Loose Oak Chips

[Nitasch]

I racked my first batch of Chardonnay to the secondary yesterday, and started a batch of Red Zin....I have decided that I officially hate loose oak chips!!

My question to all the sterilized nylon fans, is....can I place the oak chips in nylon and acheive the same taste results? I know that some use the oak chips that are in a tea type bag....

To be honest I would rather put a big chunk of oak bark in there as opposed to the loose chips....

 

[cpfan]

Not sure why you are having trouble with the oak chips. I don't usually, but I always use an Auto Siphon with an anti-sediment tip, and usually that works.

Yes, you can put the oak chips in some sort of bag.

Steve

 

[Luc]

To be honest I would rather put a big chunk of oak bark in there as opposed to the loose chips....

You can put them in part of a nylon stocking.
That way it is easy to get them out of the carboy when
the flavor is at the point where you want it without having
the need to rack......

Chips have a larger surface as 1 big chunk. That is why
they are so popular. A big chunk would take in a lot
of space in the wine and therefore you would need to fill
up more when you remove the piece of wood....

Luc

 

[Wade E]

Cubes and especially spirals work great and are much easier to deal with, You also have staves that you can use. Like said above though, they will need longer contact with the wine as they have less surface area to the wine.

 

[Nitasch]

Not sure why you are having trouble with the oak chips. I don't usually, but I always use an Auto Siphon with an anti-sediment tip, and usually that works.

Yes, you can put the oak chips in some sort of bag.

Steve

I will admit that my dislike of the loose chips have to do with being a rookie, and afraid to do anything more than what the instructions of the kit stated on my first batch, and the instructions state, "leave undisturbed for 14 days"

As you know, the chips float at first, and when I moved the primary to it's resting place, some of the chips stuck to the side of the primary above the liquid level. SOOOOO when I opened it up for testing I discovered this mess, and did my best to get them off of the side without dropping too many in the wine. I racked two days later, and noticed there were "floaties" (loose chips) that were making it into the secondary. Hopefully these sink in the secondary which would mean I will not have to filter.

Started the next batch that same night (Red Zin) and was a bit dissapointed to see a bag of loose chips in this one as well. BUT, I removed the lid the next morning and knocked all the chips off the side...so hopefully no floaties this go round.

This new batch has been perking away steadily four five days now, pretty amazing.

Thank you all for the suggestions and continued help!

 

[Wade E]

There will most likely always be some floaties. If you are really disturbed by this you could get some muslin bags from a brew shop, usually used to put hops in when making beer. They are very cheap and you just toss them out when ready to transfer.

 

[Nitasch]

Wade, your post brought back a funny memory...I was just graduated from High School and my best friend's dad decided we were worthy of having a beer with him to celebrate (like it was our first beer....yeah right). Turns out he made his own beer. He brought some bottles from the garage, and popped them open for us. We both took a drink after a toast to our graduation, as the dad looked at us with that "it's good huh?" look.

It's not that it tasted bad, but it was lets say....chewy. Seems he did not use bags, but strained the beer through some sort of colander (used for draining pasta) in one of his batches.... You know it's just not something you expect when you take a drink of beer...chunks...eww.

He laughed and brought us out a bottle of the good stuff and stated he only used this batch for practical jokes. Good memory, thanks for sparking it!

 

[Wade E]

Just like wine when using real grapes, its not whats in there but how much time you give it to settle out.