Homemade Oak Chips?

[Tenbears]

How do you deal with the heavy smoke from the oven and sometimes fire?

I take it you have never used lightly toasted oak. Lightly toasted is not much more than kiln dries. There is no smoke, and no fire In fact wood requires temperatures greater than 662F to ignite.

 

[Floandgary]

OMG!!! 10,000,000 pardons for my grand foopah. Had my brain somewhere else when I submitted that. White oak for sure. Or maybe it was just a test to see if anyone was watching! Yeah,, that's the ticket!

 

[DaveMcC]

I know this posting is old, but if anyone comes across it researching toasting oak for winemaking, this is absolutely incorrect. Red oak is NOT used in barrel (or oak additives) for wine. Too many off flavors and chemistry not conducible to good wine flavors. White oak IS the preferred north American species to use and the one used exclusively by N. American cooperages.

 

[winemaker81]

It's an interesting read. Another problem is using oak products not processed for winemaking, especially flooring products. It's not possible to know what building products are treated with, which could be poisonous.

An old saying is, "the longest distance between two points is a shortcut". When looking at "cheaper" solutions, it's best to think it through and look for the potential pitfalls.

 

[jburtner]

I bought a whiskey 1/2 barrel planter from HD - Broke it up and cut the staves/head down to roughly finger sized removing the outer layers of wood and char in the process - exposing fresh oak. Then toast some up in the oven for a couple hours @ 350, 375, 400*F... Smells great and no smoke... Drop one or two into a carboy for a couple months... The barrel only cost like $35 @ HD and there's enough oak (white oak & barrel quality) to last me for years..

Cheers!
-johann