Maple beer

Has anyone made a beer using maple sap instead of water? It's getting close to that time. Sap is beginning to run. I would like to do this, but I am just not sure what type of beer would compliment the slight maple flavor of the sap. Recipes and suggestions would be great.

There's a dozen threads of people making maple beers on here. I thought about it, but the cost of syrup in the islands was enough to persuade me to wait until I move.

SN and DFH did a maple and (birch?) sap brew...its called Life and Limb and I see it in store all the time but have never tried it. Harpoon's 100 barrel series did a Vermont Spruce tip ale that also uses sap.

I have no idea how to do it but the Harpoon one is easily one of my favorite beers now.

Yeah, plenty of people are using maple syrup, but I intend to use the sap instead of water to brew. I did a search but didn't come up with any recipes. The flavor of the sap, "sweet water" is very delicate. I want to find a recipe to compliment that, and not overpower the taste.

I have added some at secondary but never instead of water. I saw an episode on basic brewing that did it. U may want to search their archives for the episode and recipe.

Remember if you replace the boil water with the sap, you will be boiling down and concentrating the sap, which is the process of making syrup. You won't get all the way to syrup of course, but you will get a little stronger flavor than just sap alone.

Oh, and try Life and Limb. Fantastic.

I have two cornies hooked up to taps now, when they are full I plan to brew a batch with it.

Id love to get my hands on some of that sap!! Ive made a porter,pale ale,brown ale,and a wheat beer using pure maple syrup,im not sure about sap but with syrup my favorites were the pale 1st then the wheat!Dont know if that helps but its my 2 cents!!

I have made one of my best ever oatmeal stouts using silver maple sap! I utilized the sap, just as I would water. I don't know what it was, but that beer came out damn good! That taps are a running again up here in montana, and another is in the works. I have the recipe somewhere in hopeville under the user name Camelcarlson

you should try it and let us know how it goes. definitely curious

Taps are flowing here too. 500 gallons collected in the last week or so alone, and it's not really season yet. I think I will try a simple pale ale recipe. I think the cleanness of the water and slight woody flavor should shine through. Sap is at about 1.015 right now.

So I ended up with an Imperial Malple Pale Ale. It came in at 8.1%. There is a nice hint of maple when you taste it and kind of a woody aftertaste. It is a very good beer, and extremely smooth.
I ended up using 15 gallons boiled down to about 8.5 and used that to mash and sparge. it kicked up the ABV and the flavor a bit. I will certainly be doing this again next year.

I wish we had maple trees here where I live. Maybe I can make a cactus water beer!

bluemoose,
i had the same results, my standard pale ale recipe that clocks in around 4.5% abv came in right around 8%abv. i did not taste the maple in mine but it sure gave it some more body. i too will be repeating this next year!

awesome. when i buy a house i hope it has maple trees in the yard

DO you have a recipe that was used? Grain bill, Hop schedule, etc?

We collected 1500 gallons of sap this spring. Ended up with about 30 gallons of syrup.

We did try to brew coffee with sap but OMG was it sweet.

I will get it for you later today or tomorrow. I suppose if I got it to you by February it would be soon enough!

5 pounds pale malt
3 pounds vienna malt
2 pounds Munich malt
1/2 pound crystal 20L
1/2 pound crystal 60L

1 ounce Cascade 60 minutes
.75 ounce cascade 30 minutes
1 ounce Cascade 10 minutes
1/2 ounce cascade 5 minutes
1/2 ounce cascade flameout

1 ounce cascade (dryhop)
Yeast S-05

This is basically Da Yooper House pale ale. I have made it a few times and it was really good. All I did was add sap. As far as the sap, I did boil it down from 15 gallons to get my strike and sparge water. I might try to boil a bit more down next year, 20 gallons perhaps.

If you need anything else, let me know.

Wow. Nice recipe. Thanks for this. I'm up in New Hampshire so this stuff grows on trees (literally). Lots of sap in the spring. Have you had Lawson's Finest Maple Tripple? If you're near waitsfield you can buy it at the farmer's market on the 7th of July I have a bottle if you want to crack it open. 100% maple sap.

Too bad I won't be out that way at the end of next week. Any time I am west of Montpelier I grab some Heady Topper. Alas, I will be in Canaan on Friday at a B&B with the wife. I'm only about 30 mintutes north of WRJ. We could certainly get a beer sometime.

bluemoose said:

Too bad I won't be out that way at the end of next week. Any time I am west of Montpelier I grab some Heady Topper. Alas, I will be in Canaan on Friday at a B&B with the wife. I'm only about 30 mintutes north of WRJ. We could certainly get a beer sometime.

Click to expand...

Canaan NH near White River? That's where I live. You're welcome over any time. Lots of brews to open up and enjoy including a few maples. Send me a PM sometime if you want.