After hearing what people had to say in my previous oak thread, I went ahead and ordered a packet of Hungarian oak cubes. They haven't arrived yet, but one of my questions that never got answered was how many cubes to put in a small amount of mead (like 1 gallon or less) to flavor it correctly. I have two jugs of cyser I made back in December in bulk aging that I would like to add oak to. They were originally close to full but they are now between 8/10 - 9/10 of a gallon due to racking and sampling losses. They are water-clear and sediment free so there is no reason to rack them again before bottling. This seems like the perfect time to apply oak to them (I haven't added any sulfite yet and since they are bone dry there is no need for sorbate). Since I'm going to leave the oak in there for a while maybe I should add a campden tablet to each now.
The problem is, everybody gives oak measurements in ounces. The packets are designed to be dumped into large carboys, so if I were oaking 3 gallons at once I would just use half of it. However, that kind of unit doesn't mean much to me on smaller amounts since I don't have a scale sensitive enough to weigh the cubes separately. What is a good baseline number of cubes to put in a mostly-full gallon of mead? Some cubes undoubtedly extract faster/better than others but would 1-2 cubes per gallon be enough or would I need more? In a cyser, I'd prefer a light oaking.
The problem is, everybody gives oak measurements in ounces. The packets are designed to be dumped into large carboys, so if I were oaking 3 gallons at once I would just use half of it. However, that kind of unit doesn't mean much to me on smaller amounts since I don't have a scale sensitive enough to weigh the cubes separately. What is a good baseline number of cubes to put in a mostly-full gallon of mead? Some cubes undoubtedly extract faster/better than others but would 1-2 cubes per gallon be enough or would I need more? In a cyser, I'd prefer a light oaking.
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