The chips are down

After trolling through numerous recipes on the web I decided that I needed 50g of oak cubes to flavour my IPA, but after carefully measuring it out the cubes they didn't look enough so I chucked in another handful or so into the saucepan. I poured in boiling water (around 3 times the height of the cubes) and left them boiling on the stove for 15 minutes or so. It was surprising how much water was absorbed by the cubes and also the deep dark colour of the remaining water

I tipped the murky water out and left the oak chips soaking in fresh water for a day or so, which leeched out more colour that just wasn't there in the original oak chips

I drained the oak cubes and tipped them into the fermentor, where somewhat disconcertingly most of them sank immediately. Which makes me wonder how old boats worked...

 
In another week I rack off this bad boy into secondaries to mature for a few weeks, then two long weeks of bottle conditioning before we get to try it.....