Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I made a 10 gallon batch of belgian wit two weekends ago and split it into two carboys.  They are mostly done fermenting now and I am going to do an experiment with on of the carboys.  My wife loves the Dogfish Head Red and White beer, so I am going to try to duplicate it.  Press materials about the beer say that it is brewed with a small amount of pinot noir grape juice and then aged in used pinot noir barrels.  It is too late for me to get the grape juice, but I bought some medium toast oak chips.  I am soaking them in pinot noir and will let them soak for about a week.  Then I plan on draining the pinot off of the chips and putting them in a fermentor and racking one of the carboys onto the chips.  I plan on tasting the beer after a week and seeing how it goes.  That way I can see if I need to leave the beer on the chips longer or rack it off.  Because I have a carboy of unadulterated wit, I have a control group (read - if the experiment makes beer that tastes like doggy poo, I have a good beer to fall back on).  I am interested to see how the two compare in taste.

Anyone else ever try something like this?

How about using oak cubes and adding some actual pinot noir to the brew? I remember on the Jamil Wood show that he recommends cubes and actually adding bourbon versus soaking the wood...not actually wine but it may yield a better flavor...

I was reading about that recently too, Greg.  People say that oak cubes add more complex flavor because there is a gradient of toasting as you move "into" the cube.  Chips don't have that and have an even toast all the way through.  However, you need to let beer age on cubes for a lot longer (months) and wit beer is usually best drunk relatively fresh.  So, I will see how this one turns out (sampling tonight) and adjust as I go.  I am really excited to taste my normal wit and this other one side by side.

How did the vino-beer turn out? Close to the original or better perchance?

I am going to bring some of each along on Saturday for others to taste.  In my opinion, the wood/pinot noir beer turned out better than the original.  The normal wit tastes good, but the soft vanilla and other flavors the oak chips imparted really made an excellent beer.   I am curious to see what others think.