Hi. I've been playing with a maple wheat beer for many batches. I like the idea and want to get it to work. I'm trying to get a little maple flavor in an American wheat/heffe. At first I used light maple syrup and got nothing. Then I used Grade A Amber and noticed a slight sour note on those batches. But drinkable. Then Grade B. I tried adding the syrup at the end of the boil, 1/2 at the end of the boil and 1/2 on the 3rd day of fermenting, and at the 3rd day of fermenting. I'm getting off flavors but no maple flavor. No matter what I do, I don't get a lot of (or any, actually) maple flavor, but I get a slight sourness. I think what's happening is the sugars in the syrup are fermenting and making the beer kind of "hot" and alcohol-y and that's coming across as sour. I was told I could use a maple extract (sold on Amazon.com), but I'd like to get the flavor naturally. Here's my recipe, and I'm open to thoughts. It's homebrew and I'm fine with experimenting, and the beer's been drinkable (but seems to sour a little as it sits). I thought I'd try adding a boat load more of syrup, some extra malt and extra hops to counter the added alcohol, but the intent is a light easy-sipping summer beer and not a really alcoholic beer. Adding the extra amount would defeat that. Thanks. 5# Wheat malt 5# US 2-row 4 oz crystal 60 4 oz cara pils @60 .75 oz Saaz and .25 Liberty @15 .25 oz Saaz and .25 Liberty 1/4 tsp Irish Moss 16 oz Grade B maple syrup @1 min 16 oz Grade B maple syrup on 3rd day of fermentation
I've considered maple sap, I had a source but didn't follow up. A little late in the season now. However, I've been told that it doesn't contribute much flavor. It has to be boiled down A LOT to contribute flavor (example: 40 gallons sap is boiled down to 1 gallon syrup)
The flavor of maple is one of the hardest to brew into a beer, thus your difficulties are pretty much the same as what you'll find in previous threads with discussion on this topic. I think there have been 2-3 threads about this within the past 6 months. No one has the answer, but if you want to read more into it then you can search this forum and use a keyword of 'maple.'
I've had that "maple sour effect" in past maple beer brewing attempts as well. Time (lots of it) sometimes helps a little bit. One approach I've been considering for future maple beers would be to back sweeten with maple syrup. To prevent the yeast from fermenting the syrup I'd either A. Add the syrup at kegging time and then chill the keg to refrigerator temperatures immediately or B. Use potassium sorbate plus potassium metabisulfite (campden) to stunt the yeast I prefer "method A" but one would have to keep the keg cold until the beer was finished. Unfortunately, neither method could be used if bottle priming in lieu of force carbonating. Depending on the style being brewed, I might employ an overly fermentable / attenuative wort and or yeast (so brew it too dry for style) if I didn't want the resulting beer to become too sweet for style because of the maple syrup addition. My hope would be that the sugar in the syrup would then "correct" the FG and put it into style range.
Depending on the extract, you might reconsider this idea. Sometimes extracts get a bad wrap because some delicate flavors get lost in the extraction process, leaving the product one dimensional. This is common for fruit extracts that remind us more of candy than real fruit. But maple syrup is a product that is highly processed, boiled to reduce its volume something like 50 times. If a natural maple extract is made from syrup, there might not be that many "delicate" flavors to lose. The best way to add an extract like this is probably to do so at bottling after taste-testing some beers dosed with different amounts of extract and then scaling to batch size. "Artificial" maple syrup may be made from fenugreek, a natural seed spice. So if you are uptight about something not being natural, it could be natural. It is just not maple. In my only stab at a maple beer, I tasted the beer after primary fermentation and couldn't taste maple, so I added crushed fenugreek at the end of primary and waited another week or two to bottle. I didn't like it. It tasted like maple but also like something earthy that didn't belong.
I forgot to say I tried that too. It didn't help much. In fact, that was my worst batch. I like the idea of using campden to kill off the yeast and then add some syrup. I haven't tried that.
?Was it the worst because it was too sweet (i.e., no maple fermentation at cold temps) or was it something else?
It was an odd mix of sweet, really dry, and too hot with alcohol. I wondered if the yeast continued to churn away at the syrup even though it was in a keg, carbonated, and at fridge temps. Or maybe got infected. I don't know, but it was just disgusting.
Ever consider just adding it to a glass? Beer plus 1 tbs maple syrup? Probably would also taste too sweet, but at least it wouldn't ruin a whole batch. Maybe try to make an acerglyn (like mead, only with maple syrup) and blend it to taste with your beer? It might would give you better control on the ratios, with zero maple being an option if the acerglyn was not to your liking.
"too hot with alcohol" was your base beer and had nothing to do with adding syrup to the keg at kegging time since there is no way the yeast fermented if you chilled it down to refrigerator temperature right away. I can see getting the sweetness level of the blended product right being difficult though.
I have no help for you on the maple front, but I am wondering what you use for yeast? Are you repitching the same yeast slurry into subsequent batches?
