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About Our Products

It’s all about the shape

A Wooden barrel exposes only long grain to the Wine, Spirits or Beer.

All barrel alternatives have degrees of short grain and some more than others.

Short grain can be thought of like this: take a piece of Red Oak 4” long and you can blow through it end to end!

The shorter the grain or “end grain” the faster the liquid can saturate the wood as in products like chips, beans, spirals and cubes… also the faster the extraction of flavors from the wood… so long grain is very slow to be saturated by the wine and more complexity occurs naturally and slowly.

The WineStix® shape is unique in that it gives the impact of oak flavors to the wine as in “short grain wood” (allowing less pieces of wood) and at the same time gives a more complex extraction of “long grain wood” like the Wooden Barrel does, in the same piece of wood!

In combination to this type of extraction of flavors is the fact that where the pattern occurs on the wood, due to this extra thickness allows “gradience toasting” as they are being processed in Light, Medium and Medium Plus toast levels. This means that the caramelization of the sugars (lignin) in the wood is gradient as in likeness to the toasting of a Barrel. This complexity acquired with WineStix® products are the closest Oak Alternative being made to replicate the magic of a Wooden Barrel.

BeerStix™ milling is 60% more “short grain” and 1/16” thinner to allow faster extraction to your brew or spirits, the tradeoff is quicker extraction for less gradience toasting, just can’t have it both ways. Fast extraction of any product does put the oak to the brew or wine but the marriage of wine or brew to oak is off kilter. It’s like making a simple syrup, cup of sugar to a cup of water; good to go! 3 cups of sugar to one cup of water just doesn’t work, it’s in there but not together! If maturation time is not a issue, Wine Stix® is the best choice.

If we had enough wood to build a barrel on the mill floor and converted that wood to WineStix® we could treat 57 barrels of wine as new barrel flavors! Since the average dosage is like a 2nd season barrel that same wood will treat 114 barrels of wine! Gotta love it…

Just put one carboy WineStix® in your 5-6 gallon carboy and give it 2-3 months (takes 2 months to become saturated) and allow the process happen.

Over extraction seldom happens because the process is controlled and slow so you just take it out when you have the flavors you like!

Less Oak. Less Cost. Excellent Results.

WineStix®, Char-Stix™ and BeerStix™ products are milled in a way that exposes short grain and long grain in the same piece of wood.

With the care and thought we put into our Stix, we know you’ll love them!