I'm Brewing a Weird One Today: Maple Sap Beer

[sudbuddy]

Ever since reading about using tree sap as brewing water over a year ago I have been dying to try it. Yesterday a customer brought me 10 gallons of maple sap he harvested in his back yard and I swapped him a new fermenting bucket for it.

My grain bill is:

12 lbs pale
2 lbs cherrywood smoked malt

1 oz Northern Brewer @ 60 mins
1 oz. Brewer's Gold @ 5 mins

2L Starter of Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale

Single infusion mash @ 153 for 1 hour

60-90 minute boil, haven't decided yet. I'm brewing at work so it depends on if I get busy.

I just doughed in and it smells amazing! Can't wait to see how this turns out, it's been a year in the making. Just thought I'd share

 

[JohnK93]

Let us know! My wife and I just tapped our first two trees to collect some sap and she suggested using it in beer. We've got about a gallon in the past hour or so. I'm not sure we'll collect enough to completely replace brewing water, but at this rate we should be able to get a few gallons.

Now I need go wandering through our woods to find some more maple trees!

John

 

[sudbuddy]

Let us know! My wife and I just tapped our first two trees to collect some sap and she suggested using it in beer. We've got about a gallon in the past hour or so. I'm not sure we'll collect enough to completely replace brewing water, but at this rate we should be able to get a few gallons.

Now I need go wandering through our woods to find some more maple trees!

John

You should definitely do this. So far it's turned out awesome!

I just put it in the fermenter, and the brew smelled absolutely AMAZING. The whole store smelled faintly like maple syrup and strongly of smoked malt. Everyone that came in commented on how great it smelled. I was shooting for an OG of 1.070, didn't expect to get that high after checking preboil gravity, but after a 90 minute boil I wound up with 1.080!! :rockin::rockin:

If all goes right this beer is gonna be magical, I can't wait. First time I've felt like pacing the floor in front of a fermenter in a long while, I'll keep you posted.

 

[JohnK93]

Awesome! We collect about 3 gallons of sap today so we're off to a pretty good start. I don't know if we're going to make syrup or beer, but either way it should be tasty.

How did you calculate your OG when brewing with sap instead of water?

 

[philjohnwilliams]

60-90 minute boil, haven't decided yet. I'm brewing at work so it depends on if I get busy.

Where do you work and are they hiring?

 

[FrozenOcean]

Wow, can't wait to hear how this turns out.

 

[electrolight]

I know nothing of sap, but I would never have thought to try cause either thought it was thick. Let us know how it goes!

 

[-CHRIS-]

Depending on what type of maple tree this sap came from, 10 gallons of sap should produce around 32 ounces of syrup. I wonder how much maple flavor will carry through fermentation? I am thinking about trying this as well.

Chris

 

[photobru]

I'm also curious to know, I've got a tree tapped and over 5 gallons of sap so far. It'll be great if the flavor makes it through fermentation since I've been a little uncertain about that.

 

[GilSwillBasementBrews]

Was just listening to a basic brewing radio podcast with a guy talking about just this. You guys should give a listen I thought it was pretty insightful information for those of you considering brewing with maple.

http://traffic.libsyn.com/basicbrewing/bbr03-19-15maplebrew.mp3

 

[ImNoExpert]

Subbed.

 

[Homercidal]

Sap itself won't give any maple flavor in the finished beer. It's sugar content is pretty low and most of that ferments right out. A lot of what we call maple flavor comes from the serious concentration of the sap into syrup and the process of boiling it to that concentration.

In addition, if you are brewing All Grain, you don't know what the mineral content is. After boiling there is a collection of stuff they call "Sugar Sand" which is precipitated minerals and things.

I'd be curious to see how it turns out, but I think you'd be better off with boiled sap to get the sugar and flavor raised up a bit (a lot).

 

[Zepth]

Depending on what type of maple tree this sap came from, 10 gallons of sap should produce around 32 ounces of syrup. I wonder how much maple flavor will carry through fermentation? I am thinking about trying this as well.

Chris

Nailed it. My father make backyard syrup and 40:1 is the average sap:syrup ratio. That said a near identical result could be obtained from using 1 qt syrup in place of using sap for the whole thing. Will also get slightly better hop utilization from having a lower boil gravity, assuming you use the syrup as a late addition. The catch is that if you're going for big maple flavour (which a friend mazer said works well in mead) you'll need to use syrup or go with an epic boil off to get it.

That all said I'm planning on getting a bucket or 2 of sap from my father when we have a year with good yield and do a maple batch myself. I suspect he'd disown me if I were to suggest re-constituting his hard work of boiling it down to syrup.

 

[sudbuddy]

I'm not really trying to achieve anything life-changing here besides making a decent beer. It's something I've been dying to try for the past year, but I have very low expectations as far as maple flavor goes. If I get it, it's a plus, if I don't then I have a fairly boozy pale ale on my hands and I'm totally OK with that. I didn't notice any extra trub after the boil, but I did have all kinds of weird solids in my HLT which I kind of expected. Like I said, the mash and boil smelled excellent, but I wouldn't expect the maple flavor to survive fermentation. It would be super cool if it did though! Also, I highly recommend a 90 minute boil on this one, it got the gravity where it needed to be and I think it helped concentrate the maple too.

 

[Zepth]

Those solids are likely "nighter." Spelling a mystery to me. If memory serves it's mostly Potassium and Calcium. Maybe mineral content from sap would be the most influential part of the brew?

 

[sudbuddy]

Those solids are likely "nighter." Spelling a mystery to me. If memory serves it's mostly Potassium and Calcium. Maybe mineral content from sap would be the most influential part of the brew?

Interesting. BTW I think the spelling is nitre, but I might be pulling that out of my @$$. So, do you think that we can infer that those extra minerals will result in harder water? I did nothing to treat the sap because I wanted to see what it would be like on its own, but now I'm curious

 

[Zepth]

I know very little about water chemistry. I'll be delving into that as my next project to improve brewing. Aside from "too high ph=bad, too low ph=bad" I know virtually nothing.

Should be obvious but if it stayed in the kettle after racking, it's not going into the final product. Could still change things in the mash and boil though.

 

[sudbuddy]

I know very little about water chemistry. I'll be delving into that as my next project to improve brewing. Aside from "too high ph=bad, too low ph=bad" I know virtually nothing.

Should be obvious but if it stayed in the kettle after racking, it's not going into the final product. Could still change things in the mash and boil though.

I would assume some of it made it into the fermenter, but I'm more curious about how it was just as water. Sugary maple water is hard? *mind blown* but now I know.

 

[Zepth]

I would assume some of it made it into the fermenter, but I'm more curious about how it was just as water. Sugary maple water is hard? *mind blown* but now I know.

Assuming by "hard" we can agree to mean "Has a lot more in it than hydrogen and oxygen" then yes. I can guarantee that. Since we're talking about maple sap here it having sugar in the solution should not come as a surprise to anyone. Once again, mentioning because I like to clarify as much as possible. Or I like being long winded.

 

[sudbuddy]

Assuming by "hard" we can agree to mean "Has a lot more in it than hydrogen and oxygen" then yes. I can guarantee that. Since we're talking about maple sap here it having sugar in the solution should not come as a surprise to anyone. Once again, mentioning because I like to clarify as much as possible. Or I like being long winded.

And I like beer. It's all good

 

[JohnK93]

After collecting about 17 gallons of sap, we boiled a bunch down and set a couple gallons aside (got tired of spending my propane making syrup.) The syrup tastes pretty amazing, and the trees are still flowing so I'm collecting more. If I can collect another 5 gallons or so I think I'll have a go at replacing my brewing water with sap in a porter. Like sudbuddy, I'm not expecting much of a flavor from the sap, but it'll be fun to experiment and fun to say that it was made from maple sap.

Let us know how the beer turns out!

 

[sudbuddy]

After collecting about 17 gallons of sap, we boiled a bunch down and set a couple gallons aside (got tired of spending my propane making syrup.) The syrup tastes pretty amazing, and the trees are still flowing so I'm collecting more. If I can collect another 5 gallons or so I think I'll have a go at replacing my brewing water with sap in a porter. Like sudbuddy, I'm not expecting much of a flavor from the sap, but it'll be fun to experiment and fun to say that it was made from maple sap.

Let us know how the beer turns out!

Very cool! Maybe you should put some of the sap in your beer later on too? My brewing/LHBS partner scored another 10 gallons yesterday and brewed with it today. He went a little weirder and used rye, aromatic, amarillo hops and the Ardennes yeast, so we'll see how it goes.

Mine fermented down to 1.015 already and tastes great. There is a hint of maple in the flavor but I think it's mostly wishful thinking and I'm really just tasting the smoked malt. Either way, it's a killer beer and I'm happy with it. Now I just need to cold crash and carb in a week or so

 

[tokerlund]

http://www.hyzercreek.com/maple.htm

Has the breakdown of maple sap minerals.

 

[SanPancho]

anybody know the gravity/brix/plato of the sap? if its high enough it might be a candidate to ferment on its own.

pulque is made in mexico from agave sap with wild bugs fermenting it. its a wild yeast type and then a souring bacteria. not sure about "sour maple" so maybe just use a regular yeast with the sap? or maybe a cider/wine yeast?

if you have extra just go ahead and send a bucket out to california and i'll let you know what we come up with........

 

[JimRausch]

anybody know the gravity/brix/plato of the sap? if its high enough it might be a candidate to ferment on its own.

pulque is made in mexico from agave sap with wild bugs fermenting it. its a wild yeast type and then a souring bacteria. not sure about "sour maple" so maybe just use a regular yeast with the sap? or maybe a cider/wine yeast?

if you have extra just go ahead and send a bucket out to california and i'll let you know what we come up with........

It depends on the tree, the year, early or late in the season.
My 1st batch of sap this year came in at 1.015. I used 7G of it in a batch of Caribou Slobber.