Oak Measurement

I have a question about oak measurement be it chips or cubes. When someone or a kit manufacturer says to add 3 ounces of oak, do they mean by weight or volume? I purchased an 8 ounce package of French oak chips. Thinking I would have enough for a couple of 6 gallon juice buckets with a little left over, I weighed 3 ounces for a Chilean Carmenere I was making. It took the entire 8 ounce package. I then put the entire 8 ounces in a measuring cup and sure enough, it was by volume.

Good to know Mike. Did you add raisins? When I pick up my reds I think I'll add golden raisins and med toast french spirals.

When I use oak beans I use a scale and add by weight.

Hmmmm. Something is not adding up with what I have on hand and used in the past. Where did you purchase your 8oz package from? I always weigh my oak. 3oz is ~100gm by weight not by volume.

Like, Dan, I've been using the spirals.. I actually got the heavy toast american this time around to try. I liked the medium on the Pinot Noir from the fall. Of course, I only used 1 spiral per 5 gallon..

Flem said:

I have a question about oak measurement be it chips or cubes. When someone or a kit manufacturer says to add 3 ounces of oak, do they mean by weight or volume?

Click to expand...

I haven't seen a kit manufacturer say add 3 oz of oak. All the ones I see have generic instructions telling you to add all of the oak that was provided. According to my notes, Vineco and Spagnols label their oak packages (when they do label them) in grams, so that would be by weight.

When 'someone' ie another winemaker says 3 oz, it could be either. I would expect it to be weight, but then I wonder how many winemakers have small scales that can measure that.

When a retailer or distributor says 8 oz of oak, I would expect it to be by weight because I would expect them to have access to good scales. But I guess it depends on the retailer/distributor.

I guess this is just another reason to go metric. Ounces (weight) versus ounces (volume). Grams (weight) versus litres (volume). Less confusion.

Steve

I got the chips from L'uva Bella Winery. They were obviously repackaged as they were in a Baggie marked 8 ounces. What was interesting was that their 8 ounce (by volume) package weighed approximately 3 ounces.
So I guess I'll use the entire package for my 6 gallons of Carmenere and taste along the way.

I have a lot of leftover oak beans from kits that went into the Vadai. I will use them someday when the barrels are neutral. They are almost all 100g bags (marked) which is ~3.5 oz by weight so that is a pretty good starting point for a 6 gallon batch of any big red wine (like Carmenare, etc.)