Maple Wine

[morticaixavier]

This sounds delicious to me as is. Granted I have been known to drink a shot of maple syrup  :

I suspect that syrup has even less nutrients for the yeast than even honey or grape must. It is cooked so long and essentially clarified by that process that I would think very little but sugar and mailard left overs are still there.

If you can without messing up the flavour you might try another nutrient addition with your new starter.

[brewmichigan]

@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.

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.

Yes, it is who you think it is. Follow what Fred said here. I contacted him but never heard back.

[erockrph]

@morticaixavier

This sounds delicious to me as is. Granted I have been known to drink a shot of maple syrup  :

I suspect that syrup has even less nutrients for the yeast than even honey or grape must. It is cooked so long and essentially clarified by that process that I would think very little but sugar and mailard left overs are still there.

If you can without messing up the flavour you might try another nutrient addition with your new starter.

I had a similar thought with the nutrient. It’s hard to tell whether there’s any residual DAP flavor going on because the sweetness is high enough to mask most of that. I will definitely put some nutrient in my starter, and I may add one more addition to the wine when I add the starter to it.

[erockrph]

I thought I’d update this thread since I recently bottled the batch. After my attempts to restart fermentation I pretty much put the fermenter in an upstairs closet and forgot about it for many months. I was about to dump it since I needed to reclaim the fermenter, but I gave it a taste first. Although it is still quite sweet, something magical seemed to happen. The alcohol mellowed out and the sweetness (while still there) rounded out quite a bit. It seems to be in the ballpark of a cream sherry, and is a real nice sipper now. FG is now down to 1.050 (it had initially stalled at 1.058).

Here are my tasting notes:

Appearance is ruby/copper with some haze (I never ended up fining it). The nose is vinous, with a big sweet maple note. There are hints of vanilla and dried fruit/raisins. There is also a woody cedar/oak note.

On the palate, it is winy and quite sweet, with a lot of maple syrup character. There is a moderate acidity that helps balance the sweetness. Alcohol is notable. I also pick up some wood, vanilla and a sherry/raisin note. The mouthfeel is full with some juiciness and a bit of tannin. The finish is drying with wood and maple lingering as the juiciness starts to fade.

Overall, I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I think the complexity is just starting to develop now and will hopefully develop even further over time. I was surprised how much wood I picked up, but I’m guessing that using good quality grade B syrup makes a difference here. I’'m glad I went with 71B for my yeast choice, since this really needs some acidity to balance out the sweetness.

I doubt if I’ll brew this again, since it’s a real sipper and the stockpile I have will likely last a decade at the rate I expect to consume it. If I did, I think I’d still try to shoot for 1.020-1.030 range for FG. I think it would be a lot more drinkable down in that range.

[el_capitan]

Interesting.  That’s technically called “acerglyn.”  A friend and I made 5 gallons of syrup last year.  I use my stash as a refined sugar substitute.  My wife uses it in my morning muffins  ;D

BUT, once I get a sugarbush of my own set up, I could see myself doing a small batch.

The thin black layer on the bottom of your fermenter was probably niter, or “sugar sand” as it’s commonly called.  It’s a natural sediment that forms in the syruping process.

Here’s Don O’s writeup of his attempt, with photos.

I’ve made a maple porter with sap as the brewing liquor, and 1 quart of homemade syrup added at 15 minutes.  It wasn’t too bad.  Still, the syrup seemed to really thin the beer out and leave a strange sweet/tart character that’s hard to describe.  Not worth repeating.

I’d really like to get a RO setup, and use that in the syruping process.  I could concentrate the sap quite a bit, and also produce RO water for brewing at the same time.  That would be the way to go.  We’ll see where I’m at in 15 years or so…

Thanks for sharing your info.  I haven’t had too much success with “country wines” yet I’m always intrigued to try another.

[pete_baker (pete b)]

Thanks for this post, very interesting. We are a couple months away from bottling a maple tej- maple syrup, honey, hops, and maple sap instead of water, started in may of 2013. Let you know when we taste it.

[pete_baker (pete b)]

Just bottled and sampled maple tej started 3/24/13
Used 3 gallon maple sap
1gal maple syrup
6 lbs local raw honey
5 vanilla beans
7 black tea bags. (Steeped 7 min)
Lavalin d47 yeast
1oz styrian goldings hops added to must
2weeks in primary then racked to carboys (5gal + 1 gal)
Racked to carboy 11/24/13 after secondary at 65-70 degrees
Aged 1year at 55-60 degrees
Tastes great. Lightly sweet, countered by bitterness and astringency of hops and tea. Really do taste mineral flavor from sap.(i think).
Can’ t wait to taste with Ethiopian food and oysters!

[pete_baker (pete b)]

Btw realize i had said this was started 5/13 but records show it was started 3/13

[pete_baker (pete b)]

We have about ten gallons of sap on hand and in addition to that will have 2-5 gallons maple syrup tomorrow. May the experiments begin!

[RandyMarshCT]

@el_capitan

Interesting.  That’s technically called “acerglyn.”

Here’s Don O’s writeup of his attempt, with photos.

Nice write-up. I’ve been fermenting maple syrup for a little over a year and never heard of the term acerglyn. Thanks for the link!

[58limited]

I made a maple wine in 2013 that turned out great. It was a 4 1/2 gallon batch with a total of 1 1/2 gallons of grade B maple syrup. I started with 1 gallon maple syrup for a 4 gallon batch and this gave me a starting gravity of 1.086. After 10 days it had dropped to 1.040 and I decided the staring gravity was too low for a true wine so I added another 1/2 gallon of maple syrup which brought the gravity up to 1.066 (If I had added all of the maple syrup at first starting gravity would have been about 1.112). I also added more yeast nutrient and some energizer. Final gravity at the two month mark was 0.988. WOW! This fermented to 16.5%! I decided to treat this like a port and I aged it with some pecan rum-soaked oak cubes from Texas Star Distillery. I then back-sweetened it with 4 cups of maple sugar (gravity went up to 1.012) that I rendered from the remaining maple syrup and fortified with 2% brandy like a Port. It is amazing. I made another batch this year but added 1 cup less of the maple sugar.

Here is my recipe:

1 gallon maple syrup
add water to 4 gallons
4 tsp yeast nutrient
2 cups raisins
6 yeast energizer tablets (these were 15 year old tablets i got back in college - brand unknown)

When the gravity dropped to 1.040 I added:
1/2 gallon maple syrup
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
4 yeast energizer tablets.

When fermentation finished (Gravity-0.988) I added 4 ounces of the rum-soaked oak cubes and let them sit for a month. Then I racked, added the maple sugar (4 cups) and 12 ounces of good quality brandy.