Oak in beer: our benchmarks come from wine

Brewers have been calling us for a few years now. Here is what our products do, and the point at which we go beyond what we have actually measured.

Wood brings to a beer what it brings anywhere else: vanilla, caramel, toasted or spicy notes, which come mostly from the heat treatment of the oak and not from the raw wood. Tannins, for their part, work on structure and mouthfeel. None of this is specific to our products, it is the oak doing the work. What we sell is a way of toasting it and sizing it.

Why not just use a barrel?

Plenty of brewers do, and that is a good thing. A barrel is expensive, takes up space, calls for ongoing sanitary management, and two barrels from the same batch will not give exactly the same beer. Alternative oak does not make the result better, mostly it narrows the spread: at the same dose and the same profile, two tanks oaked the same way resemble each other more than two barrels do. It is a different craft, and for some beers, especially those where the barrel's own flora is part of the project, a barrel cannot be replaced.

Which format, and for how long?

The durations below are the ones on our technical sheets. They were established in wine. We give them as an order of magnitude, not as a brewing protocol.

In beer, plan on shorter. The matrix has less alcohol than a wine, it is often more acidic, sometimes carbonated, and turnaround is fast. The only protocol we stand behind today for a first trial: a low dose, tasting every day or every other day, and pulling the wood out as soon as it reaches the level you want. The equivalents in grams and in units per hectoliter are in our oak dosage simulator, bearing in mind that they were calculated for wine.

One point on compliance: our fine chips stay above 2 mm in particle size in order to comply with the Oenological Codex. Below that, it becomes P powder, which falls outside the Codex. That framework was written for wine; if your production falls under different regulations, it is up to you to check what applies, and we will provide you with the documents we have.

Which profile for which beer?

Each of our Primary Colors carries one character, to be blended yourself: #13 Vanillé for vanilla and soft caramel, on an imperial stout or a porter; #14 Épicé for cinnamon and clove notes, on a Belgian style ale or a winter beer; #22 Toffee for caramel and crème brûlée. La Recette brings the same characters together already blended, for when you would rather not build the mix yourself.

These descriptors come from our tastings in wine. In a beer, they do not land in the same place: the hops and the malt already occupy part of the aromatic ground, and some characters come through much more than expected. Run a trial on a few liters before making it a recipe.

Consistency from one batch to the next

That is the reason we toast our oak by convection rather than over a flame: hot air circulates around each piece and tightens the gap between the surface and the heart of the wood. On our own batches, we see the spread between two pieces from the same run drop noticeably. We are not saying it disappears, that would be untrue, and oak remains a living material, air dried for 36 months before toasting.

Where to start

With the smallest pack size in the Beer category, on a volume you can afford to lose. What we see coming through with brewers goes well beyond stouts: sour beers where the tannin balances the acidity, lightly oaked lagers. We have no measurements of our own on those styles. If one of our benchmarks does not hold up at your place, tell us: we would rather correct a number than defend it.

Read next : Chips, staves or barrel inserts: how to choose · Le Nuancier des Possibles : les "Couleurs Primaires"