Home Brew OhioAmerican Medium Toasted Oak Chips, 1 lb.

I make and unusual kind of alcohol: Goatka. My base is cheese whey instead of water. It comes out of the still pretty much a smelly spirit. I charcoal filter 3x to bring it to neutral. As an experiment, I wanted to try aging on some oak chips (barrels are so expensive!). These chips arrived quick, had little to no dust, and after I gave them a little char with a propane torch, I tossed 2 handfuls into a gallon jar and filled with spirit. In less than 24 hours it was 5x darker than a quart jar I'd put a dark toasted oak spiral in a month earlier (and had been doing nuclear aging with as well). Within a week, it was as dark as some long-aged whiskeys. The flavor was mellow- actually nice to drink with subtle hints of vanilla and charred oak. I suspect if I leave it on the chips longer it will build more character. I consider myself a newbie to distilling, but when I compared my Oakygoaty to some of the more well-known brands, I actually found it smoother and more "comfortable" to drink.

The media could not be loaded. This is my first attempt at home-aging so I thought I'd start with a jar of moonshine we have had for a few years but never really drank.The wood chips are clean and perfectly dry, and a great size to put down the neck of a bottle, so you wouldn't necessarily need to put your spirits in a different container for aging if you didn't want to.There was a fair mount of wood dust in the bag I received so I put a few ounces of chips in a colander and rinsed them off to make sure I wasnt putting those fines into my jar.I started with a perfectly clear jar of moonshine with this experiment and the chips have imparted a nice color and flavor so far. The photos I took were after exactly 4 weeks of home-aging.I have sampled the contents every week and really couldn't even notice much of a difference in taste until this week. Seems like another month or two of aging for this jar is in order.Overall, this seems like a great value, as I used very few chips out of the bag. I'm very happy with my purchase!

good flavor and color. had to wash the chips twice to remove the sawdust.

Wish I ordered the second bag. Worked really great in the whiskey I was making.

After doing some comparison shopping, I found that I could purchase these Oak chips for half the cost of what they sell for locally.Normally I prefer to support my local brew suppliers and other small businesses, but with the cost difference and uncertainty if I would be able to use these chips more than once necessitated that I go with a more financially prudent choice.I chose chips over cubes initially because they are thinner and I figured that they would not require as much time soaking in my wort to impart any flavors which I was correct about.But after using these chips with several of my batches, I will likely switch to cubes in the future especially for batches that I can allow them to age in for longer than 2 or 3 weeks (now that I have increased my fermentation capacity considerably).The main problem with using chips over cubes is that chips require the use of a bag (I use cotton Muslim bags) and pose issues with cleaning after use, especially if you want to avoid imparting the taste of the previous style beer into the next one.If you are new to brewing and are considering using Oak (or other wood) chips, here are some tips I would recommend considering before using them:1. find a suitable storage container with an air/liquid tight lid that you can use to store them in between uses2. use some type of distilled product (vodka, bourbon etc) to soak the chips in prior to initial use (for sterilization) and for storage3. before removing them from the bag, rinse them thoroughly with hot water to remove any yeast or other fermentation by-products4. consider reusing them only for the same type of beer againEven after soaking for 2 to 3 weeks in secondary, I found that these chips imparted some wonderful flavors into one my porters, a saison and an IPA and look forward to using them to experiment with other recipes in the future.

Good for aging alcohol!

These wood chips have taken my homemade muscadine wine to a new level. They added substantial earthy smoothness and depth of flavor!

Great product, but mine weren't toasted.