Honeycomb Experiment #1-Cabernet Sauvignon (Sour)

About a week ago I purchased some honeycomb inserts from BlackSwan in Minnesota.  I ended up getting 6 in total.  3 In White Oak Medium and 3 more in Red Oak Medium.  Here is the original post. 

I didn't really have a plan for these when I purchased them but I am starting to get a couple of ideas.   For the 1st experiment, I will be soaking 1 inch of the Honeycombed Red Oak in Cabernet Sauvignon.

The honeycomb inserts are very well made with clean cuts and a nice even medium toast.  They originally came in 5" lengths or 1" per gallon.  The pictures above show the honeycomb cut down to 1". 

I am going to let this soak in the cab for 3 weeks and add it to a dreg beer around 4%.  I will use Russian River Supplication for this.  Plus it gives me another reason to drink the Supplication in my cold room.

First, I want to see how much oak I get from the honeycomb addition.  Since most of my dreg beers are in jugs for only about a month it will be interesting to see how it influences the base beer.  In addition, it will be nice to have the bugs in the oak for future batches of Supplication dregs.

Second, since these are all bottled over the next 6 months I can see how the level of oak fluctuates over time.  (One of my 1st dreg beers had oak cubes in it and it turned out fantastic.) 

Lastly, it is a great reason to brew again and get some more sour beers into the pipeline.  I will update this post on brew day and during tastings.