Maple Wine

[erockrph]

I've been starting to get an itch to brew a Maple Wine lately. Anyone here have any experience with one? I'm thinking of handling it exactly like a sack mead: Mix in enough water to target OG of 1.150; mix the hell out of it to aerate, pitch 71B rehydrated with GoFerm, staggered nutrient additions & degassing, etc. Does this sound reasonable?

I'll hit up a couple of my local sugar shacks until I find the best Grade B syrup I can get my hands on and hope I can score a bulk discount.

[mtnrockhopper]

Never done it, but sounds reasonable. I'd expect it not to have many nutrients so treating it like honey should work. I'd check the pH too and consider adjusting acidity.

[morticaixavier]

Let me know how it turns out. I have wanted to do one for a really long time but the cost ohhh the cost. I am putting 2.5 lb of maple in the barley wine I brewed this weekend and even that's gonna cost 30 bucks. you are going to need like 5 lb per gallon or more to got to 1.150 if my math is not completely off basically you are talking about 1:1 dilution with water. Syrup comes in around 1.3~1.4 so a half gallon will weigh a little over 5 lb (at 39*f).

When I was a kid in VT I could walk up the road and get a half gallon of syrup for 8 bucks if I brought my own container. I suspect even with a bulk discount a 5 gallon batch is going to be in the area of 150-300 bucks.

I will do this someday I really will. In the meantime I will follow your adventures.

[mtnrockhopper]

A friend who makes TONS of mead told me that years ago he made a maple mead with 1/2 maple and 1/2 honey. Sadly I never had any, but he said it came out tasting much like bourbon.

[erockrph]

Yeah, only going to do a 1-gallonish pilot batch specifically because of the cost.

Speaking of bourbon flavor - I was thinking of aging this on wood. I'd love to use maple, but I don't think I've ever seen maple cubes/chips/spirals anywhere. Although, if my only option is oak, I may wait for a future batch to try that.

[mtnrockhopper]

You can buy some maple at the local big home improvement store. It won't be toasted, but I'm not sure if toasted maple is good. Actually, I have no idea what, if any, flavor maple wood will provide. Looks like only have couple (The Bruery and Lawson's Finest) breweries have made maple barrel aged beer.

[mtnrockhopper]

Woodford reserve did a maple aged burbon with toasted, but not charred maple barrels.
 
http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-maple-barrels-look-different.html

[erockrph]

Interesting info about the toasted maple. I think I can find chips for a wood smoker and try my hand at toasting them. Thanks for the tip.

[andrew000141]

ive heard that using sap has more maple flavor than the actual syrup but i presume the gravity of that is low, maybe just add maple syrup to maple sap? let us know how this turns out cause i have a few good friends who make maple syrup. They already challenged me to make them a maple wine or beer after they tried my rum raisin braggot

[morticaixavier]

ive heard that using sap has more maple flavor than the actual syrup but i presume the gravity of that is low, maybe just add maple syrup to maple sap? let us know how this turns out cause i have a few good friends who make maple syrup. They already challenged me to make them a maple wine or beer after they tried my rum raisin braggot

maple sap has very little flavour and is only about 2-3% sugar. It's nice and if you can get acccess to enough it is amazing just carbed up all by itself. very slightly sweet. Lawsons Finest in VT makes a beer using sap as the brewing liquour but for a wine I think you would have to use syrup just to get the gravity you want. If you make your own I suppose you could stop the boil when you hit your target OG but I don't know that you would get the robust flavours you get with the long 20:1 reduction boil,

[mtnrockhopper]

ive heard that using sap has more maple flavor than the actual syrup but i presume the gravity of that is low, maybe just add maple syrup to maple sap? let us know how this turns out cause i have a few good friends who make maple syrup. They already challenged me to make them a maple wine or beer after they tried my rum raisin braggot

Actually, most of the maple syrup flavors are due to caramelization of the sugars during the boil.

[erockrph]

Just to keep this thread updated, I got this batch started on Friday. I have 1 & 5/8 gallons of 1.151 OG must churning away. I couldn't source any local Grade B syrup in the quantities I was looking for, so I grabbed 3 of these on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005C3IVN8/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i05

It had some good reviews and tastes really nice. I'll keep everyone posted on how this turns out. If it works out well I'll be hunting the farmers markets in the spring for local syrup.

[brewmichigan]

I have a buddy who's in-laws run a maple syrup business. He said he gets maple syrup from them every year and decided to do this a few years ago. The first batch was good but a little hot. He has since perfected the recipe and methods and the latest one I tried was really good.

His friend, who is a brewer, decided to do a big batch of it. He has almost one barrel of it fermenting right now and it tastes spectacular. I'll email him and ask about his process.

[Jeff M]

Got a Progress Report on this? I live in MA and my brewing buddy loves maple flavors, And his dad works in Vermont, so we could source syrup on the cheap.

Cheers,
Jeff

[bonjour]

I have a buddy who's in-laws run a maple syrup business. He said he gets maple syrup from them every year and decided to do this a few years ago. The first batch was good but a little hot. He has since perfected the recipe and methods and the latest one I tried was really good.

His friend, who is a brewer, decided to do a big batch of it. He has almost one barrel of it fermenting right now and it tastes spectacular. I'll email him and ask about his process.

if it's who i think it is th Maple Wine is awesome.

Treat the syrup as honey, diluting to your target OG and follow the modern day (Ken Schramm of Schramm's Meads, he wrote the book) Mead process.