Brown Sugar Maple Syrup Molasses Brown Ale

I found this recipe in Sam Caligione's book "Extreme Brewing." He recommended it as a first brew. This is my third, but I figured an easy one that required me gathering all my own ingredients (instead of a kit) would be good experience.

Here's the recipe:
Grains/Fermentables
0.45lb Caramel 80L (steeped 35 mins)
6.6lb LME (light)
1lb Belgian Candi Syrup (amber)
8oz brown sugar
8oz molasses
Hops
1oz Northern Brewer hop pellets (60min)
0.5oz Cluster hop pellets (30min)
1oz Whole leaf Goldings hops (10min)
Yeast
1 packet Safale US-05 American Ale Yeast
Additions
12oz maple syrup added 3 days into the primary

So far it tastes great, although most of the maple syrup was fermented out (read up on this afterwards and it seems to be normal oh well still tastes fantastic)

It's been in the fermenter for 3 weeks now and I'm going to be bottling tonight. I have 5oz of priming sugar I was going to use, but now I'm thinking about adding something else instead like brown sugar. What do you think?

maple syrup!

You can also use maple syrup for the bottling sugar. It's in Northern Brewer's online priming sugar calculator. Use grade B 100% maple syrup (I got mine at Trader Joe's; Kroger didn't have any). Sounds weird, but grade B has more maple flavor than grade A.

I haven't actually done it yet, but in a couple weeks I'm going to bottle the BYO Founders Breakfast stout recipe and try to turn it into the Canadian breakfast stout by adding maple syrup as the priming sugar. I'm also splitting up the batch and trying maple flavoring at bottling too.

I like the idea of maple syrup, but I'm worried it's all going to ferment out again and I'll just waste my $10 on a bottle. Do you think it would actually be worth it?

jamsomito said:

I like the idea of maple syrup, but I'm worried it's all going to ferment out again and I'll just waste my $10 on a bottle. Do you think it would actually be worth it?

Click to expand...

It's perfectly normal for maple syrup to ferment out - it's nearly 100% sucrose(and water).

I've had good luck with using 38oz (fluid) in 10 gallons of beer. It left a moderate aroma in the finished beer.

MC

Ok, went to Trader Joes and picked up a bottle of Grade B maple syrup. Per the Northern Brewer priming sugar calculator, I need between 5-7 oz. Going with 6. Wish me luck!

Bottled the Maple Syrup Brown Sugar Molasses Ale tonight. Soooo good. I can't wait till it's cold and carbed up.

Cracked the fermenter


FG: 1.011


Racking onto priming sugar in bottling bucket (grade B maple syrup... aww yeah)


Took a sample. Great color. Oh so delicious.


CASUALTY! I had to dump this one because I was afraid there would be glass shards in it. It was a 750ml bottle too


Done!


And now it's a test of my patience.

Looks good. I like the red caps. Sucks you lost one. Did it happen when capping? Shockingly, that's never happened to me, but I did have the neck of a bottle break when opening it.

What is that that you have your hydrometer in?

Yeah, the top actually stuck in my capper when it broke. It was the weirdest thing.

The hydrometer is in a "thief". It lets you take gravity readings without losing any beer, and its particularly nice when you have your beer in a narrow neck carboy. Just stick it in, touch the side, it fills up, touch the side above the liquid and it empties out.

jamsomito said:

Yeah, the top actually stuck in my capper when it broke. It was the weirdest thing.

The hydrometer is in a "thief". It lets you take gravity readings without losing any beer, and its particularly nice when you have your beer in a narrow neck carboy. Just stick it in, touch the side, it fills up, touch the side above the liquid and it empties out.

Click to expand...

I love my thief, but I don't know that I would empty that beer back into the bucket. It seems to me that the inside of the thief - plus the hydrometer - needs to be REALLY well sanitized if you were going to return the beer.

Better to drink the sample than to risk infection, if you ask me.

Incidentally, I've used maple syrup for priming sugar. Every little bit of flavor helps... but don't expect to get much from it.

2.5 weeks, cracked one of these Lumberjack Ales. It's taking while to carb up, but nonetheless it managed to mesmerize me in the glass...

(rotate your phone, I know )

Tastes good. It's growing on me, but it seems to be missing something. Not sure what. Maybe its because it came out a bit thin after all the maple syrup. I might try a bigger base next time, and maybe a bit more flavoring hops.

@thief - it's not too hard to sanitize. I clean it out after every use, then before the next use, I just make sure to hose it down with starsan (I have some in a spray bottle - best thing I've ever done for sanitizing).

Yeah, I would expect that recipe to be pretty thin with all the sugar/syrup. In most cases you'll get better flavor for a brown ale from malt: victory/biscuit, chocolate, Munich, etc.