Ever brew with sugar maple sap?

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Yeah - as bluemoose says... I was able to get almost 10 gallons of the stuff from a local maple shack for $7. Not quite the $.50 a gallon he mentions, but I figured it was a fair enough price.

So long as this comes out, I've really got to look into whether or not the maples in my yard are sugar maples for next year...
 
I'm totally with you guys on the "torn" problem. Ive been producing a half pint a day of finished syrup from my eight taps, but it's coming out so darn good that I'm really re-thinking using it for beer production. One thought I had was to use it at priming time for a nice porter or brown ale, or even pasteurize, keg, and back sweeten a dry stout I already brewed for st. Patties day. Any thoughts?
 
Well today I boiled it down and made syrop. Already have another 2 gallons hanging on the tree waiting for me. Going to brew some sort of porter next weekend with the sap but will probably just boil it down and prime the bottles with it. Think that's the right way to go here.
 
Yeah - as bluemoose says... I was able to get almost 10 gallons of the stuff from a local maple shack for $7. Not quite the $.50 a gallon he mentions, but I figured it was a fair enough price.

So long as this comes out, I've really got to look into whether or not the maples in my yard are sugar maples for next year...

You can make maple syrup from any maple tree( silver, red, maple, and black), no orientals though. The only difference from Sugar to lets say the Red Maples is the percent of sugar in the tree sap. Sugar and Black Maples have around 2% sugar ( can be higher ) the silver and red have half as much or even less than half. I tap all maples. But if you want to get syrup with less boiling Sugar and Black Maples are the way to go. New to brewing beer. But very experienced at making maple syrup. Going to miss the run this year. My wife just had our baby and it takes a lot of work to make syrup from start to finish. Ill get the evaporator fired up next season for sure though.
 
I did a Maple Ale last year. A friend gave me 15-gallons of sap.
I boiled in my electric boil kettle, until it was about half the original volume.
I used this "sap" @1.015 in place of water for the whole process, mash and sparging.
I used a simple grain bill of;
7# of 2-row
2# of Caramel/Crystal

I used 16-oz of 100% maple syrup in the boil.
Hops, 1-oz Chinook @60
.34-oz Cluster @45
.13-oz Hallertauer @5
BeerSmith had the gravity to the fermenter at 1.055 using water. I got 1.070.
I did 7-days in the fermenter, using #WLP001, Cali Ale.
I followed with a week in the secondary.
I bottled at 1.008. (8%ABV)
The brew was quite tasty, with a definite "woody" fragrance, and slight hint of maple. Definitely not too sweet, which I thought was a good thing.
I'm hoping to score some sap this year, so that I can try another batch.:mug:
I don't think I would change anything, except to double the batch if I can get enough sap.
 
My maple wheat is now on tap, and while it turned out quite a good beer, I'm really not picking up any woody or maple-y notes to it. Could be that I used sap too early in the season, maybe next year I'll retry with later season sap.
 
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