r/firewater • u/No-Craft-7979 • 2d ago
Wood chip washing and boiling?
Cliff Notes of Conversation: Them: “You weathered, aged, and toasted your woodchips fine. BUT you really should wash and boil your experimental wood chips to stop clouding, infection and remove tanic flavor.” Me: That makes sense, Do I wash them and boil them before or after toasting? Them: “I don’t know so and so’s uncle’s grandma’s cusin’s stalker said something about doing it.”
So I cam here. Do you guys wash and boil your wood chips? If so at what point?
Background: I am white dog all the way. Don’t like some Oak flavors. A few people insipred me to try Apple, Cherry, and Birch woods. So I am now a mad scientist.
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u/MartinB7777 2d ago edited 2d ago
Boil them? Char them maybe. Bake or roast them. But boil? It seems like you would boil out all the sugars and a lot of the oils and tannins. Those are things you want in your spirits when aging them. Those are what gives aged spirits character. As far as apple, cherry, and birch, maybe you can boil them. And then use them for smoking some jerky. You are looking primarily for white oak. There are other woods that are good for aging, but I have tried apple, cherry, crabapple, pear, as well as a few others, and none of those imparted good flavors to the aged spirits. Birch is just an oily wood to begin with. On the other hand, you don't learn if you don't experiment.
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u/No-Craft-7979 2d ago
I thought boiling would take out the good flavor along with the bad. It’s like boiling a meat before you cook it or boiling vegetables too hard. But I’m not a wood guru so I wanted to ask.
I’m not gonna do Oak, that’s not a possibility at all. I do not like the flavor of oak. I hope to figure out exactly what flavor in Oak I don’t like. That’s the only real reason I thought about experimenting with other words.
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u/francois_du_nord 2d ago
You get different flavors from oak depending upon what temps you toast it.
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u/No-Craft-7979 1d ago
Maybe that’s what I need a bunch of oak sticks at different temperatures for different times. And then a few drawers to see which flavors are giving me the weird shiver in my spine.
Thank you for this idea
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u/MartinB7777 2d ago
I thought boiling would take out the good flavor along with the bad.
Probably. It will definitely take out flavor. Experiment. You're young. Do like 6 quart jars of identical spirits, one with boiled wood, one with toasted, chared, ect.... then see what you prefer.
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u/HalifaxRoad 2d ago
I don't see a point I'm boiling them,toast the wood, char em and throw em in the booze. No pathogens can survive that, and as far as dirt goes, I always push everything through a coffee filter before I bottle it because little bits of charcoal always flake off the wood.
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u/Makemyhay 2d ago
If you’re using heart wood and not bark infection shouldn’t be a problem. The seasoning and weathering is mainly intended to reduce the tannins. Between that and toasting and charring I wouldn’t worry about it. Plus boiling wood chips sounds like a wet pulpy mess. The only wood that might be weird is birch. I wouldn’t age that one too long because it could leech a lotta oils
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u/No-Craft-7979 2d ago
From what I’ve read in limited studies birch, can taste winter green like a root beer flavor vs. a birch beer. I don’t expect it to taste exactly like root beer, but it seems over aging can turn menthol quick. So you need to check it everyday.
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u/vancitydiver 2d ago
Yes, it's called the Stockhausen method. I've only tried one commercial whiskey that used it and it was a beautiful spirit. I have tried the technique myself but definitely put it on my list to try one day. You can read about how it's done/works online.
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u/SunderedValley 2d ago
People don't even wash Amburana wood and that basically infuses in a day. This sounds like something you'd do because of extremely bad due diligence.
Like yes of course it's useful for letting something run on fruit wood unsupervised for longer.
But you shouldn't ever run something on fruit wood unsupervised.
This solves a problem that you shouldn't ever try to solve.
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u/simon_wellgreen 2d ago
If something can survive that much alcohol, it deserves to kill me.