Donatelo
Senior Member
I am thinking of adding a package of oak chips to my next batch of Dragon Blood. What should I add and how much and for how long. Thanks in advance for your reply.
I've never used them in DB, but when I use chips in the primary I generally use 1 cup in a 4-6 gallon batch and leave them behind after primary fermentation when I rack to carboy.
I say in another thread someone used 4 cups in a juice pail, presumably 6 gallons. I think that is too much.
Agreed. Chips after primary are a huge hassle for little payoff.
4 cups is excessive. But in that context it was just said ‘not too much’ to necessitate racking to carboy halfway through fermentation.
Why do you say there is little payoff to oak wine after fermentation? Oak chips added during fermentation adds very little oak flavor to the wine but helps to preserve tannins from grapes. That is not necessarily applicable to dragons blood but it can provide an underlying tannin structure even to a DB. That being said, nearly all the benefits we taste in terms of oak comes from oaking wines during aging (e.g. barrel aging). Thus, if you are looking for oak flavor, you want to add them after primary. I don't find it to be a huge hassle at all. You can just add chips to the carboy and they get left behind the next time you rack it.
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