StillSmart

Well well, thats just water and the wood boiled..........

I must admit Mick you are using your nogging.. flavour the water that you are going to use to cut your likker??? we need to look into this..well done.

Lol. Bang alright.You will be on the news.
I may have said this before....

Don't boil alcohol on a gas hob.
ITS V.F. DANGEROUS .

Better still.
If you insist in making posts like this, I think we should consider you continued membership of this forum.
People reading this stupidity in the future might get hurt.

If you wish to harm yourself please don't include this forum.

Mash wrote:Lol. Bang alright.You will be on the news.
I may have said this before....

Don't boil alcohol on a gas hob.
ITS V.F. DANGEROUS .

Mash, pay attention. No alcohol is going on or near a hob. No wood is going in my alcohol either. I'm boiling wood in the water that i am going to dilute my alcohol with . You with it now ? Gonna toast some of these chips now and then try that. Or mayne try tea bags and a vanilla pod !

Mash wrote:Better still.
If you insist in making posts like this, I think we should consider you continued membership of this forum.
People reading this stupidity in the future might get hurt.

If you wish to harm yourself please don't include this forum.

Go back and read my posts correctly.

OK. Fair point. My bad.

On the subject of malt. You can extract that flavour from malted barley. Think I used about 10g in a liter.

PS. The nuking business works partly because of the vacuum it creates. It will be interesting to see your results. Got a feeling it will be a bit thin, but experimenting is a good thing.

PPS won't mention boiling anything again

Well the wood i boiled in the water above, looks dark and when added to the spirit it produces a very pale spirit, it is as you say "thin" . Smelling the coloured water it smells just like you imagine very "woody", but somehow this does not come through in any bad way to the spirit. I found it OK, if somewhat pale in colour. After messing about in the kitchen like some sort of mad alchemist for most of the day i nipped out shopping with the missus, i popped in my local for a pint and took a sample with me. Guy who tested it drink a bottle a week, he usually gets that Highland Black from Aldi or Lidl. He gave it 9 out of ten !!!! I wouldn't rate it that high but there you go.

Moving foreward........ i'll be doing my last spirit run this evening. I'm toasting / roasting / burning some chips in the oven as we speak. Here's what i'm hoping for; the wood will darken giving me a much deeper colour, and i think it will need to be very dark to add to the spirit. I'm also hoping the aromas / flavours in the toasted wood are going to come through but lets see. Update tomorrow !!!!! If it works for me then its better than buying the small sachets of esscence.

Mash wrote:On the subject of malt. You can extract that flavour from malted barley. Think I used about 10g in a liter.

You think that might impart a bit of flavour adding Horlicks to a wash or that a daft idea ?

Well worth a try in the fermenter... Late.
My idea for malt was in the spirit.

Only me again !! Just an observation. Mash wrote: "Nuking works because of the vaccum it creates", made no sense to me initially. Someone else on another thread about nuking (might of been Robert, sorry if i'm wrong) wrote: "the vaccum thing is a red herring, i just nuke it and leave it with an open top" (not verbatim). So, what the truth ? Which one you believe ? Well i may have the answer Also at the same time it seems to answer a lot of other things for me (at least) .


Get a piece of wood, any size, place it in water or alcohol and it floats. Nuke it in water or alcohol etc.. for long enough and eventually when all the air is missplaced from the fibres then it sinks. If your wood sinks then its properley permeated, whether you nuke it or boil it. Makes sense that vaccum would assist with this.


That makes it easy with the example of a wooden cask to know how long to leave a given amount of alcohol, in a given cask size time to permeate and gain the neccesary colour/flavour. With wood chips then its purely a guess how much wood to use, you can't go on weight because surface area will factor in absorbtion rates. i.e 50 grammes of inch chips is gonna give you a different result than two small chunks weighing in a 50 grammes between them.

If only there was a way to extract what we want and put it in a sachet ?......................

You have to try it all and see what is best for what you want.
Simples.

Robert.

Take a look at this....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWpf9N90Kqg

+1 Try it and you will find what works for you.

Something that occurred to me last night. Flavours extracted from wood by alcohol will be different from those extracted by water.

The microwave also heats the wood directly which have a separate effect.

Well thats the weekends wizzadry concluded. I like the plain oak chip boiled add juice to spirit. Nice, Speyside Malt type taste.

Next, i roasted some chips on a tray in the oven untill they took on a darker grey colour, half hour or so @ 200 degrees. Dropped them in water brought to boil and simmered for about half hour. The chips go very dark in colour when wet. The juice/water looked very much darker than the water from the plain chips. Upon decanting the liquid was the same colour, it appears to have just been an illusion created by dark chips in a stainless steel pan. That said, the juice was very smokey in taste. I added some to plain spirit, its OK. Very smokey/peat taste. I don't like smokey whiskey so much so i won't be repeating that. Plain chips is gonna be fine for me.


I also think the alcohol would bring something more out the wood as said above. If i wipe my cooker hood with alcohol it absorbs instantly the grease etc.. whereas water does not. I've just dropped my previously boiled plain chips into a jar of tails i collected. Just to find out if there is any colouring capability left in the wood and just because i'm nosey as to what will happen. I rate it as a success for me at any rate, can't see me buying whiskey essenses again. I do think there is a little something lacking in the taste of what i've done but i'll investigate that another day. There's also the possibility of throwing a bit of that "oak water" into a wash, or into my tubs of wine.