Adding Pecans and Maple Syrup to an ale or Porter

[SeeAliceBrewery]

So I am interested in recreating the new porter that Sam Adams has out now..(its only available in the spring mixed 12 pack...and only gives you one). It is called Maple Pecan Porter...

I am very interested in trying to clone this brew...love the maple and pecan flavor that blends and melds so purely.

My question is...at what point would one add the syrup and the pecans in shells? It is my thought the Maple syrup about 15 minutes before flame out....and the roasted pecans in primary....or secondary?

 

[ajandrs]

I’m also trying to figure out the process of getting this flavor profile into a robust porter I’m about to brew. My thought is to put the maple syrup in the secondary, but once it ferments out I’m not sure how much flavor / aroma you’ll be left with. If kegging you could kill the yeast to leave some residual sweetness and flavor, but if bottle conditioning then obviously that won’t work for you.

My plan is to triple roast a pound of crushed pecans to release their oils and aromas, then soak it all in vodka to create a pecan extract. After that sits for a couple weeks I’m going to add into the pecan extract half a pound of grade B maple syrup and let that meld together for another couple of weeks. As it progresses I’ll add more of either nuts or syrup until it’s where I want it. Then I’ll put that into a secondary carboy and rack my porter on top of it. At that point I’ll pull a sample and see how it tastes, if it’s good then I’ll add campden tablets to stop the yeast from going to work on the syrup and let it condition for another week or two. I keg so I don’t have to worry about leaving the yeast for carbonation.

 

[stonecutter2]

I'm also interested in trying to recreate this beer. It's pretty darn good.

However, I'm fairly sure that Sam Adams beers are force carbonated and not bottle conditioned, since I've never seen yeast in the bottom of a Sam Adams bottle. That means killing the yeast and kegging will work, but bottling probably won't allow you to retain that mapley goodness. In fact, you can't add maple syrup to the boil or during fermentation without the sugars being consumed by the yeast. Some element of the maple will still be there...but not sure if you'll lose some of that maple sweetness that the Sam Adams porter has.

The roasted pecans can probably be put into secondary, or you could make an extract like ajandrs suggested and secondary with that - that's a great way to impart flavors, too. Speaking of extract, a maple extract might allow you to get that flavor into the beer at bottling (or secondary) without adding sugar that can cause bottle bombs.

Make sure you use real maple syrup though, if you use some. That corn syrup based fake stuff isn't the same thing (which we use on our pancakes and such but is more sugary than maple-like).

 

[SeeAliceBrewery]

ajandrs is actually a friend of mine....he is helping me to figure this one out. We will post our findings and results...

 

[BroncoBeer]

Hey guys I have brewed a fantastic Pecan Ale. I've done it three ways. All three ways are kind of on target with what you have said. I have roasted the Pecans anywhere between 4-6 times at 350 degrees. I place them in a brown paper bag each time to absorb the oils. I then added them to the grain bag during steeping. I've also done it the above way except added Vodka to them after 3 times of roasting and put the whole mix in the freezer for several hours. The oil would rise to the top of the misture and then I would skim the oil off. I would drain the Vodka and add the pecans once again to the grain bag. Another batch I took the Vodka from the previous mix and added it during the secondary and let it sit for I think a week. I added .5 lbs of carapils for head retention. All the brews came out wonderful. They are my favorite brews. Let me know how things work out. Oh BTW I used 1 lbs of pecans for 5 gallons. I'm going to try 2 lbs next time which will be next week.

 

[dontspamjay]

What overall porter recipe did you guys use? I plan to brew this too.

 

[isuflyguy]

Im currently doing a brown ale extract kit and steeped 7oz of pecans for 30'min with the grains and Im going to put another 7oz in for the last 10-15min of my boil.

 

[lolznrofls]

I am thinking about brewing with maple and walnuts....im thinking about going up to Amish country and trying to purchase granulated maple sugar or a few pounds of pure maple sugar candy..its almost the consistency of brown sugar..question is if I add a pound or so to the boil and maybe more in the secondary will I retain the maple flavor?

 

[isuflyguy]

Yea i have the same thoughts with adding pecans in secondary. Im not a fan of transferring into another bucket for secondary because of the risk of contamination. Can you add flavors like that into the primary bucket, say 10 days after start of primary?

Maple walnut sounds delicious


Primary - Pecan Brown Nut Ale

Bottled - Belgian Wit

 

[lolznrofls]

The only thing I can think to do is get three or four one gallon batches going..and do some experimenting..

I would like to stick with walnuts myself..for my neck of the woods black walnut trees are all over the place..That and wouldn't you know I happen to be a tree trimmer..lmao..the only thing I have to watch is getting poisoned accidentally..black walnut husks are a natural source of arsenic. Or atleast thats what ive been told

 

[millie]

So can anyone post an extract version of this?

 

[isuflyguy]

Well If it works I can! Just started fermenting this week so itll be a few weeks


Primary - Pecan Brown Nut Ale

Bottled - Belgian Wit

 

[Brewbro29]

Adding maple syrup to flameout may get a very small amount of maple flavor.. but not much. Since maple syrup is a fermentable sugar, the yeast will eat it right up.

I would definitely recommend dropping out the yeast towards the end of the secondary with either a cold-crash or using gelatin. This will knock out about 80% of the yeast and allow you to flavor your beer before bottling. You could also carbonate with maple syrup if that's easier.

 

[46binder]

Last year I brewed the Maple Nut Brown beer, higher abv nut brown, added maple syrup at flame out I believe. That was a great beer, mild maple flavor. I just cracked open the Wild Pecan Porter, another recipe from here. 2 lbs pecans, roasted 4X with crushing and using towels to absorb oil. Pecans were added to mash. Great flavor, pecan did come thru, but little to no head. I will be brewing the Maple Nut brown again, but will look into changing up the Pecan recipe.

 

[BroncoBeer]

Last year I brewed the Maple Nut Brown beer, higher abv nut brown, added maple syrup at flame out I believe. That was a great beer, mild maple flavor. I just cracked open the Wild Pecan Porter, another recipe from here. 2 lbs pecans, roasted 4X with crushing and using towels to absorb oil. Pecans were added to mash. Great flavor, pecan did come thru, but little to no head. I will be brewing the Maple Nut brown again, but will look into changing up the Pecan recipe.

For better head retention add 1/2 lbs of Carapils

 

[ajandrs]

Ok well after a year of doing this experiment I finally remembered to come back and post my results. It was an epic fail, to say the least. Between my brothers and I we've brewed probably around 50 beers and this was the only one that got dumped. Below are my lessons learned so that you hopefully won't make the same mistakes, but I'll never attempt this again. We brewed this as a 10 gallon batch with me trying to make this maple pecan porter, and my brother took the other 5 gallons and left it alone ... it was a great porter by itself so at least I got to enjoy it at his house.

1st: 3 roastings wasn't enough. I had an oily sheen on top of the carboy so either more roasting is necessary or as someone mentioned above put the extract in the freezer and skim off the oil.

2nd: After even 3 roastings and "pressing" the pecans with paper towels to soak up the oil the pecans became smashed up pretty good, to the point of starting to create a rough powder (still lots of chunks though). The problem with this is that due to the powder that was there it took a LOT of vodka to soak it all up, about 4 times more than I had planned on using. Lesson - be very gentle with the roasted pecans and try not to break them up.

I quickly realized that getting all that pecan mess into a hop bag and through the neck of a carboy would be impossible, so I just poured it all into the secondary carboy and let it float around for a month ... many are taken aback by this approach, but I've used a hop bag over the end of my siphon to filter out dry hop material when transferring to a keg and it works great so there was no need to bag all the pecans as I could use the same method when transferring to keg.

At the 1 month point I pulled a sample and knew right away this batch would be no good. For one, as I mentioned above there was an oily sheen on top of the beer in my glass, not a lot, but enough to matter. But where it really went wrong was all the vodka I had to use to soak the pecans. The sample was super hot and anyone would have been able to detect the VERY strong presense of the vodka. It was way way way too much to consider keeping it.

I did however have the available carboy space so I decided to let it sit to see if the vodka would mellow out with time. I ended up letting that batch sit for 6 months and it was still the same when I sampled it again. Down the drain it went.

IF I were to do this again - and I won't - but for those of you willing to try it here's what I would do differently. For starters, I personally would only put the pecans in with the mash, but if you do extract I would use the freezer method to skim all the oil out before putting it in the secondary. As for the vodka, it increases the cost of the recipe quite a bit to use that much vodka, but I would drain it prior to adding the pecan mess to the carboy. Do NOT pour all that vodka into the carboy with the pecans. You could potentially save the vodka you drain out and if it takes on enough pecan characteristic you could possibly use it as an extract.

Hope this helps someone looking to do what I tried last year, and hopfully yours turns out better than mine did.

 

[frettfreak]

Ok well after a year of doing this experiment I finally remembered to come back and post my results. It was an epic fail, to say the least. Between my brothers and I we've brewed probably around 50 beers and this was the only one that got dumped. Below are my lessons learned so that you hopefully won't make the same mistakes, but I'll never attempt this again. We brewed this as a 10 gallon batch with me trying to make this maple pecan porter, and my brother took the other 5 gallons and left it alone ... it was a great porter by itself so at least I got to enjoy it at his house.

1st: 3 roastings wasn't enough. I had an oily sheen on top of the carboy so either more roasting is necessary or as someone mentioned above put the extract in the freezer and skim off the oil.

2nd: After even 3 roastings and "pressing" the pecans with paper towels to soak up the oil the pecans became smashed up pretty good, to the point of starting to create a rough powder (still lots of chunks though). The problem with this is that due to the powder that was there it took a LOT of vodka to soak it all up, about 4 times more than I had planned on using. Lesson - be very gentle with the roasted pecans and try not to break them up.

I quickly realized that getting all that pecan mess into a hop bag and through the neck of a carboy would be impossible, so I just poured it all into the secondary carboy and let it float around for a month ... many are taken aback by this approach, but I've used a hop bag over the end of my siphon to filter out dry hop material when transferring to a keg and it works great so there was no need to bag all the pecans as I could use the same method when transferring to keg.

At the 1 month point I pulled a sample and knew right away this batch would be no good. For one, as I mentioned above there was an oily sheen on top of the beer in my glass, not a lot, but enough to matter. But where it really went wrong was all the vodka I had to use to soak the pecans. The sample was super hot and anyone would have been able to detect the VERY strong presense of the vodka. It was way way way too much to consider keeping it.

I did however have the available carboy space so I decided to let it sit to see if the vodka would mellow out with time. I ended up letting that batch sit for 6 months and it was still the same when I sampled it again. Down the drain it went.

IF I were to do this again - and I won't - but for those of you willing to try it here's what I would do differently. For starters, I personally would only put the pecans in with the mash, but if you do extract I would use the freezer method to skim all the oil out before putting it in the secondary. As for the vodka, it increases the cost of the recipe quite a bit to use that much vodka, but I would drain it prior to adding the pecan mess to the carboy. Do NOT pour all that vodka into the carboy with the pecans. You could potentially save the vodka you drain out and if it takes on enough pecan characteristic you could possibly use it as an extract.

Hope this helps someone looking to do what I tried last year, and hopfully yours turns out better than mine did.

Thanks for remembering to come back and post this! Great info.

FWIW.. i have done 2 pecan beers and had zero oily / head issues... however there wasnt enough pecan flavor. I put them in the mash, after roasting 3 or 4 times. but i only used a pound. I am getting ready to make this beer again and going for 2 lbs in the mash this time. Good luck.

Also, have done maple at flame out and in the keg and it came out MUCH better in the keg. When i did it at flame out, the yeast left a little bit of maple, but not much, and it was definitely not like "hey did you put maple in this" was more like " whats that flavor?" it wasnt bad, but it wasnt very maple like either.

 

[jwalkermed]

i did a southern brown pecan ale that I added 2lbs of roasted pecans to the mash. It's fininishing up in the fermenter and I really can't taste any pecans. I'm stumped. I think adding pecans to the fermenter may be the only way to get a real robust pecan flavor.

5gal batch btw

The brown ale is quite tasty so not all is lost

 

[frettfreak]

i did a southern brown pecan ale that I added 2lbs of roasted pecans to the mash. It's fininishing up in the fermenter and I really can't taste any pecans. I'm stumped. I think adding pecans to the fermenter may be the only way to get a real robust pecan flavor.

5gal batch btw

The brown ale is quite tasty so not all is lost

Hmmmm... Dang. That's a bummer! I was hoping 2 lbs would be the ticket! Doesn't seem like many have had success adding them post fermentation either.... 3lbs?😁

 

[jwalkermed]

Hmmmm... Dang. That's a bummer! I was hoping 2 lbs would be the ticket! Doesn't seem like many have had success adding them post fermentation either.... 3lbs?😁

There is this brewpub here who has nailed the pecan brown. I'm going to ask them how they do it.

 

[frettfreak]

There is this brewpub here who has nailed the pecan brown. I'm going to ask them how they do it.

would love to hear what they have to say for sure!

Also, have a question that is within the realm of this one.. if anyone can answer i would appreciate it... I dont want to hijack this thread so i will just post a link to the question (has to do with protein rests and pecans / pumpkin). Thanks

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?p=7101950#post7101950