Sorry, I didn't know what you meant by suggestion, my response was intended as a leading question, no dickish intentions at all.phat matt wrote:I was just wondering about different peoples procedures for getting it ready. no need to be a dick about it.
I just throw my oak cubes directly into the keg/secondary for 3 months. I keep them stored in a sealed package and only add to strong beers that have already fermented out, so I'm not too worried about infection or over oaking. Lots of people think the raw flavour of new oak is too strong, but 3 months gives it time to extract the full flavours, as well as mellow and blend. Depending on the beer, I use 1-2oz of cubes per 5 gallons.
I prefer the heavy toast american cubes, this is what is used for bourbon production. French and hungarian oak has a much different character that is not suited for dark beer in my opinion, though they can work nicely in some belgians.
Cubes are by far my preferred choice. Chips are awful, stores shouldn't even be allowed to sell that sawdust crap, and I haven't had good results with the spirals either.
If I want to add bourbon, I'll just add it to the keg/bottling bucket until I get the flavour I want. There is really no benefit to soaking cubes in bourbon ahead of time, other than the alcohol will help santize the cubes and get the flavour extraction process started a little sooner.