wood chip bourbon aging question.

I have a coffee chocolate imperial stout that og was 1.118 and final 1.019
It tastes amazing already. I have vanilla bean, oak and makers mark thar have been melding for about 3 months now. When I add them to secondary is there a maximum amount of time before the oak starts decomposing and mucking up the flavor.
I plan on aging this beer for a year. I'm just wondering if I can leave it in the secondary bucket for year or if I should age for say 4 months and then keg condition for the last 8 with no oak and just the flavor already taken on work. Thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

I would not age in a bucket for 12 months, too much O2.

If your oak has been soaking for 3 months its done. Put the beer and liquid into a keg, condition and age in the keg for 8 to 12 months.

fyi: it takes about three years for an oak cube to completely dissolve in a beer, done that ;-)

Does the breaking down affect the flavor. I keg conditioned a stout for one year before for 1 for year.
I tried it throughout the process at 6 months it was delicious. After 1 year for some reason it was not as good. Any thoughts. I did have the co2 sitting on it the fullyear could yhat effect the flavor.

I'm not sure about off flavors if you leave it in too long, but most companies that sell oak chips or cubes say that maximum extraction of the oak/bourbon/vanilla flavor in the chips/cubes is achieved at 2-3 weeks (2 weeks for chips and 3 weeks for cubes). I recently did a Vanilla Bourbon Winter Ale where I soaked oak chips and a vanilla bean in bourbon for a week, then added that to the secondary for 3 weeks. I'd recommend tasting it along the way as it is possible to over-oak your beer.

It's possible that the C02 could have had an effect, but not likely. When you say it didn't taste as good, what did it taste like?

It was rated with in 93 and 95 from my club leader right around 6 months but it was dead of summer. I was very happy with it. I finally tapped into it again and it tasted chemical ish kinda how an empty keg smells (burns sinus) when you pop a corney. So I was leaning toward the gas also.

I thought it was more like 3 weeks for chips and 3 months for cubes?

You may be right, that's what I remember hearing form someone I talked to about it. It would make sense that cubes take a lot longer to extract flavor from.