Do you sterilize your wood chips

[Bryan Livingston]

When adding oak chips to a brew, do you sterisize these before adding to your fermenter?

Ive heard and read mixed views. Some use spirits to sterilise, others use boiled water, some dont sterilise at all.

Interesed in you views and comments.

[TBone]

Any time I've seen it done they have been soaked in alcohol for a few days prior to going into secondary. Bourban or whiskey seems to be popular. 

[Ralph]

I have not used, but from what I have read I would be inclined to soak the oak in something for a while or you are likely to get a bit too much wood character?

As to the sterilising, well that depends if you want to make a sour beer or not??

[Bryan Livingston]

Hi Ralph, the wood character is what im looking for and the type of wood and the surface area impacts the amount of the charater. I dont want infections and i definitely dont want sourness....so i expect sterilising the oak is the right thing to do. Im not seeking whisky or bourbon characters in this brew, just the oak notes. Any thoughts....white unflavoured alcohol? Heating? Or just put it in and hope for no infections.

[Ralph]

My guesses would be steaming/boiling them for 15 to 20 min would kill most things.

Soaking in some sort of white spirit could work, but the alcohol is likely to extract some of the flavours you are looking for... so I would be adding the alcohol you soaked the chips in into the beer if you wanted the flavour...

For that matter, if you have been steaming/boiling them in a little water I might add that to the brew... depending on what the water tasted like after the steaming/boiling process.

[Grant R Baker]

I have seen them steamed for 15minutes before going into the secondary.... and I have seen them steamed then added to a jar with whiskey in it (2 weeks prior to being added to the secondary).

 

Since these are normally added to the brew well after boiling the wort and inital fermentation I would want anything risky added to the brew... in my opinion Sterilize them.

[Christian]

I just used chips and sticks in a Porter. The chips I didn't sterilise. With the sticks, I did use Starsan on the ones I'd used in one previous brew but I also added some new ones straight out of the packet. No issues but it's not much of a sample either. Think about the origin of the product and if it is an attractive environment for bacteria - I'm happy to risk it.