Why add maple syrup?

11oz of maple syrup won't really do anything besides raise the OG and eventual ABV. Your beer would be dryer than if you achieved the same OG using all malt.

Also, 11oz? How fucking arbitrary is that?

 

Maple is a tricky flavor to capture in beer. The flavor we are accustomed to with syrup is highly concentrated. You are diluting that flavor considerably by adding 11 oz in 640 oz of wort. When the yeast are done with fermentation, you will pick up little if any contribution beyond the higher alcohol content.

 

Waste of time and good syrup.

 

How can you add maple flavor to a beer? Add it post- boil? Prime with it? Add large amounts? Add metabisulphate, add maple syrup, keg and force carb? Use extract flavoring?

None of these are ideal. Is there a best method?

You were probably instructed to add the MS late in the boil in order to minimimze boiling off volatile aromatics.

 

I think the answer is this. There have been several threads on this topic over the past year or so but never a good answer for how to get that good maple flavor into a beer like some of the good commercial examples are able to give us.

 

The best results I've had with maple have been to pick a style that calls for a large sugar addition to dry it out but perceived has a perceived sweetness. Load up on honey malt and medium to dark crystal(s), mash low and long, long boil, generous pitch of healthy, high-attenuating yeast, add two pounds grade b amber syrup after high krausen. Add a little high quality maple extract (should be ~$10 an oz for the good stuff) to bump up the flavor, and bottle using maple sugar as the priming agent. Makes for an interesting quad/specialty saison/biere de garde depending on what yeast you use.

 

you do realize that maple syrup is made by boiling it for a long period to concentrate it right?

I wouldnt think there would be many aromatics to boil off, that said using maple syrup in a beer generally is a waste of time. If you want that maple flavor use some fenugreek seeds

 

good point.

 

Ironically, maple syrup has no delicate aromatics. Anything delicate is lost when sap is concentrated 50x or so to make the syrup.

 

If you'll read more, or search online about brewing with maple syrup, you'll find that you won't really get much, if any residual maple flavor if you add it to the beer during the boil. Adding it once fermentation start could keep some of the aromatic there, but syrup is all sugar, and most of all sugar chains are eaten up during fermentation.

If you keg, I've had luck adding it to the keg at keg temps, which would in essence keep the syrup from starting fermentation.

Use some high quality extract if you really want to smell and taste some maple syrup, honestly.

Or you can try the 1 gallon of maple syrup, but be advised it will dry out your beer, so you need to build a recipe around it, and include it in your calculation. Not only that, but the cost is going to be significantly higher than adding plain sugar, which is close to what you are doing. Search about adding honey.. it's a hard thing to hit too, but you have the option to use honey malt.. no maple malt that I know of.

 

A gallon in a five gallon batch? That's a damn expensive beer for what's likely to be a subtle effect. Last year it was going for $60-ish. It's expected to be higher this year due to a number of factors, not the least of which is the Canadian government's penchant for meddling with the free market (you probably thought the US gov't had a monopoly on that )

 

Most homebrewers wouldn't even consider this, but actually hitting the beer with sorbate and campden, then adding the syrup, kegging and force carbing would work extremely well. When I was heavily into mead making I would do this all the time for meads that I wanted to backsweeten with honey or if I wanted to add fruit without it fermenting out. Worked like a charm.

 

I've got around 3 gallons of cider from last years apple harvest I have sitting around. It's already fermented out and done, but my wife wants to make it sweeter since it got damn dry. 1.001. I'm gonna hit it with the k-met and all that shit, sweetness it with honey or some more apple juice, keg it and then bottle it. Hoping it works out, as I'm not interested in bottling and pasteurizing it for keeping, and I certainly dont want it taking up a keg.

 

Frozen apple juice concentrate is a good option for back sweetening cider (after stabilizing it) as it adds both sugar and intensifies the apple flavor. I would recommend that you use sorbate in addition to the sulfite if you want to ensure that it doesn't re-ferment.

 

Preciate the advice HB42. I've made cider and had it on tap last year, but I normally just filled gallon growlers of it and took with me to places. Most was drank within a few days, and kept cold. Haven't backsweetened before, and then needed to have the cider GTFO of my kegs and way. It moves slower these days since all these hussies around here are getting preggo and old.