How much oak essence to use and how to pull it back

How much oak essence to use and how to pull it back

Oak essence is the thing people get wrong most often, and it's nearly always in the same direction. Nobody ever ruins a batch by being too careful with it. They ruin it by tipping in what looks like a sensible amount out of a 50ml bottle, walking away for a week, and coming back to something that grips the roof of your mouth like cold tea.

So the useful question here is how much to put in, and what to do when you've put in too much.

Start lower than the bottle suggests

A typical oak flavouring runs somewhere in the range of 1ml to 10ml per litre of spirit, which is a very wide range, and the high end of it is for people who know exactly what they're after. Start at 1ml per litre. You can always put more in. There's no operation that takes it out again.

Mix it right through, then leave it 24 to 48 hours before you make any judgement at all, because oak keeps opening up for a day or two and a batch that tastes thin an hour after dosing can be exactly right by the next evening. Most over-oaked batches happen because somebody tasted it too early, decided there wasn't enough in there and then doubled the dose.

Taste it diluted or you're guessing

At full strength the alcohol burn covers the oak almost entirely, so you'll consistently under-read what's in there. Take a small sample, cut it with water in the glass until it's roughly half strength, and taste that instead. That's how the wood actually shows up, and it's how you catch the dry, grippy edge arriving before it's a problem in the whole batch.

Do the tasting on a sample, never on the main vessel. A teaspoon into a glass costs you nothing, and you can throw it away without any feelings about it.

Dose the batch in steps

Work up in three or four small additions rather than trying to hit it in one, and wait a day between each. It feels slow. It's a week instead of an afternoon, and the alternative is a batch you don't want to drink, which is a lot slower.

Keep a note of what you've put in as you go, because by the fourth addition nobody remembers whether it was 3ml or 4ml, and that number is the only thing that lets you repeat a batch you liked.

If you've already gone too far

Three things work, roughly in order of how well.

Blend it back. The most reliable fix by a long way. Keep some unflavoured base spirit aside, and add it to the over-oaked batch a bit at a time until the grip lets go. It costs you some strength and it costs you nothing else, and a slightly weaker drink you enjoy beats a stronger one sitting in the cupboard.

Run it through carbon. Carbon pulls tannin and harshness out along with a bit of the colour and a bit of the good flavour, so it's a trade rather than a cure. Try it on a small amount first so you can see how much it takes with it.

Sweeten it very slightly. A small amount of sugar syrup will mask a bit of dryness. This is the weakest of the three and it's easy to overdo, so treat it as a finishing touch on a nearly-fixed batch rather than a rescue on its own.

What doesn't work is waiting it out. Tannin doesn't fade in a sealed bottle the way a fresh spirit's rough edges do, so a batch that's too oaky in March will still be too oaky in November.

Wood behaves differently to essence

Worth knowing if you're using chips or a soaker rather than drops. Real wood extracts slowly at first and then faster as it opens up, so the same piece of oak that seemed to be doing nothing for five days can take over in the next three. Essence is linear, and that predictability is what makes it easier to control. A lot of people use essence to get most of the way there and then a small amount of real wood for the last bit of character.

One thing worth saying plainly

Owning a still is legal here and we sell the gear, but actually distilling spirits at home needs an excise manufacturer licence from the ATO and most people haven't got one, so if that's you then what you're doing is flavouring a base spirit you've bought. That's completely legal, and it's what this whole article assumes anyway.

What you'd want for this

• Still Spirits Oak Cask 50ml. The standard oak flavouring, and the one these doses refer to.
• Still Spirits Cedar Oak Profile 50ml. A drier oak, useful when the sweetness is already there.
• Still Spirits Universal Z Carbon. What you run an over-oaked batch through.
• Still Spirits Z Filter Paper 5pk. The paper that goes with it.

Did you know we also keep Still Spirits Mellow Oak, bourbon barrel chips, Sam Willard's oak soakers, EZ filter kits and 5 litre Italian demijohns in the shop. They aren't all on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The rest of it is in our homebrew range, and Brewhilder, our homebrew helper, will talk you through what suits your setup.

Read next

• Still Spirits Oak Cask, what it does and how to use it
• Still Spirits Cedar Oak Profile, what it does
• Still Spirits Mellow Oak, what it does and how to use it

I'm heavy handed with a dropper by nature, so everything above is a rule I wrote for myself first and then decided other people might as well have it too.

Cheers,

Candeece

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