Now this is a blast from the past! I brewed this beer 11 months ago. 10 months ago I put it on oak cubes. In April I took it off the oak and let it mellow until September, when I finally bottled most of it (saving 1 gallon which is now sitting on raspberries and roeselare yeast). Not the fastest beer to make, but hopefully it's worth it.

My goal for this beer was an Anglo-American stout with oak providing complex notes of vanilla and chocolate. The resulting beer is delicious, but lacks some of the complexity that I had hoped for.

The head is strong, solid and long lasting with a nice light-chocolate color. The flavor is mostly chocolate-y, with some roastiness, sweetness and touches of vanilla. The mouthfeel is lighter than I want, perhaps due to the mash's swift decline in temperature -- the container I used for partial mashes didn't hold heat all that well. Another contributing factor is the sugar that made up 12% of the grist, which I added to help dry out the beer, which was probably not necessary. The beer is also a bit overcarbonated -- if I want the flavor of the oak to linger than I don't want to have those flavor float away on a cloud of carbonation.

When I re-brew this beer there are a few small changes that I'll make that should improve it significantly:

• Replace some or all of the sugar with base malt
• Up the mash temperature to 154ish
• English-level carbonation instead of American-level

I'd also like to split the batch and try some different oaks and longer exposure time. I am happy with the flavors that the Hungarian oak added to the beer, but it will be fun to see what flavors other oaks bring to the party.