I made some different dilutions of the whiskey in some small tasting glasses, starting with the maximum amount I could add (equivalent to 750 mL bottle of booze to the 5.75 gallons of beer). I was shooting for some subtle vanilla, woody, sherry flavors without a strong whiskey bite in the finish. From this first dilution I got nice flavors, that I wanted but I also got a lingering alcohol in the finish.
I tried dilutions that would scale to 3/4 and 1/2 of the 750 mL bottle to 5.75 gallons as well. The 3/4 was just about perfect. Nice woody flavors without noticeable strong alcohol. The flavors got lost in the 1/2 bottle dilution. I couldn't pick out any whiskey flavors. Set on the 3/4 dilution I added a little more than half of the whiskey to the beer, stirred gently preventing as much oxidation as possible, and tasted it just to make sure the flavors were coming through but not too strong. It seemed a bit weak so I added some more and tasted. I ended up adding a little more than 3/4 of the 750 mL before I was satisfied.
I served this beer at a claybeer and burrito's beer utilization and reduction party (I needed to empty some kegs so I can keg my Cherale Summer Ale). I had everyone from my lab over, most of whom had never had any of my beer before. The beer went over really well, the 3 gallons I had kegged were gone by the end of the night. I can't wait to bottle up the rest and take it home to my dad. Hopefully he'll enjoy it as much as they did. I was also serving my Cranberry Oatmeal Brown Ale, which wasn't quite as popular. It's much heavier, not quite as drinkable and palette friendly. Still very good but I think next year I will dry it out a bit more and go with some fruit other than cranberries, as they can be overpowering.
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