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Author Topic: dubbel with cubes and wine  (Read 1672 times)

Offline homoeccentricus

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dubbel with cubes and wine
« on: February 28, 2016, 03:12:47 pm »
Just curious, has anyone had success brewing a dubbel with the addition of oak cubes soaked in red wine (e.g., pinot noir), similar to RR Supplication but then without the souring part? So a much faster process, all in all. Comments, recommendations?
Frank P.

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Offline reverseapachemaster

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Re: dubbel with cubes and wine
« Reply #1 on: February 29, 2016, 09:48:28 am »
There are some potential problems with this approach, primarily with oxidizing the wine and infecting the wine with whatever might be hanging out inside the oak cubes. You can remedy those problems by soaking the cubes under CO2 and sanitizing the heck out of the oak cubes.

Personally I think this approach ends up over-oaking the beer unless you add a lot of the wine and little oak. In that case you might as well just blend an oaked wine into the beer and skip the cubes or the aging altogether. I had good success recently doing this with a BDSA. I do prefer to add a good amount of wine and oak cubes for beers that will be aged for a long time, particularly if they are soured, and adjust the amount of oak according to the wine but for beers I want to have that taste of a quick run through a wine barrel it's easier to just add wine by itself.
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Offline homoeccentricus

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Re: dubbel with cubes and wine
« Reply #2 on: February 29, 2016, 10:01:33 am »
Yep, I think Mike Tonsmeire says something similar: you might as well blend in the wine at bottling time. I don't think I want to do that. That's faking it ;)
Frank P.

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Offline unclebrazzie

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Re: dubbel with cubes and wine
« Reply #3 on: March 01, 2016, 01:02:45 am »
Yep, I think Mike Tonsmeire says something similar: you might as well blend in the wine at bottling time. I don't think I want to do that. That's faking it ;)

I believe that was one of my suggestions for the Supplication clone as well, prompted by one who's more in the know about wine than I am: soaking without the CO2 blanket will basically just oxydise the wine, in which case it shouldn't matter too much which wine you're using as long as you like it in oxydised form.

No other experience than our (shared) Supplication so far, but I realise I'm not fond of most beers aged in red wine barrels. A dubbel also seems to be on the light side to me for barrel ageing , but that may be subjective.
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Offline reverseapachemaster

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Re: dubbel with cubes and wine
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2016, 09:59:17 am »
Yep, I think Mike Tonsmeire says something similar: you might as well blend in the wine at bottling time. I don't think I want to do that. That's faking it ;)

I can appreciate that reasoning. I don't like blending wine in at bottling or admitting I do it but I like the results a lot more.
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