I brewed a Kate the Great clone based on the recipe here
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/officia ... ne-217674/ which contains no oak info. Having had this beer several times I knew that it was an oaked beer so I shot an email to the brewery, Portsmouth Brewery, and got this as my answer.
"As far as the Kate's oaking goes. All of Kate is lightly oaked. We make our own Portwood simply by infusing oak spirals ( The Barrel Mill, Avon, MN- 800.201.7125) with local Port. Of course if I told you the amounts and proportions I have to kill you!! Actually, we take 6 spirals and break them up, place them into a 10 gal. corny keg and pour 3 bottles of Tawney Port over the spirals. We add about 10 PSI to the keg and let the concoction sit for 18-25 days. Then we fill the remainder of the 10 gal. keg with Kate. Let it sit at ambient temp for 45-60 days then inject the 10 gals back into the 440 gals of KtG. Once the keg is empty we then back fill the 10 gals and let the Kate sit on the oak for another 6 months. This become the double oaked Kate. Very rare, only about 56 bottles produced. Hope this helps. Kate can age for 6 years once in bottles, if truth be known!! Cheers! Tod Mott"
So how do I figure out how much oak to use per gallon etc? And what type of oak. What char level. Not sure if the origin of the oak is as important as the amount of oak but want to try to get as close as I can. Any advice would be appreciated. Chris