Maple "mead" or "wine" or "alcohol"

Hello there,
I just wanted to share our experience on the maple "mead" we did last year. I did quite a lot of research before starting it, but I haven't find lot of information about it. Here is my experience with this great alcool so you can do the same!

Here's the recipe:
- 8 L of grade C maple syrup (amber)
- 15 L water
- juice from 2 oranges
- Lalvin K1-V1116
Initial density 1.118
Final gravity (before aditionnal maple) 0.9900
projected ABV 16.6%

The instructions are quite simple, you start it off like a normal mead (minus the pasteurisation). We transfered it after 3 weeks in a plastic carboy. We let it ferment for about 2 more months in the secondary and then bottled it.
Before bottling it, we added 0.7 L to 1.5 L (to taste) of maple syrup to the entire batch for the taste, because it was very (very) dry.

The final product is just heavenly. One of my best drink ever (seriously).

I hope you get a chance to try something like this,
cheers!

1) Mead with maple is called Acerglyn. It is only mead if the largest portion of your fermenting sugar is honey. Your recipe looks like maple wine, because there is no honey. I've made an Acerglyn Cyser many times and highly suggest it to you. Maple, Apple, and honey. Smooth, warm, and tasty.!
2) your freeze distillation is not safe. That concentrates methanol, which is poisonous. Don't know if it is still a rule, but it used to be that we were not to discuss this kind of distillation in the forum because it is illegal without a license in most places, and it is also not safe. But, for the sake of academic discussion... Freeze distillation concentrates all alcohols, ethanol (good) and methanol (bad). You cannot separate them out this way. However, if you were to go with a traditional evaporation still, methanol has a lower boiling point, so you just throw out the first bit of condensate, called the heads, because it is mostly methanol and getting rid of it makes the booze safe for consumption.

nitack said:

2) your freeze distillation is not safe. That concentrates methanol, which is poisonous.

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It concentrates all of the alcohols present, that's why the abv goes up. It's no more dangerous than consuming the same amount of alcohol by simply drinking more of the non-concentrated stuff.

BeeDeeEff said:

It concentrates all of the alcohols present, that's why the abv goes up. It's no more dangerous than consuming the same amount of alchohol by simply drinking more of the concentrated stuff.

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Yes, but it makes it much easier to get to a dangerous dose.

Thanks for the comments. I don't think it's more dangerous, except if it already contains methanol. And since I don't drink as much concentrated as the normal, I don't think it's more dangerous...
Anyway I deleted this part in my original post, I didn't want to start a debate on this subject

We are planning on a new batch this year, we got ourself 16L of maple syrup to make 2-3 different batch. We will try out Acerglyn for sure! Do you usually make it half honey half maple or?

Next batch will be a small one, maple cider, about 3L of apple juice + 1L of maple syrup.

nitack said:

I've made an Acerglyn Cyser many times and highly suggest it to you. Maple, Apple, and honey. Smooth, warm, and tasty.!

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Care to share the recipe/link?

The recipe is pretty simple.
- 3 pounds honey of choice, I like wildflower
- 32 ounces of maple syrup, grade B or C has more intense flavor so I'd suggest that
- top up to 3 gallons with apple juice instead of water, if fresh pressed cider is in season use that instead.
- that will get you a 8-9% ABV, backsweeten to taste with equal parts maple and honey.
- if you are ok with a higher ABV and longer aging time throw in a can of frozen apple juice concentrate. You'll get more apple flavor and it will be more full bodied. It will be good after a few months of aging, but it will be amazing after a year. Warm, smooth, complex... So going to open a bottle now.

Methanol is a byproduct of fermentation containing pectins (fruit mostly), not usually enough or any in a pure sugar solution to cause concern even with concentration.

porterpounder said:

Methanol is a byproduct of fermentation containing pectins (fruit mostly), not usually enough or any in a pure sugar solution to cause concern even with concentration.

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Yeah, that's not correct, but you go for it!

A common treatment for methanol poisoning is... ethanol!

Just take a shot of whisky/vodka after drinking it, if your worried. I personally wouldn't be.

edit: This recipe looks awesome. I think I'm going to try adding maple syrup to my next cyser.

nitack said:

Yes, but it makes it much easier to get to a dangerous dose.

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According to that logic, no one should ever drink an alcoholic beverage that is more than 5%. You know, drinking wine at 10% makes you twice more likely to ingest a lethal dose of ETHANOL. And we’re not even talking about spirits!

If it’s safe to drink 5 glasses of mead, it’s equally safe to drink 2.5 glasses of the same concentrated mead (assuming the alcohol content is twice the one of the regular mead and freeze distillation was used).

When someone does regular distillation, the first output of the distillation is pure methanol because its boiling temperature is lower than ethanol. Now that’s very dangerous to drink!

By the way, I’m not a scientist or anything so my opinion is worthless.

nitack said:

Yeah, that's not correct, but you go for it!

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To my knowledge, pectin will indeed increase the amount of methanol produced by fermentation. Fermentation of a must that contains no pectin will produce methanol, but in very low concentration. In such a case, ethanol would be a much bigger threat for your heatlh than the methanol, even if freeze concentration is used.

If you have sources that say otherwise, please post them here for the sake of our collective safety.

That comment does not apply to regular distillation, because in that process methanol is separated from the rest of the liquid before ethanol and is super concentrated early in the distillation.

Once again, I'm not a scientist so my opinion is worthless.

Interesting, by that logic no one should ever get methanol poisoning... But they do. Methanol is naturally produced in any alcohol fermentation, and as little as 10ml is a toxic dose. Ethanol is a natural cure, but only at a much larger volume than naturally occurring in this kind of situation. Feel free to actually read about freeze distillation, methanol, etc. or don't.

You see, this is one of those classic Darwin Award situations. The award you get from generously ending your ability to reproduce by killing yourself and making the human race better for it. If you're so sure, bottoms up!

nitack said:

You see, this is one of those classic Darwin Award situations. The award you get from generously ending your ability to reproduce by killing yourself and making the human race better for it. If you're so sure, bottoms up!

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Haha! I love Darwin.

nitack said:

The recipe is pretty simple.
- 3 pounds honey of choice, I like wildflower
- 32 ounces of maple syrup, grade B or C has more intense flavor so I'd suggest that
- top up to 3 gallons with apple juice instead of water, if fresh pressed cider is in season use that instead.
- that will get you a 8-9% ABV, backsweeten to taste with equal parts maple and honey.
- if you are ok with a higher ABV and longer aging time throw in a can of frozen apple juice concentrate. You'll get more apple flavor and it will be more full bodied. It will be good after a few months of aging, but it will be amazing after a year. Warm, smooth, complex... So going to open a bottle now.

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It sounds delicious, we'll start a batch tomorrow!
Ever tried a higher ABV version with more honey/maple? I usually do 12% mead, ever tried this recipe at this volume?

nitack said:

Interesting, by that logic no one should ever get methanol poisoning... But they do. Methanol is naturally produced in any alcohol fermentation, and as little as 10ml is a toxic dose. Ethanol is a natural cure, but only at a much larger volume than naturally occurring in this kind of situation. Feel free to actually read about freeze distillation, methanol, etc. or don't.

You see, this is one of those classic Darwin Award situations. The award you get from generously ending your ability to reproduce by killing yourself and making the human race better for it. If you're so sure, bottoms up!

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I'm sorry if this subject upset you for some reason.

I actually tried to find quality information on the subject and there is not much to find on the internet.

Of course all fermentation produce methanol, and of course methanol poisoning occurs in the world. Nobody denies that. My point was that the specific process of freeze concentration of mead (without fruit) made in normal conditions probably cannot produce dangerous level of methanol. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm not a chemist or anything, but it sure makes sense to me.

Based on my readings, I understand the following:

1) Distillation and concentration aside, a larger quantity of methanol will be produced during the fermentation of pectin, something that is found mostly in fruits (think about wine, cider or JAOM, for instance). Methanol will also be produced if the fermentation temperature is too high or the alcohol content is too high during fermentation. So, a must that contains no pectin (such as honey and maple syrup, to my knowledge) and that is fermented in a normal temperature and stays below 12% would produce only traces of methanol, probably much less than what you would find in commercial red wine (the skin of the grape contains pectin).

2) The process of regular distillation evaporates the methanol before the ethanol and water, because of its lower boiling point. So, methanol is extracted at the very beginning of the distillation and is very concentrated (almost pure). The first extract of distillation would be very dangerous to drink, even if the original beverage had a low concentration of methanol. That's why distillation is considered dangerous.

3) However, when concentrating an alcoholic beverage by freeze concentration, the ratio of alcohols to water rises, but the ratio of ethanol to methanol stays more or less the same. This means that it is the same thing healthwise to drink 1 liter of a 10% ABV mead or 500 ml of this concentrated mead at 20% ABV. Both ethanol and methanol quantity would be the same in the two drinks.

Perhaps I'm missing something important that you know and that makes all this inaccurate. If that's the case, I wish that you kindly point out my mistake instead of simply wishing that I be removed from the gene pool.

By the way, I'm not encouraging anyone to start freezing alcoholic beverages because of what I wrote. I'm simply interested in the theory of it.

Quebecbrew said:

It sounds delicious, we'll start a batch tomorrow!

Ever tried a higher ABV version with more honey/maple? I usually do 12% mead, ever tried this recipe at this volume?

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Yes my first batch topped out at about 18% it took me over a year to be able to drink it but it is heavenly!

I make maple syrup. Like 40-50 gallons a year. I make everything out of maple but I have never made a wine that didn't chew up all the maple and leave no flavor without stabilizing it with Sorbate and Camden then adding more syrup

nitack said:

The recipe is pretty simple.
- 3 pounds honey of choice, I like wildflower
- 32 ounces of maple syrup, grade B or C has more intense flavor so I'd suggest that
- top up to 3 gallons with apple juice instead of water, if fresh pressed cider is in season use that instead.
- that will get you a 8-9% ABV, backsweeten to taste with equal parts maple and honey.
- if you are ok with a higher ABV and longer aging time throw in a can of frozen apple juice concentrate. You'll get more apple flavor and it will be more full bodied. It will be good after a few months of aging, but it will be amazing after a year. Warm, smooth, complex... So going to open a bottle now.

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Thanks, and just a basic ale yeast? Or do you go with a mead yeast or something else..?

For the higher ABV I use EC-1118. If your going for the lower ABV I'd go with 71B

nitack said:

Yes my first batch topped out at about 18% it took me over a year to be able to drink it but it is heavenly!

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We started a 17% batch yesterday, one year to go!

Quebecbrew said:

We started a 17% batch yesterday, one year to go!

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You will not be sorry. That recipe is the one I am most proud of.