Using oak cubes/spirits for the first time

thunderwagn · May 18, 2019

I'm in 100% agreement with @J A and @Texas Ale Works, and I'd soak the staves, chips, chunks, coils, or whatever wood your using for the oak barrel notes, in whatever spirit you're looking to add notes of to your beer. So I'd soak the chips in tequila if that's what you're after. Come keg time you can adjust the tequila flavor by adding tequila directly to suite your taste. Search around. There are some great barrel aged tequilas out there that will help with the flavors you're looking for I think.
One of the big benefits we have as homebrewers is we can add spirits directly to our brews. The big boys can't do that legally and that's the only reason why they don't.

Just noticed you're in Lakewood. One of our local breweries here in Loveland (Loveland Aleworks) has a barrel aged tequila sour that I think is pretty tasty. I don't know if you're into sours. Just thought I'd mention it. http://www.lovelandaleworks.com/ales

Mark Farrall · May 19, 2019

I've used two methods for oak and spirits flavours. I'll add the oak chips to the boil if I'm mainly intersted in the vanilla/oak flavours. The if I'm interested in a spirt from a barrel flavour I'll soak the chips in the spirit for two weeks and add the spirit at packaging. Haven't combined the two, but I can see that I might in the future.

Last batch of the sprit/oak was around 20 ml per litre. It was a bit strong a few weeks after packaging, but as I've put it away for six months I'm hoping it will mellow out. I suspect I may be aiming at 10 or 15 mL a litre next time.

Edit: if it was something you wanted to repeat I could see adding chips, pieces of staves or spirals to the whole bottle of tequila and then just adding it to taste during packaging. The chips do seem to give their all in only a week or two.