Recipe creation, need some help

[DrunkenCanuck]

Hey guys,

Now that I have had some success with making my own beer using other recipes, I'd like to make my own. Using an ale style beer, I'd like to make a maple style ale. Flavor wise, I am going for something sweet with a touch of smoky, hence why I am adding some maple syrup to the boil

Batch size: 5 gallons
Grains: Pale Malt (6 row) 8 lbs, Crystal Malt 80L (2 lbs), Choclate Malt 1lb. Maple syrup (1 lb).
Hops: Calypso 1 Oz
Yeast: White Labs WLP004 Irish Ale Yeast

Primary: 7 days
Add 2 lbs of maple syrup prior to bottling.

So my questions are simple.

Do I have enough grain to suit the recipe? Would you recommend I use different malts to attain the flavors that I seek or is this good enough? I really want to experiment and make something my own, but I am not familiar enough with the flavors that grain produces overall.

 

[kh54s10]

If you add maple syrup at bottling make sure you take into account the sugar content when figuring out your priming sugar amount. If you don't you could risk bottle bombs.

I would let the late addition of syrup ferment out, the prime normally.

Are you using a recipe calculator. That will answer some of your questions about how much grain.

For smoke, you might look at a smoked malt. I like cherrywood smoked malt alot. It is smoother than some of the others and has a nice flavor.

IMO the maple syrup addition in the boil is going work mostly as a sugar creating a drier beer. Maybe giving a small amount of flavor. The late addition will do more to giving you some maple flavor. I guess I would go with what you have for the syrup.

This will be a rather dark beer, almost a Porter. This without actually putting in a recipe app to see the results.

 

[DrunkenCanuck]

If you add maple syrup at bottling make sure you take into account the sugar content when figuring out your priming sugar amount. If you don't you could risk bottle bombs.

I would let the late addition of syrup ferment out, the prime normally.

Are you using a recipe calculator. That will answer some of your questions about how much grain.

For smoke, you might look at a smoked malt. I like cherrywood smoked malt alot. It is smoother than some of the others and has a nice flavor.

IMO the maple syrup addition in the boil is going work mostly as a sugar creating a drier beer. Maybe giving a small amount of flavor. The late addition will do more to giving you some maple flavor. I guess I would go with what you have for the syrup.

This will be a rather dark beer, almost a Porter. This without actually putting in a recipe app to see the results.

Yeah, I figure if I put enough maple syrup in at bottling, I won't need bottling sugar. Now, it's pretty sweet usually, though Ontario Maple Syrup tends to not be as dark as the Quebec stuff (we don't put as many additives in them).

I put the recipe into BeerSmith 2 and without the Chocolate malt, it isn't as dark of a beer, only 21.5 SRM, 41.4 IBU and 1.068 starting gravity. I think I might keep the Chocolate Malt out, not sure why I'd put that in there anyway.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I'm going to speculate that the yeast will eat the maple syrup, make CO2, and leave the beer with no hint of maple syrup flavor.

 

[ejf063]

I'm all about creating new recipes and trying new things. However, this seems like a complicated beer for your first attempt. I am sure you did your homework, and I am not trying to be offensive by saying that. I guess when I look back at my experiences I probably wouldn't try something quite as hard as this..... That's just me though and I am sure that what you are on to is going to be delicious.
Have you considered changing the yeast to Wyeast 1728. Its a Scottish ale yeast and tends to lend a 'smokey' flavor to the finished product.
also, you can always add maple extract instead of syrup. syrup has a ton of sugar which would cause the beer to dry out. This could also thin out the flavor profiles you are looking for. Extract on the other hand will give you a nice maple flavor.
Let us know how it turns out....
Brew on

 

[ChelisHubby]

Your beer will be different than most with 2 lbs of 80 and then 1 lb of chocolate. May I ask what kind of a brew you are trying g to make?

 

[DrunkenCanuck]

I'm all about creating new recipes and trying new things. However, this seems like a complicated beer for your first attempt. I am sure you did your homework, and I am not trying to be offensive by saying that. I guess when I look back at my experiences I probably wouldn't try something quite as hard as this..... That's just me though and I am sure that what you are on to is going to be delicious.
Have you considered changing the yeast to Wyeast 1728. Its a Scottish ale yeast and tends to lend a 'smokey' flavor to the finished product.
also, you can always add maple extract instead of syrup. syrup has a ton of sugar which would cause the beer to dry out. This could also thin out the flavor profiles you are looking for. Extract on the other hand will give you a nice maple flavor.
Let us know how it turns out....
Brew on

Wyeast isn't readily available around here, but White Labs is plentiful. Hence why I opted for White Labs but it looks like I didn't research my yeast choice

 

[DrunkenCanuck]

So my brew calculator had an OG of 1.072. I tweaked a couple of things about how I was going to make it.

Mash at 155 F, Mash out at 158. Hops added 15 minutes into the boil, at 45 minutes I added 2 cups of maple syrup and another 1.5 cups at the end of the boil. OG worked out to be 1.085. Calculator adjusted to 1.01 FG, so we will see. Pitched my yeast so I will make a new topic on this brew when it's done.

 

[Hayden512]

Sounds like your aiming for a scotch ale with your flavors. Do some googling of other scotch ale recipes and tweak it to your liking.

I'd recommend adding the syrup a couple days into the fermentor straight into the primary. I've had good luck maintaining some maple flavor with that. Sure the sugar gets eaten in the syrup but there's other things in it that will leave you with a maple flavor.