THE RECIPE:
7+ Gallons of VT Sugar Maple sap
9# Pale Malt
1# Crystal 10L
1/2# Crystal 40L
1/2# Vienna
3 oz Roasted Barley
1# Maple syrup to end of boil
1 oz Chinook (60)
1/2 oz Cascade (10)
1/2 oz Centennial (10)
1/2 oz Cascade (0)
1/2 oz Centennial (0)
Wyeast 1056 (starter made with maple syrup)
I also plan to add more maple syrup at bottling/kegging time to taste.
Can't wait for this one, but timing will be interesting seeing that I have to wait for a run of sap before I start going! Hoping I can brew on VT Maple Open House Weekend, March 19-20.
3/17 BREWDAY: (night)
The sap started running this week, and since I was collecting sap from 2 sources, Thursday, St. Patty's Day, turned out to be the day that I would get the sap from both. So, Thursday night, I celebrate with brewing this batch. I was given 7 gallons of sap from each source, and flirted with the idea of boiling all 14 gallons down to about 8 or 9... but I took a gravity reading of the sap and it was already 1.012, so I really felt like it was unnecessary.
Single infusion mash, target temp about 154 so that I can leave plenty of unfermentables in there to produce a nice body and sweet taste. Even though I decided against boiling the total volume down, I did boil the sap for about 10 minutes before using. I boiled 9 gallons and split it up into 3 pots: 14 quarts for strike, 7 quarts for mashout, and 14 quarts for sparge. The sap was pretty discolored and cloudy, and made everything smell like cotton candy. Not necessarily a bad thing in my opinion. I was letting the strike water settle down in temp to about 170 before pitching in the cooler, and I had already added a quart of boiling sap to the cooler,... but this is where things took a bad turn. I poured the sap in when it was about 169. After 5 minutes, the cooler has sucked the temps down to 163. Ouch. Not good. I know that adding the grains will take another 10-15 degrees, so I took the whole batch and poured it back into the kettle to raise the temp up again. This time, I poured in when it was 171, and it still sank to 165. Not happy, but I had already wasted an hour chasing strike temps. I doughed in all the base malts first, then the specialty malts, mixed it all up, then added some of the roasted barley on top. I mixed it up more, added a 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda, and let it sit for a few minutes. Temps seemed to be around 153 which made me happy, since my target was 154. I checked it again about a half hour later and the temps had sunk to 150 and below. Not good. AND I had to leave to go pick up a part for our car, pick up Jen, Barrett, and get my propane tank filled since it ran out while I was boiling the remainder sap. I knew this wasn't ideal, to leave those temps sink below 150, and to leave it for another hour at those temps. Beta Amylase will have its way, making a more fermentable, lighter bodied, drier beer. Damn damn double damn!
So, I got back and the temps were between 143 and 146. I heated up the mashout sap to boiling, threw that in, and the temps only rose to about 158. I let it set for about 15 minutes, and then I drained for first runnings. I got 3 gallons, 17.2 Brix, or about 1.070. I had been heating up the sparge water at the same time, so I got the first runnings on the burner, and I poured the sparge water in - 14 quarts @ 180, still only brought the temps up to about 165. Oh well. Second runnings - 3.25 gallons - Brix 10, or about 1.040. Pre-boil was about 6.25 gallons, 1.058. Shooting for a 60 minute boil.
Boil went fine... added 1/2 ounce Chinook at 60 minutes, 1/2 ounce Centennial & 1/2 ounce Cascade at 15, along with a teaspoon of Irish moss, and threw my immersion chiller in to sanitize. Also added about 6 ounces of maltodextrin at the end of the boil too, to help resolve some of the body issues caused by the lower mash temps. I also threw in a few ounces of maple syrup with about 5 minutes to go. Getting ready for knock out.
Collected 5.25 gallons of wort - Brix 14.5, or 1.059. I had to add some water so that I wasn't way way over. I think my initial reading was 15.something/1.066. I really wanted this to land around 5.5%.
4/16 BOTTLED
I guess I missed an update when I transferred to secondary... but today was a good day to get this batch bottled. Gravity was sitting pretty at 1.010, and everything cleared out very well. Even though I never put any maple syrup in the boil or secondary, I can still taste maple. Everywhere I read about using sap said you won't get any maple flavor, but I tell you I do! In any case, I decided to use maple syrup to prime the bottles with rather than corn sugar. I found a few things online (one from Mid West Brewing Supplies) that says to use 1 & 1/4 cups of maple syrup with a pint of water, so that's what I went with. I'm really liking the taste of this already, I would say the hops do come on a little strong... if it were a straight forward amber ale, I think it would be perfect... but I really wanted the maple character to come out on this so the hops do kind of prohibit that from happening. Hopefully using the maple syrup for priming will add more aroma and flavor. The only thing I really worry about is overcarbing it. Ended up with 2 dozen 12 oz bottles, and a baker's dozen of 22's.
Next up... tasting! And a video of the entire process!
And a review from Mr. Don Osborn (starts at 2:53):
