Using Maple for a stout - advice

What ABV are you shooting for?

 

Would it work if you add the maple to the keg when the beer is cold so it doesn't ferment. I would also skip the gelatin.

 

Add sorbate with the maple to stabilize and prevent further fermentation. Yeast hates sorbate real bad and would rather lie down and sleep than ferment in presence of sorbate.

 

Yeah at 8-8.5% if you added it to the keg and kept it cold you’re good. If it was say closer to say 12% I don’t think you’d even need to keep it cold. You could fine it or cold age it, both work. Personally I’d maybe add it twice. Reduce some down until it’s so unbelievabky thick and add it at WP or during fermentation. Then add it to the keg if you need more.

 

That's where i'm confused. You want to clear a stout.

 

He probably wants the least amount of yeast in the beer as possible to minimize refermentation as much as possible.

 

I'd put new grade robust flavor maple syrup I. A secondary or after primary ferment is done and add a spiral of sugar maple wood to the keg. Not maple infused. Properly aged sugar maple wood will give a lot of maple flavor by itself with no fermenting?

Don't know how long the stout would be good seeing I have left maple wood in no longer that 4 weeks.

 

Just to expand on this a little, the grading system changed a few years ago. The old system prized light color over other qualities, which had come to be an outdated way of thinking about what makes for high quality syrup. (Under the old grading system, a lot of people said, "B is Best," because Grade B had a more robust maple flavor than Grade A. This was confusing to anyone who took the letter grades literally.) The old grades were done away with entirely (or I guess strictly speaking, they were all merged into "Grade A"), and now the labeling uses words to differentiate the syrup by color and degree of flavor/robustness.

So what I think GormBrewhouse is suggesting is to use syrup labeled "Dark Color and Robust Flavor," which roughly corresponds to old Grade B. This makes sense because old Grade A, which is now known as "Golden Color and Delicate Taste," would contribute relatively little in the way of maple flavor. And even "Amber Color and Rich Flavor" would probably not provide as much character as you are looking for.

[Edited to add a clarification: I'm simplifying the correspondence between the new grades and the old ones, it is actually more complicated than I indicated, but I think these details can be ignored.]

 

I am interested in this kind of thing too and without going to adding maple when kegging, I have thought about using spirals. A guy in my homebrew club did a quarter spiral for 3 weeks and it was more woody than maple in many peoples opinions. It was still good, but I am interested in what kind of maple wood gets the best maple flavor.

 

I'd be surprised if those are non-maple spirals that are infused with sugar maple "essence". It's more likely they're made from sugar maple and spiral-cut to increase surface area and enhance 'infusing' the sugar maple characteristics to whatever liquid.
If wood chips/cube made for grilling/smoking would work they're available on ebay and Amazon.

 

I've always wanted to try putting the keg in hot water to kill the yeast but i'm not sure if this would be dangerous or screw the beer up.

 

Yes, nicely done Mr Mindbender.

New grading system aledgidly used to increase sales. I never had a problem selling my product with the old system.

 

I’ve read of old German breweries who would do this. A sorta slow pasteurization. Something like 40 min. at 60°C. I used to have a pasteurization time/temp chart around here...

The primary concern would be speeding up staling by heat exposure. Heat damages beer pretty quickly. There’s a reason people use flash pasteurization nowadays. Still, if you ever do it, I’d be curious to hear the results!

 

OP, for a beer that size, I’d recommend dosing in the keg. Removing as much yeast as you can and adding sulfites will help, but loading sugar in an unpasteurized beer is just asking for refermentation.
I’d recommend fining in your fermenter and then racking the brite beer to the keg. Hook up the co2 to the beverage port, bubble co2 through, and add some syrup. Taste and add more if you feel like it needs it. You can age in your kegerator, but you are probably good to drink immediately.