Maple Wheat (Rock Art Clone-ish)

After SWMBO and I visited VT, and many breweries, we found Rock Art. They brew a fantastic beer called Maple Wheat with a huge maple flavor. Way bigger than Harpoon's offering. I talked to the fellow serving, and he told me they got the big flavor by waiting until bottling to add maple syrup.

I thought about what this would mean for bottle conditioning, and decided it was easier to filter the yeast out, keg, and then bottle - my neighbor conveniently has kegs, a filter setup, and I can DIY a keg-bottle filler.

Some Googling revealed that they used to post the recipe on their website, but sadly, no more. Archive.org to the rescue, I found it! Unfortunately, their recipe is a mini-mash, and contradicts descriptions on their website (archived later) show - namely, Tett vs. Saaz. Honestly they're pretty similar, so go with whatever you want. I used their description of grains and my judgement of the taste to decide the Wheat/2-Row split.

60 Minute Boil
5 # White Wheat Malt
2 # 2-Row
2 # Maple Syrup (VT Grade B)
0.5 # Carapils
2 oz. Saaz/Tett @ 60 min
1 oz. Cascade @ 10 min
1 Whirlfloc @ 15 min
S-05 or equivalent

Anyway, I decided to make a similar beer to this, but how I thought it should be.

60 Minute Boil
5 # White Wheat Malt
2 # 6-Row
2 # Maple Syrup
1 # Aromatic Malt
Handful rice hulls
1 oz. Hallertauer FWH 40 min
0.5 oz. Saaz @ 30 min
1.5 oz. Saaz @ Flameout
1 Whirlfloc @ 15 min
S-05

Mash @ 157 F

OG 1.043

After 1 week, add 2 lbs Maple Syrup (should add ~11 points to gravity). Before bottling, add some more - I'm not sure on how much. I'll re-post when I go to bottle.

FG 1.009, IBU 24, ABV 6%.


I brewed this today, and unfortunately messed up my boil time due to drawing off a bit too much wort, and then my phone's timer app dying. Add that to significant trub loss (need Hop Blocker), I wound up with 2.5 gallons @ 1.053. I diluted it down to target, wound up with 3.1 gallons. Still, it tastes good!

Any thoughts on the original, mine, differences, back-sweetening techniques...?

I realize this thread is 6 years old, but I just wanted to thank you for taking a crack at the Rock Art Maple Wheat recipe. I brought this beer home from a ski trip a few years ago, and I was amazed at how good it was. I am not usually a fan of sweet beers, so I wasn't expecting much besides a novelty. But they managed to find the perfect balance, not too sweet, not to dry, and lots of maple.

Anyway, my wife came home with a couple of 12oz bottles of Vermont maple syrup last night that someone gave her, and commented how we don't really have much use for it (we rarely eat pancakes or waffles). I immediately thought, well why don't I make some beer with it!

It's supposed to be near 50 degrees in NJ this weekend. Sounds like a perfect chance to get my outdoor burner going.

Thanks again!

Hot damn, this is old. I don't post much at all on HBT any more.

I looked through my notes in BeerSmith, and couldn't find anything for this, sadly. I will say that being several years wiser, I doubt that 1# of Aromatic is a great idea. I'd just make the first recipe posted, that I got from their archive website. Either way, please post here your thoughts, since apparently I never got around to doing so.

Glad someone resurrected this thread. I've been trying to pin down a maple beer recipe for a while. How did your Maple Wheat come out?

I've been using this article from BYO as a basis for my recipe https://byo.com/article/maple-beer/. I'm also probably going to use a simple Scottish 80 Shilling recipe as the base to bounce the maple flavor off of. Another book I've read said adding toasted maple bark to the beer can enhance a mapley taste.

So is adding maple sugar at bottling the right way to go about this?

I'm going on hazy memories here, as I have no notes of the final product.

Absolutely zero maple flavor or aroma after primary fermentation is complete. Not a bad beer, just void of any maple characteristics. 100% of that comes from adding it to bottles, or as I would do it now, kegging. I do recall that with bottling, it was a bit tricky to balance adding the right amount to be carbed, and chilling them at the right time to retain enough maple character. With kegs it's obviously easier; chill, add syrup to desired level, force carb.

The beer was quite tasty after it had maple dosing, though. The high mash temp is necessary given the large amount of simple sugar, which would otherwise drop the FG down too low.

I think you could get away with replacing the maple syrup with table sugar (or dextrose if you're concerned about apple flavors developing; I've never noticed, but to each their own), and just using the syrup as a flavor addition.

Thanks for the reply. I'm hoping to lean a lot on this "maple bark" strategy I read about, and if also all else fails, I can possibly add fenugreek into the fermenter or the boil. Apparently its a dead ringer for maple taste and is used in imitation maple syrup all the time.

I'm thinking of possibly carbing with a carbonation drop, and then adding maple syrup as a flavor addition. So I should chill the bottles to keep that flavor?

I'll be giving a version of this recipe a shot this weekend. I'm just going to make a 2.5 gallon batch to conserve on the amount of syrup needed, and also since it's a bit experimental anyway. I'm also going to use all Hallertau hops as I have a fair amount already that need to be used. I don't think I'd gain a whole lot of difference out of Saaz, and Cascade would be a little too citrusy I think. For the grain bill I'm going to use the first one up top.

I don't have a real kegging system, but I do have a mini 1.75 gallon keg that I can probably fit in my fridge. My thought was to use that and then bottle the rest. I can force carb the keg with CO2 cartridges (i'll probably need a couple of them), and then I can compare the difference between bottled with some conditioning and kegged with no conditioning. I assume the Keg will be the better of the two, but it's always interesting to me to compare differences like that.

Based on your comments, I wonder if it's even helpful to use any maple syrup in the boil, as I've read in other threads, or even in the fermenter. It sounds like it ferments out completely. At that point I'd almost rather just up my 2 Row instead of using simple sugars, and add all of the syrup at bottling. Decisions decisions.

RedIvan16 said:

Thanks for the reply. I'm hoping to lean a lot on this "maple bark" strategy I read about, and if also all else fails, I can possibly add fenugreek into the fermenter or the boil. Apparently its a dead ringer for maple taste and is used in imitation maple syrup all the time.

I'm thinking of possibly carbing with a carbonation drop, and then adding maple syrup as a flavor addition. So I should chill the bottles to keep that flavor?

Click to expand...

The maple syrup is probably enough to carbonate all by itself if we let it sit for a few weeks. But we want to leave some maple flavor behind in the beer, so the idea is to chill the bottles early, and compensate for the lack of time by adding some other sugars, like the carb drop or dextrose.

But like the OP said, finding that balance is going to be a guessing game. I'm thinking I'll give the bottles about a week in my basement at 66-68 degrees F, then chill, but that's entirely a guess. Sampling one before chilling might not be a bad idea actually.

The other issue is ending up with a mess if the bottles explode due to too much simple sugar. I'll post back in a few weeks and let you guys know how I made out.

I haven't brewed with maple before, but from what I understand that mapley taste comes from a delicate chemical compound that doesn't survive contact with yeast or a boil. Same with honey I suppose.

A little off topic, but I remember on a vacation to the UK a year or so ago I was talking to a fellow brewer about maple beers. He said he had the best result with "refermenting" the beer with maple syrup. I was a tad buzzed at the time, so I didn't follow up, and now I wish I did. Anyone know what "refermenting" with a sugar like maple or honey would do?

Good info. Thanks. I'm leaning more and more to just adding the maple syrup at bottling and using more 2 row to boost my OG.

I assume by refermenting he means a real secondary fermentation. Allowing the primary to finish, or nearly finish, and then adding the maple syrup, kicking off fermentation again. For homebrew purposes I think that is basically what the OP did when adding the maple after 1 week in the primary. If the yeast is worn out enough, or maybe just because the sugar is much simpler than the wort, it's possible they don't consume all of the maple flavoring or sweetness.

This is definitely something worth considering.

I bottled today and thought I'd share my observations.

First of all, I should say that I made a 2.5 gallon batch, using 2.5# of White Wheat, 1.25# of 2 Row Pale Malt and .25# Carapils. I added just a small amount of Magnum (.07oz) at 60 minutes and then half an ounce of Hallertau at 15 and 5 minutes each. I fermented with S-05.

Side note, this was my first time using such a large amount of wheat, let alone over 50%, and due to my inexperience I had a stuck sparge almost immediately. I did add rice hulls, but no where near enough. I managed to salvage my brew day but it was a real PITA. Lesson learned.

I did not add any maple syrup on brew day. Instead, I added 12.8oz to a secondary vessel and racked on top after 6 days. At bottling I added another 12.8oz. For sanitation, I did boil the first 12.8oz with some water as it was not a sealed container of syrup. During bottling I had a brand new container so I just threw that right in.

Now for the real point of my post, flavoring. I took a sample before the bottling addition of syrup, and to be honest, I think that amount was perfect. It had a very nice maple aroma, and the maple flavor was present but mild. So adding syrup day 5-7 works pretty well in my opinion. If I make this again I think that's probably all I'll add. And at the ratio of 12-14oz of syrup to 2.5 gallons (or 24-28oz for a 5 gallon batch).

This made me sort of regret adding any during bottling, but I did, and I can tell you it was way too sweet. At least for my tastes. So if you want a sweet maple syrup beer, then add at bottling. But if you just want some of that maple flavor, like Rock Art's Maple Wheat, then adding as a secondary should be perfect for you.

I was going to immediately chill and force carbonate 1 gallon (I have a uKeg) to maintain the bottling addition flavor. But after tasting how sweet it was, I have decided to let some of that ferment out for a week or so. As for the regular bottles, I'm going to let them bottle condition for at least 2 weeks.

By the way, in case anyone is wondering about sugar additions for bottling, I did not add any extra to the uKeg (since I can force carb with it), but I did add about .5oz to the remaining 1.5 gallons I bottled. About 1/3 what I would normally use to bottle condition. As the maple syrup should provide plenty of sugars all by itself.

Sorry for the long post. Hope this helps someone.

Interesting post, thanks for sharing your experience.

I wonder if the sweetness would have survived conditioning in the keg or even bottles. Sometimes the remaining yeast eats those sugars. I'd like to hear where the beer is after you bottle condition.

I think for when I finally brew this I may split the batch between the one I described above (toasted maple bark into the kettle, syrup at bottling) and one with no syrup but fenugreek. Apparently it is a dead ringer.

I'm still waiting for my friend who works at maple farm (?) to get me some sap. Should be any day now....

I'll post back with how the bottles turn out after a few weeks of conditioning. As for the secondary addition, the yeast did eat most of that sweetness, but they left enough of the maple flavor behind to work quite nicely I thought. It was not the tree bark taste I had heard to expect after the yeast eats all the sugar.

We'll see what happens after the bottle conditioning.

RedIvan16 said:

I think for when I finally brew this I may split the batch between the one I described above (toasted maple bark into the kettle, syrup at bottling) and one with no syrup but fenugreek. Apparently it is a dead ringer.

Click to expand...

Just confirming from experience, fenugreek has a very similar aroma to maple syrup. I'm a fan of grinding some up along with the coffee beans in the mornings. Never brewed with it though.

Thanks for the reply. I've heard that they use it in imitation maple syrup all the time. Glad to see someone has experience with it!

Okay - Just received a call from my friend at the maple farm. They have sap ready and waiting for me. I'm thinking of using a malty, English style bitter for sweetness, and then having a maple flavor to compliment it.

Here's the potential grain bill:

57% Maris Otter
19% Honey Malt
9% Red Wheat
9% C30
5% Special B (for color mostly)

Hops: Something with low AAs and an earthy, clean bitterness. I'm thinking either Willamette or Styrian Goldings. Probably one 60 minute addition and another at flameout.

Yeast: Wyeast ESB

For maple flavor, I think I'm going to go with adding toasted maple bark into the boil. In secondary fermentation, I'll add oak cubes soaked in maple syrup for an extra kick. I'm hoping the sweetness will come from the honey malt and not the syrup.

I'll let everyone know how it goes. Any tips are appreciated as well.