Thinking of adding oak chips and vanilla bean to my cheap 20 litre of read. When should I add it, and for how long?
Oak can be added during fermentation, and during aging.
During fermentation it's referred to as "sacrificial tannin", as the tannin extracted from the oak will drop out during clearing, preserving the natural grape tannin. Use shredded oak or chips for this, as there's more surface area to extract from during the short fermentation period.
Aging oak provides oak flavoring, and chips, cubes, spirals, and staves are used. Some folks oak for as little as a few weeks, while I drop cubes in the barrel or carboy and leave them for 3 to 9 months. I prefer cubes as it's a trade off between control and cost -- I can approximate the surface area of cubes so I can consistently dose the wine. Surface area of chips is highly variable, so two different batches of 2 oz of chips can produce more different results.
Vanilla bean? I haven't done this, but it can probably be added during either period. I'd go with aging, tying a single filament nylon fishing string around it, and lower it into the carboy. This way you can extract it when you want.
When taste testing the wine, stir gently to distribute the flavors, as wine does not have convection currents. I do this 1 hour before tasting, then when I pull a sample the wine is more consistently flavored througout.
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