Maple Imperial Russian Stout

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Did some research, 7 of 11 commercial beers (that I found) which are made with maple syrup, are Stouts; 4 of them being Imperial Stouts.

Checked prices here; a kit is $10.00 more than making it from scratch.

I'm going to try my hand at making an Maple Imperial Russian Stout this coming fall.
 
Did some research, 7 of 11 commercial beers (that I found) which are made with maple syrup, are Stouts; 4 of them being Imperial Stouts.

Checked prices here; a kit is $10.00 more than making it from scratch.

I'm going to try my hand at making an Maple Imperial Russian Stout this coming fall.

Why wait until fall? Maple syrup is fresh now and your imperial stout will need time to age anyway. Make it now, start drinking it around Christmas time. Of next year. It will be really good by then.:ban::mug:
 
Off subject a little bit here...would it be feasible to do a mash and boil with the raw maple (sap collected) to attain a good maple porter/stout? Does anybody know of someone using this technique? and how did it turn out?
 
Off subject a little bit here...would it be feasible to do a mash and boil with the raw maple (sap collected) to attain a good maple porter/stout? Does anybody know of someone using this technique? and how did it turn out?


Two guys in my club made separate beers with fall runnings from maple sap last year. It only added a little of the actual maple flavor to the base beers. It fermented well with very strong attenuation but unfortunately left very little flavor behind.
 
I have a birch sap Imperial Stout in the carboy which I used the sap partially in the mash and completely for the sparge water. I would have done a 100% sap mash, but with all the roasted grains and the low pH of the sap itself, the mash would have been just far too acidic.

I also have a Maple Imperial Ale bottle conditioning which used absolutely no "water", just the sap. The gravity of the maple sap was about 3 times more than the birch sap, and I feel the character is definitely there in the beer. I'm really happy with it. The beer was even a darker amber than beersmith predicted, maybe an extra 3-4 SRM, presumably from the sap.

I would highly recommend using sap in the wort production if able, but it is season dependent of course, and probably passed for everyone now. Otherwise, adding the syrup after fermentation would provide very similar flavors, if not even more pronounced. One downside of using the sap/syrup is the high manganese content, which I believe can accelerate staling. I wouldn't worry about it though, especially in a strong dark beer. I did not notice any oxidation in my last bottle of Birch Sap Baltic Porter that was just over a year old. I would just be extra careful not to introduce any extra oxygen after fermentation, and bottle condition if you would like to age it out a bit.

Go for it, let us know how it turns out!
 
Why wait until fall? Maple syrup is fresh now and your imperial stout will need time to age anyway. Make it now, start drinking it around Christmas time. Of next year. It will be really good by then.:ban::mug:

Temperature control, with summer coming, the house gets much warmer. I like brewing between 60 F and 63 F. Fall through spring is easy to control the temp, summer more of a pain and no so easy.

I'm never in a hurry do do something right and minimize possible mistakes.
 
Two guys in my club made separate beers with fall runnings from maple sap last year. It only added a little of the actual maple flavor to the base beers. It fermented well with very strong attenuation but unfortunately left very little flavor behind.

Okay, I'm going to guess that these guys are not Canadians.
 
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Temperature control, with summer coming, the house gets much warmer. I like brewing between 60 F and 63 F. Fall through spring is easy to control the temp, summer more of a pain and no so easy.

I'm never in a hurry do do something right and minimize possible mistakes.

You stout would probably only need temp control for 3 to 4 days, fairly easily doable. Swamp coolers are cheap.:ban:
 
Off subject a little bit here...would it be feasible to do a mash and boil with the raw maple (sap collected) to attain a good maple porter/stout? Does anybody know of someone using this technique? and how did it turn out?

Maple sap don't taste anything like maple syrup. Yes we do it every year. It's for novelty as sap barely has enough sugar to matter. Like 1.003 if I remember right..
It tastes like you soaked oak leaves in a pail of water overnight.

Beers turn out fine. No maple anything,, but just fine
 
Being only a few batches into All grain brewing, I was curious about using the sap in the mash to obtain that maple flavor...Thanks to all that have shared their experience and knowledge...it saved me from going through what would have undoubtedly left me with a less than stellar porter or stout, as far as producing the maple flavor is concerned.
 
Maple sap don't taste anything like maple syrup. Yes we do it every year. It's for novelty as sap barely has enough sugar to matter. Like 1.003 if I remember right..
It tastes like you soaked oak leaves in a pail of water overnight.

Beers turn out fine. No maple anything,, but just fine

Sap will not taste like syrup, you need to boil about 15 gallons of sap to get 1 gallon of syrup.
 
Being only a few batches into All grain brewing, I was curious about using the sap in the mash to obtain that maple flavor...Thanks to all that have shared their experience and knowledge...it saved me from going through what would have undoubtedly left me with a less than stellar porter or stout, as far as producing the maple flavor is concerned.

I'm using maple syrup.
 
Sap does not get collected in the fall, just in the spring, while temp is below freezing at night and above freezing during the day.

I know that, I was being facetious. Just wondering why you didn't think they were Canadian
 
I made an American Imperial Stout and added about 8 oz of maple syrup to about 2.5 gal of wort in the boil pot. My taste buds are shot but it came out GOOD. 10% ABV and I aged it 1 year in bottles. Fresh the alcohol was sharp. Now it's so smooth. Will know what others think as I have 2 bottles in a contest on Maui right now. Results due by weekend. I will do this again. The year before I did same recipe but used molasses instead of maple syrup. I like the maple better.
 
I made an American Imperial Stout and added about 8 oz of maple syrup to about 2.5 gal of wort in the boil pot. My taste buds are shot but it came out GOOD. 10% ABV and I aged it 1 year in bottles. Fresh the alcohol was sharp. Now it's so smooth. Will know what others think as I have 2 bottles in a contest on Maui right now. Results due by weekend. I will do this again. The year before I did same recipe but used molasses instead of maple syrup. I like the maple better.

Good to hear, good luck with the contest.
 
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