Maple Sap Profile

[dpeters]

So I have tapped a couple of maple trees and plan to use the sap in place of all the water for mashing and sparge. I did some googling around and I came up with an average mineral profile of the sap to be around Ca 41 Mg 7 Na 35 S04 5 Cl 90 HCO3 140 The PH was 6.14 and the OG was 1.008.
I am wondering if anyone else has looked into this and what did they come up with?

 

[RPh_Guy]

If you're worried about hitting a good mash pH, you could do a scaled down mash like 500-1000mL and adjust it until you get it right.

As far as the minerals, I suspect that looking at averages might be "good enough", but could also be way off.

 

[cactusgarrett]

I can't speak to the mineral aspect, but:

A few years back I had a friend do this to make a "breakfast beer" - supposed to taste like pancakes or something. It's a romantic concept, but he said the effort was totally not worth the pay out. He had to tell me about the beer using sap for me to pick out any hint of maple, and to this day i still can't remember if i did.

Hell, fermenting/bottling with syrup doesn't give that characteristic maple/syrup flavor, and that's concentrated. I've used syrup in all stages of brewing (boil, fermenter, bottling, etc.) and it ferments completely out while lending no flavor, so the sap shouldn't be any different. I don't mean to **** in your cereal, I just want you to be prepared for the likely results.

That said, I hope it works and I'm interested to see a follow-up. Bon chance!

 

[fun4stuff]

Sap is 98% water. It’s not going to affect taste at all. I haven’t done it, but I’d think you could get some syrup flavor by adding some syrup to the keg.

 

[cactusgarrett]

you could get some syrup flavor by adding some syrup to the keg

Can't even do that, unless you halt fermentation somehow (pasteurization, Kbisulfate, etc.), since it completely ferments out. Drew Beechum has suggested that fenugreek is actually a good alternative to get maple flavor, and is actually what's used in making syrup extract flavoring.

Example 1
Example 2

 

[dpeters]

I had hoped that the sap would have more flavor than it does so yes I don't think it will add much flavor to the beer but I am guessing it will still make a good beer so it won't be for nothing. All I had to do was drill a couple of holes in some trees and attach a hose to a bucket so not much time there vs running to the store for RO water.

 

[fun4stuff]

Can't even do that, unless you halt fermentation somehow (pasteurization, Kbisulfate, etc.), since it completely ferments out. Drew Beechum has suggested that fenugreek is actually a good alternative to get maple flavor, and is actually what's used in making syrup extract flavoring.

Example 1
Example 2

You won’t get much fermentation in a chilled keg unless your using a lager yeast. Adding the syrup to the keg is best way to get authentic taste.

 

[Rob2010SS]

I have been interested in doing this myself, actually. Ever since I read about it in, I think, BYO. They did an article on how to get maple flavor in beer and this was one of the methods, using sap from trees for all the water.

Fenugreek is something else I've been wanting to try. I tried the beer in the pics below, which had fenugreek in it, and it had an amazing maple flavor to it.

I have added maple syrup to the keg once and that worked pretty well for me. I did have to add some chemicals to halt fermentation completely because I was bottling that batch. So I added the syrup, added the chemicals, filled the keg, bottled the entire keg and never had any issues with it.

 

[Rob2010SS]

I have been interested in doing this myself, actually. Ever since I read about it in, I think, BYO. They did an article on how to get maple flavor in beer and this was one of the methods, using sap from trees for all the water.

Fenugreek is something else I've been wanting to try. I tried the beer in the pics below, which had fenugreek in it, and it had an amazing maple flavor to it.

I have added maple syrup to the keg once and that worked pretty well for me. I did have to add some chemicals to halt fermentation completely because I was bottling that batch. So I added the syrup, added the chemicals, filled the keg, bottled the entire keg and never had any issues with it.

Forgot to add the pics!

 

[smarch0]

A buddy and I did this a few years back. The OG of the sap was even lower, I believe 1.002. I probably still have notes if you really care, but it was low. We brewed a simple pale ale just to see what the flavor would be like. Tried to lightly hop, but we ran out of propane at some point and did not notice for a while so the hops sat longer, was probably about 20-25 IBU.

Anyways, there was virtually no maple flavor detectable. It did have an earthy / piney flavor, but was probably just the hops as they were that kind.

 

[jimbostarr]

I can't speak to the mineral aspect, but:

A few years back I had a friend do this to make a "breakfast beer" - supposed to taste like pancakes or something. It's a romantic concept, but he said the effort was totally not worth the pay out. He had to tell me about the beer using sap for me to pick out any hint of maple, and to this day i still can't remember if i did.

Hell, fermenting/bottling with syrup doesn't give that characteristic maple/syrup flavor, and that's concentrated. I've used syrup in all stages of brewing (boil, fermenter, bottling, etc.) and it ferments completely out while lending no flavor, so the sap shouldn't be any different. I don't mean to **** in your cereal, I just want you to be prepared for the likely results.

That said, I hope it works and I'm interested to see a follow-up. Bon chance!

my maple sap hard cider turned out very well. However like you said I could not taste as much maple is a preferred and it was a little drier than I wanted. So I sweetened it up with 3 cups pure maple syrup and a little malic acid. it's the first cider my wife really likes. And you really can taste the true maple flavor. It's a very interesting drink!