Using Maple for a stout - advice

It can help. I’ve heard some success with maple barrels retaining some syrup sweetness in big beers, but if just adding the syrup to finished beer, I don’t see any reason to try to make the beer warm shelf stable. Especially if you add coffee. Do any extended aging in the fermenter, then add your coffee and syrup to the keg. Further aging the beer at room temp is very unlikely to make it better and very likely to make it worse.

 

Let me bounce a thought... since maple sweetness ferments out, making it hard to find maple flavor when syrup is fermented, and since crystal malts can add sweetness to beer, is there a crystal malt out there that best compliments a maple syrup addition?

 

You could also go the route that @DrewBeechum recommends and use a fenugreek tincture

 

I'm half German so that explains where i get these crazy thoughts but i will try it sometime.

 

The best maple beer I've ever made was a BSDA. Used a fairly large (for me) amount of mid-range crystal for sweetness, just enough Special B for the low end of the color spectrum, Grade B maple for the sugar addition, and added a fenugreek tincture to taste.

 

Cool. I was at a tasting party tonight where everyone was passing around commercial pastry stouts. I didn’t know about the theme. My old ale and saison were mere palate cleansers by comparison (but appreciated for not being yet another bourbon vanilla coffee thing). Thinking something with maple to up my game with this crowd. The only time I tried it was back when I had fewer than 10 batches under my belt. I tried the fenugreek truck as per Radical Brewing and it added a maple aroma but offputting flavor. @DrewBeechum has suggested on his podcast that there are different varieties of fenugreek and some are grassy and not what you want. It could be that’s what I ended up with.

 

Fenugreek literally means "Greek hay", so grassiness isn't too surprising. It definitely adds a bitterness, no matter what variety you use.
I made the tincture by toasting the seeds and soaking in bourbon. I think if I ever try to do this again, I'll try using a bourbon-soaked maple spiral as well.

As a side note, I've been to style-themed tastings as well, and I don't really like them. At a certain point, your palate just wears out tasting the same thing over and over. It's like being a beer judge, except there's no real "Hey, this brewer deserves a medal!" moment, just confirmation of biases about certain breweries, with a few surprises and disappointments mixed in.

 

Next to a bunch of pastry stouts, my grisette-style saison went down like water, but it was such a welcome change.

I just browsed the Wikipedia entry on fenugreek and it says seeds are sometimes roasted to reduce bitterness and enhance flavor. I do not know if the seeds I used came roasted. If they do not come roasted, that might be something to explore.

 

2 cents.
I expermented with the thought process on a small batch pilot system. Added maple syrup grade B to the keg in cold storage. I considered gelatin to help remove suspended yeast but skipped the step. It was gross. Undrinkable gross. Maple syrup is delicious. In a glass is grotesque.

 

My first thought when I read the post was quantity/concentration or maybe uneven mixing (which amounts to sort of the same thing), but I'm interested to hear what @Brian29 has to say.

 

No no, i love maple beers. Good Morning. MBP. KBBS, on an on amongst my favorites.
The technique of adding maple directly to the keg and not allowing it to ferment produced an utterly grotesque outcome.

Attempting to find the right flavor to match those elite maple beers, i experimented with adding grade b to the keg and not allowing it to ferment by keeping it at serving temp from addition on. I can say strongly and definitely this is not the method those breweries use. In any amount it was undrinkable.

The other experimented techniques:
1. extract
2. a substantial amount of grade b at flameout, 3.aged on wood that had previously been soaked in maple all yielded much better results.

 

I believe treehouse uses 2gal per bbl of grade b. It ferments out but enough to leave behind flavor.
MBP used a spent maple barrel.

Oh i also experimented w maple flavored coffee beans. Its essentially an oil sprayed on coffee beans.
So four methods all yielding better results than maple in keg.

 

Sure.
The maple didnt ferment out by design. The beer had already been moved to secondary and off its yeast cake. I skipped gelatin. Crashed.

Added maple directly to keg while the beer was at serving temp. Carbed.

Carefully evaluated results.
Released c02. Added more maple. Recarbed

Any observed amount using this method was hideous. Sweet. Unsettling. Disgusting.

 

Another alternative that I've used is soaking an oak spiral in a maple whiskey and adding in secondary. There's a maple whiskey made in NH called Cabin Fever that uses real maple syrup and cold filters, leaving a ton of maple flavor behind without the intense sweetness.

 

Here’s a thought...

Brew the stout, keg it, carb it like normal.

Then do scales down experiments in 32oz growler (or any other size). You could put real maple at the bottom of the growler, fill the growler from the keg, let it sit for a few days to mix/settle, then taste.

Then you could do a maple extract in the growler, fill, taste, repeat.

Then a fenugreek tincture, then the maple/oak spirals, etc...

Keep copious notes on ratios so you can scale up whichever you like the best

 

Is there a source to this? I assume it’s added during boil or flameout?