maple syrup in secondary- stuck fermentation

I'm attempting to add maple flavor to a brown ale. I split a 5-gallon batch- bottled half and put the other half into tertiary fermentation with a half gallon of pure, homemade maple syrup. I repitched a third of a cup of saved yeast slurry (Nottingham) in with the syrup to help ferment the syrup. Per Palmer's book, I choose a half-gallon of syrup to ensure I got some maple flavor coming through after the syrup fermented out. This seemed like a lot of syrup, but hey, Palmer's the man, right?

The tertiary fermentation bubbled away for a good 10 days at 65 F or so. I left it for another 10 days as the bubbles slowed to a minimum. I didn't take gravity readings to check what was going on.

Today I bottled that batch. As customary for me, I took a hydrometer reading AFTER I bottled. It was sky high (1.100 or more) and the beer was super sweet. I guess I got what I was after and then some.

What would you do at this point? I'm tempted to dump the bottles back into a carboy and pitch a pack of something; either Nottingham again or US-56, or both and some yeast nutrient for good measure.

The non-mapled half of the batch is pretty good.

Ideas?

Was the hydrometer reading from the bottom of your bottling bucket or carboy? If so I would guess the heavy syrup was most of the reading.

Worst problem I think could be exploding bottles. You could pack the bottles in a plastic storage bin with something heavy on the lid and wait. Then carefully open bottles one at a time until they have reached carbonation you are happy with then refrigerate the rest to slow the process.

According to a website I founds 1 gallon of maple syrup weighs about 14 lbs, that means .5 gallons would be 7 lbs. Another website lists the gravity contribution of maple syrup as 35 pppg. So 7 lbs would add about 245 gravity points, in 2.5 gallons of beer that is nearly 100 points per gallon (damn that’s a lot). Did you happen to take a reading on your maple syrup to see what the gravity was? I am also unsure of how much water is in maple syrup, once it was mixed in how much beer did you have left? What was the FG on the rest of the beer?

I’d get the beer back into the fermenter and add a packet of yeast (maybe a high abv tolerance variety) to avoid the risk of bottle bombs.

So here's what I'm trying for a start: I dumped the bottles back into the bottling bucket and added yeast nutrient, 2 packets of Nottingham yeast, and enough water to bring it up to 4.5 gallons. The gravity now is 1.038.

Not sure if the Nottingham is going to get me anywhere so I've got some champagne yeast at the ready if I can't get down under 1.020 or thereabouts.

I realized also that John Palmer lives in California, so maybe he's putting Mrs. Butterworth's on his pancakes instead of the real thing. I'm glad I didn't buy the syrup that went into this.

Old sock- I don't know what the reading is on syrup, it's too high to read without a sugaring hydrometer. I make my syrup a bit on the thin side. The FG on the non-mapled beer was 1.013.