, was preparedness!

Something we’ve been trying to do as we really dive into this craft is that we constantly want to push ourselves and learn new things about the brewing process with each batch of beer that we make. We are always trying to improve.  Typically this has meant trying something new each time we brew; from starting out with mashing and our first all-grain batch, using a plate wort chiller, 10 gallon batches, using electric pumps to move liquid around, to grinding our own grains.  There are definitely learning curves here to all these things, and many times we just flew by the seat of our pants and figured it out as we went along. Sure, this Blueberry Chocolate Stout had some new and interesting ingredients like toasted oats, real chocolate, and blueberry extract flavorings, but nothing crazy.  No, on Sunday, the biggest change to our brew-day operation was preparedness and note taking.

Ok, ok, I’ve mentioned it twice already, get on it with it! What is this preparedness mumbo jumbo you keep talking about? I’m so glad I asked!  What I really mean by preparedness is setting yourself up to take really detailed notes about the whole brewing process.  If you want to take good notes you’ll have to start by setting up and getting ready before hand.  I liken it to keeping a good follow-through in a golf swing or a basketball shot; you can’t have a good follow-through unless you start before hitting/releasing the ball.

This is what we did; I have a chalkboard in my garage where we brew, and before we turned on any burners or ground any barley, I took the recipe and I transferred it to the chalkboard.  I wrote out every step that we needed to do, along with important details like how much water to use, what the target strike temperature of the water should be, the flow rate to sparge at, how long a task should take, every last detail I could think of.  And guess what? I still forgot some steps and we had to scramble and squeeze them in when we actually did remember during the day.  I also got a notebook and wrote everything down there as well so that we could go back and refer to it later if/when the chalkboard is erased.  When we completed each step, I wrote down the time of day next to it instead of just checking it off.  Here are the notes I took on Sunday to give you an example:

6 Guys Brewing; Blueberry Chocolate Stout; 12/13/2009

• 2:00 – Mill Grains: 16.5 lbs.
• 2:55 – Toast Oats (15 min @ 325°)
• 2:50 – Preheat Mash Tun
• 2:59 – Heat Water for mash: 6.6g @ 165°     Actual: 170°
• – Add 2 tbps. Ph Stabalizer
• 3:00 – Mash (add grains) for 60 minutes @ 150°  Actual: 154°
  • Started recirculation immediately with pumps
  • Stir top 1/3rd half way through
• 3:55 – Sparge: 9.8g @ 177°
• 4:05 – Sparge rate of 6min/gal – total sparge time of 60min.
• 5:00 – Total Wort Volume: 12.5g
• 5:21 – Boil: Hot Break Occurred
• 5:21 – Add 2 oz. Target Hops (60min)
• - Add Clarifier (whirlfloc) (20min)
• 6:18 – Add 2 oz. PA Cocoa (5min)
• 6:30 – Cool wort and fill carboys
• 6:59 – Pitch Yeast – Carboy Coozie = White Labs; T-shirt = WYeast
• Gravity Readings: Pre-boil 1.050 ; Post-boil 1.038

Note: Italicized steps/notes indicate forgotten steps or actual results that differed from our intended target goals.

Having a detailed plan ready that was written out where we could glance at it during the brewing process I really think was a big help.  This was a very relaxed brew day, we even had some time to watch a little football!  I also believe that this should help us be more consistent in the future.

A couple ending thoughts/notes…  It is a little interesting/strange that the gravity reading we took after the boil was less than before the boil. The target original gravity was 1.053, so we are little low, and I’m not quite sure how that happened.  We split our 10 gallon batches into two 6.5 gallon carboys for fermentation.  This time we decided to try a little experiment and use a different brand of yeast in each one.  So the first carboy got a White Labs Burton Ale 023 yeast, and the second got some Wyeast Ringwood Ale 1187 yeast.

I have high hopes for this beer, and I think it will turn out to be another successful day of brewing.  There is always room for improvement, but being prepared and note-taking are here to stay for us 6 Guys.

Introduction

It is the day before Thanksgiving and Jeremy, Travis, Glen, and I decided to brew. We are doing our first 10 gallon batch and the recipe we’re making is our excellent Livonia IPA.  The difference this time is that we are using bought hop pellets instead of the whole leaf homegrown hops from Jason’s.  The idea is that we can compare between the grown hops and pellets to get a better understanding of how the differences play out in the final flavor of the beer.  My personal prediction is that this batch will be significantly hoppier than the homegrown leaf hop batch.  Specifically because I suspect that we over “cooked” the leaf hops after harvesting in the dehydrating stage, but again, this is just speculation on my part.

Observations/Notes

Mashing:  When cleaning the mash tun we noticed some burnt wort.  The strike temperature of the water from the HLT was 165°, but once we added the grains the final mash temperature was about 4° too low (148°) so we added some heat. The problem was that it must’ve been too much for too long, because we mashed a little hot and apparently burnt something.

Lessons for next time:

1. Increase the strike temp of the water by 5° to 170°.  This should get the final mash temperature to be right where we want it, and we won’t need to add any additional heat.
2. Pump the water for mashing into the bottom of the kettle and start adding the grains as soon as we have enough water to float them.
3. Start re-circulating the mash as soon as all the mash water has been added. This is intended to keep the temp consistent through-out the mash, and should help if we do need to add some heat.

Ending Thoughts

At the end of the day this looks like it will be a successful batch of homebrew.  The original gravity after boil was 1.062, and our target was 1.063, so pretty good. Doing a 10 gallon batch is a little different, but not significantly so, you just have more volume.  My only worry now is that we will become victims of our own success, currently all of our carboys and kegs are in use! Lucky for us, drinking is the best part

The very first beer I ever made came out great. It was a Honey Porter from morebeer.com. CO2 levels were perfect, it had a great flavor and awesome body. 5 gallons lasted 3 hours. I thought I knew everything about brewing. The second brew was pretty good too, though certainly not of the same caliber as the first. I think I got a little lazy and wasn’t as careful with all the instructions the second time around. The third beer was horrible, or so I thought. The flavor was pretty good, but I could not get the stupid thing to carbonate.

I have always forced carbonated in a keg. I think it’s easier, more consistent and faster. Kegging also requires a lot fewer bottles to clean, and the one thing I hate about brewing is cleaning, so kegging just makes sense. I read a bunch of different things on the best way to force carbonate a beer and believed that setting the CO2 to 12psi for a couple weeks would get the job done (and it usually does). However, this can take a long, long time. You see, in order to effectively carbonate a beer, you have to expose as much of the beer to the CO2 as possible so that it can be absorbed into the beer. Think of it this way: if you want to mop up a spill on the floor, it works most effectively if you use the entire towel versus just a small portion. Sure, the liquid will eventually migrate to cover the entire toweling, but it might take a long, long time.

The first thing you should do when carbonating a beer is to purge the air out of the keg. To do this, set the pressure to about 30 psi, fill the keg. Wait til it is done filling, turn off the CO2 and pull the bleeder valve. Repeat this step 3 times, and all that should be left in the keg is CO2 and beer. To get the CO2 into solution, hook up the CO2 at 30 psi to the OUTPUT of the keg. The pin lock quick connects are different sizes for input and output on the keg, but you might be able to get the gray quick connect to fit on the output. I dedicated a black quick connect (output sized) for the CO2 and use that for carbonation. Turn the CO2 and you’ll hear the CO2 working it’s way through the beer and up to the top. Wait for the bubbling to stop and the pressure to equalize in the keg. Disconnect the CO2 and find a towel to put on your lap (the beer is cold) and a place to sit. Put the keg on your knees and roll it around until you can no longer hear the beer sloshing around. While you are doing this, make sure you have nothing attached to the keg. If you do, you’ll end up with beer in places that it shouldn’t be. Take a bleeder valve (available from Northern Brewer) and measure the pressure in the keg (on the input side of the keg). It should be around 10-12 psi. I like my beer around 12 psi, but the carbonation chart will give you an idea of what your pressure should read depending on the serving temperature of your beer. If your beer is not at the desired pressure after your first roll in your lap, reconnect the 30psi CO2 to the output and put just a little bit more CO2 into the beer. Roll it around in your lap again (this time, it may not stop sloshing). Remeasure the CO2 with the bleeder valve. When it gets to the desired pressure, you’re ready to serve!

It has been my experience that this method works equally well for cold and warm beer in the keg. However, cold beer does tend to carbonate faster and will be a little less rolling around in your lap. Either way though, using this method, your beer can go from the carboy to read-to-serve in about 15 minutes.

We made some more cider this weekend. And just like the beer operation we ramp up quickly. This time we did it all from scratch, we harvested and pressed our own apples.  Jason has some apple trees on his property, and I acquired a cider press. So it was obvious that we would need to put them together; and then really, whats the point of making cider if you don’t at least ferment some of it?

Jason harvested (and I’m guessing a little) about 8 bushels of apples, 3 bushels of Red Delicious and 5 bushels of 20oz apples. We pressed 16 gallons of fresh cider from the apples, so that means each bushel yielded about 2 gallons.

It took three of us (Jason, James, and me) about 3-4 hours to press all those apples. The fresh pressed cider was simply amazing. The Red Delicious cider was quite sweet and very good, but surprisingly it was the 20oz apples that really shined. This is a variety that I had never heard of. The NY Apple Association describes it as having a pale yellow flesh, and that it is firm, juicy, and tart.  This apple was very close to the way they described, except it was much sweeter than I think we were expecting. This might have something to do with how late in the season they were harvested, after a few frosts. The resulting cider was very smooth, had an excellent mouth-feel, and had a superb balance between sweetness and tartness.

We saved off 2 gallons each of the Red Delicious and 20oz fresh cider. This still left us with over 12 gallons of cider to ferment into hard cider.

Using our 20 gallon brew kettle we boiled the cider down and reduced it to about 9-10 gallons of cider. I had contemplated adding some malto-dextrine (that I had leftover from a beer kit that I forgot to use it in) into the boil. The thought was that this would add some body to the cider and a little more sweetness, since it is unfermentable sugar. In the end we decided not to, for a couple reasons I think: 1. the cider itself was just so good on its own already, we decided it didn’t need any more sweetness; and 2. this was our first time making fresh-pressed hard cider, we don’t know if it will even need more body. I think we made the right decision not to include it.

However, we did decide to experiment a little with the yeasts. The 9-10 gallons of cider got put into 2 6.5 gallon carboys, and we used a different yeast in each. The first carboy got WYeast Cider yeast, this came in a sealed foil pouch of sorts that you agitated, left on the counter for a couple hours, and it puffs up. This seemed to work really well as there was noticeable active fermentation of the cider by the next morning.  The second carboy got dried L-1118 Champagne yeast. Travis used Champagne yeast in his batch of cider several weeks ago. Its not done yet, but preliminary tastings indicate that it will be quite strong and very dry.

We’ll be calling it the Livonian Cider, trying to build on our Livonian line, the hope being that it will turn out as good as our Livonian IPA did!

I think everybody involved in the cider activities would say that it was an enjoyable afternoon. Making cider turns out to be a fun and easy affair, I encourage people to give it a try!

When you are in college saving some coin here and there helps a lot. Since I am the young-in of the group and still in college, I want to try some money saving techniques for brewing. The first thing I want to try is simply reusing yeast, and second is to see if I can’t brew one cheap ass beer, that doesn’t make me cringe when I drink it.

So the big question here is: “How do you farm yeast, and can it be done easily on a home brew size scale?” The answer: we don’t know, and the internet isn’t really helping us out at all. There seems to be this big rumor out there that it can’t be done easily, and if you do succeed your yeast will only last three generations before it starts mutating and tasting weird. This begs the question: “How the hell do commercial beers get consistent strains of yeast if they are that susceptible to mutation?” The yeast can’t be that hard to keep from mutating, otherwise consistent brewing would be nigh impossible with the rate at which yeast multiply and the rate at brewing beer goes through yeast.

Some sources on the internet claim that yeast farming isn’t difficult, hard or even a very touchy process. The major problem with reusing yeast, is separating it from your trub in your last brew. Trub is the nasty yeast byproducts left after fermentation that settle to the bottom, and can really screw up the taste of your next beer. “They” say that you can basically take your beer out of the carboy, pour in the sterile water, mix up the yest (and trub) pour it into a jar and let the yeast settle out from the trub. This is the approach I will take, when I try to yeast farm.

Now to properly test this I will have to brew the same brew two or three times and see if the taste changes dramatically from brew to brew. If these tests succeed it means that we can invest in some fancy yeast strains, and use they for a large number of brews. This is an exciting idea so I hope it works.

If we can successfully reuse yeast the next experiment for me to try after this is to see how cheap of a brew I can make. Just to give an idea of how cheap this can get I did some simple math. For a comparator I am using AHS Southern Brown Ale.

• Extract Liquid Yeast = $.86 a glass
• Extract DryYeast = $.72 a glass
• Extract Farmed Yeast = $.66 a glass
• All Grain Farmed Yeast = $.49 a glass

Now the last one will be the hardest because I want to estimate what if we bought bulk or just grains. So according to the Brown ale recipe there are 6.5lbs base grains and 1.75lbs specialty grains. So I am just going to price out a random base grain and a random specialty grain accordingly and see how much it costs. I will also guess 3 ounces of Kent Golding hops

• Non-bulk = $.61 a glass
• Bulk = $.49 a glass

This is an interesting result, to know that kits are about the same price as bulk.

An interesting thing happened yesterday when Bill and I decided we were both going to do all grain batches at the same time.  Actually, a lot of interesting things happened, but I’m going to focus on one thing.  Typically when doing an all grain batch, 3 vessels are needed, a hot liquor tank (used for sparging, mashing in and cleaning of various items).  Doing two all-grain at the same time should require 6 vessels.  Through a little hard work and planning, we came up with 6 vessels, at which point, everything went haywire.  You see, we only have one real mash tun (capable of water in on the top, and water out on the bottom, whilst maintaining temperature.  We, for some reason, decided to not use said vessel for either batch, and got into a bind when it came to mashing out (sparge) time.

For every all-grain batch we’ve done in the past, we’ve done fly sparging.  This is the method that is most familiar to all-grain brewers where you spend 45-60 minutes sprinkling ~176°F water on the top of the mash, while slowly draining out the bottom, until you get ~6.25g of wort.  This method is tried and true and gives good efficiency on the grain, and is easy to do, if you have 3 vessels.

As the mash time came to an end, we realized that we had selected the wrong equipment and would need to find a new way of sparging.  After scouring the internet for information about batch sparging, we decided to give it a whirl.  My first inclination was to take all my sparge water, dump it into the mash tun and drain the mash tun as quickly as possible.  THIS IS NOT THE CORRECT METHOD.  Batch sparging, when done correctly, will take about the same time as fly sparging, but requires less overall equipment, and allows for a shared hot liquor tank without complicated plumbing.

Now that we know how to not do batch sparging, and what some of the advantages are, let’s talk about how to do it.  One our particular recipes, we were supposed to have 6 gallons of sparge water for a 5g recipe.  The first thing we did was to open the mash tun about 1/2 open and let it drain into the boil kettle (after recirculating the same way as fly sparging).  This process should take 10-15 minutes and will garner about 2g of wort, depending on the recipe.  At this point, we added 1/2 of our sparge water (3g) to the mash tun, stirred it up, and let it sit for 5 minutes.  We then recirculated the wort until it ran clear and drained off the mash tun into the boil kettle over 10 minutes.  We repeated this process for the last 3g of sparge water and ran off enough liquid to give 6.25-6.5g in the boil kettle.

As you can probably see, it took almost an hour to sparge via the batch sparging method, and other than being able to share a HLT, and not requiring a fancy mash tun, it didn’t do a whole lot for us.  Some people even claim that the efficiency is lower by ~10%.  I’m not sure I agree with this, if you take your time with batch sparging, as one of our brews was well within the expected range (though the other was a little low).  We likely won’t do batch sparging again, so future evidence of efficiency may be lacking.

Without a doubt, batch sparging does work, and is a real alternative for people with less room, or who are lacking in equipment.  The lack of need for a 3-tiered system (when gravity feeding) is a real bonus for those who are attempting to try all-grain is a confined location.  Before we get out of here, I’ll list some advantages and disadvantages of fly and batch sparging, so you can make the best choice.

First off, this is my inaugural post; so let me start by introducing myself. Hi, I’m Bill. I started out brewing using the Mr. Beer kit 2-3 years ago, and while I don’t think this is a bad kit for beginners I do think that you grow out of it very quickly. I’ve made about half a dozen or so batches with that kit, most of them good (at least I was happy with them), but I’ve also had 2 batches that went bad (but in no way was this attributable to the kit).

Specifically, what went wrong with those beers is that they developed an undesired flavor that tasted like Green Apple. The first time I was making a Pale Ale, and I mistakenly thought that it was a fruity flavor imparted from the Hops that I used. The second time was with a Vanilla Porter, and by this time I realized that something wasn’t right. Some research determined that the likely culprit was a chemical called Acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is produced naturally by yeast during the process of fermentation as an intermediary step on its way to becoming ethanol (alcohol). It can also be produced as a by-product of acetic acid bacteria, but this will usually result in more of a vinegar flavor. Since my beer only had a slight green apple flavor, I think the most likely cause was that I might have pitched the yeast while the wort was too hot, or I didn’t let the beer completely ferment, or some combination of the two.

The lessons to learn are:

1. Measure the temperature of the wort before pitching yeast; it should be less than 75º F.
2. Learn how to watch your beer fermenting, and to know when it is done.
3. Lastly, and this is important to remember, this will NOT harm you if you drink it! I had many friends that sampled my first Pale Ale batch, and nobody got even remotely sick or suffered any ill effects.

So, now that you are armed with this knowledge, go forth. Good luck and happy home-brewing!

Every once in a while, we get a question from the twitter universe that we don’t know the answer to.  Truth is, we get an occasional question, and we often don’t know the answer.  The fun part with this is it gives us a chance to find out about something we haven’t yet tried, and we add it to our list of things to do.  One such question came in a couple of days ago related to wood chips, so herein lies some answers, or at least insightful comments.

For years, people have been fermenting their beer in barrels, usually oak barrels that previously contained bourbon, whiskey, or other sweet distilled liqueurs.  These liqueurs impart their aroma, taste and character onto the beer.  Many times, people who decide to ferment in such vessels acquire them from a distiller and recondition them, to make them water tight again.  Unfortunately for the homebrewer, the cost of such barrels is usually prohibitively expensive, and quite honestly, a 55g barrel in your garage/basement/brew shed takes up a lot of space.  Even if you are doing 10g batches, the container is only 1/5th full, and the fermenting gods won’t like that very much.

How then, do we get around this issue?  There are a couple solutions.  A quick search on the internet turned up several choices for pre-conditioned 5g barrels that run between $140 and $170, plus shipping.  This would be a very nice choice for those who have the cash to spend on such a fine piece of craftsmanship.  The barrel should easily last close to 10 years, which will give you many flavorful homebrews.

If a barrel isn’t your style, or you aren’t sure if a barrel is your style, there is the option of wood chips.  You can use any number or types of wood, but oak seems to be quite popular.  Wood chips inside your secondary fermenter can have very much the same effect as using a barrel as a secondary fermenter (You should avoid using a barrel as a primary due to lack of head space, and inability to easily see what’s going on inside).  The first question is, how much?  Much like hops, the wood imparts a flavor on the beer relative to its surface area.  Many small piece of wood have more surface area than one large piece, thus it will be smarter to go with several smaller pieces, but how much?  The first thought would probably be, “a 5g barrel weighs 20lbs, I should use 20lbs of wood chips.”  This is a bad idea.  A barrel’s surface area is only one side of the wood to the beer.  The barrel’s weight also contains metal, and 20lbs of wood in a fermenter will fill it.  Your best bet is to think of wood chips like hops.  Go on the heavy side of what you would dry hop – 2-4oz.

You have your wood chips, your beer has been transferred to a secondary fermenter, and you realize, the wood chips aren’t sanitary!  This is quite easily fixed.  The first thing you should do is bake the wood chips in your oven for 30 minutes, or until dried out.  This will ensure that they are sanitary, but will also get rid of much of the flavor.  The next step is to soak the wood chips in your favorite liquor for a day (this doesn’t need to be done every time, but definitely the first time).  I prefer a bourbon or whiskey – don’t go too cheap.  The next step is simply to be patient. Your beer will slowly take on the taste of the wood chips in the secondary fermenter.  When you rack your beer to the keg (or bottle), save the wood chips.  You can reuse them if you bake them and store them in an airtight container.  Soak them in water to rehydrate them before using them in another beer (or throw them in another beer right away).

At this point, if all goes well, you should have the knowledge to create an oak fermented style of beer, with or without an actual barrel.  This is definitely something we’re likely to try with a winter warmer, because, quite frankly, a little bit of bourbon flavor in a nice homebrew is the perfect way to spend a cold February afternoon.