I\'m a dedicated Bourbon drinker and after trying most options available for Home Distillers I\'ve settled for the following.
5 Litres 45% spirit
One bottle Essencia Bourbon Essence
500 Grms of Essencia Bourbon Chunks
Leave to steep for 8-9 days (taste at 8 and decide if it wants longer)
Bags of flavour together with an excellent bouquet.
I use:
Still Spirits Tennessee Bourbon Chips, Still Spirits Classic Bourbon and 40% shine.
I soak 5lt spirit on chips for 1 month, strain then add the flavor.
After straining I will add 5lt spirit to the (old) chips but I will leave for 2 months the second time around.
Now I mainly go for the SS Classic Range tenessee sour mash flavouring (having been mainly a JD drinker prior to that).
So let me get this right and make sure I understand what it is you\'re doing.....
Opus is basically making the flavouring half the normal strength, but enhancing that with Oak chips to get the flavour ?
And Andy is using about double the amount of spirit (when taking into account that the Classic Bourbon flavouring used to come in packs to flavour up 2.25 litres of spirit befor they changed the packs to flavour 1 litre) but using the raw spirit to extract the oak flavour from the chips and then also making it up to "half" normal flavour strength

?
I wonder if it will work with the TSM flavouring, as I always more of a JD person than say, Wild Turkey or Jim Beam etc etc.....