Quote:
> Wine penetrates the first millimeter of oak in a few days, but several
> months are required to penetrate five or six millimeters. Consequently, oak
> extraction time pretty much depends on the size of the chips. For very fine
> chips...."Extraction is quite fast and takes only a few hours to reach
> equilibrium." See "Concepts in Wine Chemistry" by Yair Margalait, page
> 235.
> I often age wine on the lees and aalso use wood chips. I do taste the wine
> occasionally to keep track of things. You can rack both the wine and most
> of the lees off the chips if necessary.
If I remember correctly it felt like very fine chips inside the bags. Just to
be safe as you cannot remove the oak flavour, I may put 1 1/2 in and add
the other 1/2 down the road after some justified tasting.
Incidently, I sent an email to BrewKing and they said the kit (Valpolicella)
was suppose to have two 30 gm bags of chips. Their supplier delivers it in
30 gm batches. Makes sense for a kit manufacturer who might have lightly
oaked and heavier oaked kits. A packing list would be a good idea though.
Don