I wanted to get a maple flavor into my house brown ale, but have had little success. I have added to the last 10 minutes of the boil only to have a beer that tastes like charred wood. I have added it at the end of the primary only to have my beer taste like rocket fuel. And I have racked my brown to a keg, added Potassium Metabisulfite, cold crashed and added the Maple then only to have it settle out and come through as gunk in my first few pours.
However, I will not quit my quest for maple bacon brown ale. I have found a website that sells maple flavoring in drams. From my research it looks like 1 dram per 5 gallons of beer. And the kicker is the stuff is really cheap. As opposed to spending a lot on grade B maple only to have poor results, I figured why not?
So my question is: has anyone used this? And if so, was it successful?
I plan to add LorAnn Maple flavoring and a bacon tincture to my keg on packaging day, then carb as normal.
Haven’t used that, sounds like a winner. I think you should break down exactly what you want from the ingredient, then work backward. FWIW, you may have avoided the gunk in your last example by dissolving the syrup in water before adding at packaging in your last attempt.
So to me, maple syrup has an intense sweetness with a tannic/woody flavor as well. I think the extract could get you there, but had you considered creating a really dextrinous (mash temp, crystal malts) wort that will have a good bit of residual sweetness and maybe aging it on maple cubes/chips (I’m not sure if you can get maple spirals)?
The one time I used Grade B for a Canadian Breakfast Stout, I got what I was looking for, but the beer could have been a little more dextrinous and full bodied, so likely solvable by a higher mash temp and more flaked barley/oats.
Let us know how it turns out and good luck :cheers:
Thanks Pietro, that is some good advice. I never considered going the dextrinous wort route. In that case, it could solve for the over fermentation that I had in the past.
I will def post the results when I get this brew going.
One word: fenugreek. This is an Indian spice that is used to flavor artificial maple syrup (Mrs. Butterworth, Log Cabin, etc.). Just a teeny tiny bit of fenugreek, and you’ll have all the maple flavor in the world. It’s really strong.
