Hi. I want to try to get more maple flavor in my wheat ale. I keg my beer, so the yeast are pretty inactive when the keg is cold. I don't know if the carbonation makes them inactive. I want to add more maple syrup, but don't want bottles to explode if I bottle some beer and they're at room temp for a bit (assuming the yeast will reawaken and start chomping on the sugars). My keg is now carbonated. Will the yeast be active enough to chomp on the sugars and over carbonate. Since it's a keg, I don't care, I can release the extra co2. Or, are the yeast done and inactive and I'll get some maple flavor? Thanks.
To start off, the yeast becomes inactive due to the low temperature of your keg (yeast becomes inactive at temperatures lower than 40 degrees). If I were you, I would test one bottle with some extra syrup, I would assume that your bottle won't explode from the extra sugar provided by the syrup but would instead become a gusher and you'll lose about half the contents if it were already carbonated. The yeast will likely reawaken and you could purge the keg of co2 and let them bottle condition for awhile. Another method would be to search for herbs that have maple flavor similar to how fennel provides a licorice flavor without sugar.
