I have never bought into the notion that oak chips are somehow inferior to more expensive versions of oak additives. Sure, they release their oaky-goodness in a shorter amount of time, but you can use that to your advantage and dial in your oak addition with precision adding a little at a time. AND, they're so easy to get out of the barrel afterwards. I still have chunks of oak staves and spiral-cut rods inside my barrel from years ago.
These oak chips are great for putting your wine through Malolactic as well. I was told that the Malo bugs like the oak and after a stalled Malolactic effort years ago, I've always used oak chips to help with a fool-proof Malolactic fermentation.
I used these chips soaked in jameson for 2 weeks prior to introducing to fermenter. Delicious flavor, but when cleaning out fermenter it was clear these chips were slowing the draining in my sink. Not a huge deal, but that is the only reason these didn't get 5 stars. I would recommend using oak spirals as they are easy to apply and clean up. However, if using a specific quantity, these are nice. Cubes can be used to improve consistency batch-to-batch, but other than that they are very similar to these.
Thank you so much for your feedback. We really appreciate the honesty and value great feedback like this as it helps us improve our products. Cheers!
July 2, 2019
Tyler W
Staff
Rated 5 out of 5
great quality
I have used a number of different type of oak chips in my distillery and some have been good, some were awful and these were great quality. No sawdust or other contaminants that had to be removed before I could use them. The taste was wonderful and full. i am very pleased that we found these chips and we are definitely proud of our product.
In comparison with oak cubes, oak chips give inconsistent flavor contribution (per weight) because of their size variation. Cubes have a more consistent surface/mass ratio.
Oak cubes also have more internal area to harbor brettanomyces or wine/spirit flavor.
I throw a bunch of these in a jar of whiskey, constantly changing the liquor every 2 weeks, and just pull them out and throw them in secondary as needed.
