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Author Topic: birch syrup carbonation?  (Read 1662 times)

Offline give813

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birch syrup carbonation?
« on: May 28, 2014, 05:50:07 pm »
i recently brewed a batch of birch brown ale, using 5 gallons of birch sap for the mash water and adding 2 cups of birch syrup at flameout. now i'm considering priming with birch syrup as well, but can't find any references as to how much to use. the syrup i have is the very last amount to come out when they clean the evaporator, so it is a bit watered down. but i do know that it is 23 brix. using a priming calculator for maple syrup(~66brix) and a desired CO2 saturation of 4.2, it says 4.88ounces. so i did the math and figured out to get the same desired CO2 saturation with a syrup of 23brix, it works out to ~14oz.
as far as i can tell, this is correct, but was wondering if anyone has any experiance with something like this, or has any other input? the other thing that i'm not sure if i should worry about is the fact that maple syrup is mostly sucrose, while birch syrup is fructose and glucose...does that matter? Thanks!

Offline Jimmy K

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #1 on: May 28, 2014, 08:17:48 pm »
I have done the same with maple syrup and it worked well. I think your calculations will be good.

Sucrose is made up of a glucose and fructose molecule and is actually a little harder to ferment, so the birch syrup will ferment fine.

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Offline duboman

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #2 on: May 29, 2014, 04:52:14 pm »
My experience with birch sap is for whatever reason it's taking forever!

My neighbor collected 10 gallons of the sap and opted to use it in lieu of water for an extract amber with steeping grains. OG was 1.070 and FG was 1.010, primed with regular corn sugar as I normally do and the bottles have been kept at 72 for the last 8 weeks and it's still not properly carbed. Not sure what the deal is but I've never had a 1.070 beer take this long to properly carbonate and the only thing I can think of is the sap.

I know it will carbonate so I'm not worried about it, just a little dumbfounded since I brewed a 1.090 quad the same weekend and while it's not fully conditioned it is fully carbonated and quite tasty:)
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Offline Jimmy K

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #3 on: May 29, 2014, 05:02:01 pm »
That is odd. I can't imagine why that would be because of the sap but who knows!?

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Offline duboman

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #4 on: May 29, 2014, 05:27:20 pm »

That is odd. I can't imagine why that would be because of the sap but who knows!?

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it is odd and I'm not sure why either since it fermented out perfectly fine and every day corn sugar was used to prime with the proper amount. One of those odd brewing quirks....
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Offline duboman

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #5 on: May 31, 2014, 04:33:09 pm »


So it finally carbonated and it was a basic amber style beer, actually tastes really nice.
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Offline give813

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #6 on: June 03, 2014, 11:02:32 am »


So it finally carbonated and it was a basic amber style beer, actually tastes really nice.

Looks pretty good. did you carbonate that with birch syrup? if so, how much did you use?

Offline duboman

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #7 on: June 03, 2014, 11:33:30 am »



So it finally carbonated and it was a basic amber style beer, actually tastes really nice.

Looks pretty good. did you carbonate that with birch syrup? if so, how much did you use?
no, the beer was brewed with sap in lieu of water, carbonated with regular corn sugar but it did take forever to properly carbonate, almost 8 weeks and still can't figure out why.  IIRC the 6 gallons of sap added 5 gravity points to the batch so maybe that will help you figure out how much sap can be used to prime
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Offline give813

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #8 on: June 03, 2014, 12:10:57 pm »
i brewed similarly, using sap instead of water for the mash, but i'll be carbonating with syrup, not sap. i think i figured out the math for it. we'll see how it goes. i'll post the results when its finished.

Offline duboman

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Re: birch syrup carbonation?
« Reply #9 on: June 03, 2014, 04:40:43 pm »

i brewed similarly, using sap instead of water for the mash, but i'll be carbonating with syrup, not sap. i think i figured out the math for it. we'll see how it goes. i'll post the results when its finished.
interested in hearing your results, the amber we brewed turned out really great!
Peace....Love......Beer......

The Commune Brewing Company-Perfecting the craft of beer since 2010