Official Community Brew - Maple Porter
Going to brew this one tonight, or tommorrow. The Good Wife is on her way home as I type with all of the parts and peices to make this brew!!!
Got it started on 2-24-07, A.M. OG reading was 1.060, started to ferment A.M. of 2-25-07. Looking at going to secondary in about 4 days. Got all of the supplies at local brew store, cost about 35 bucks, before the syrup.
Just did mine this morning! I ended up with a 1.060 OG almost 1.062. It looks great and smells great! This brew was my first using a liquid yeast. I'm defintely going to try and save the yeast cake. I can't wait to see how it comes out.
One thing we did not talk about is a timeline for fermentation/secondary/aging.
My batch has been in the primary for 10 days now and it still needs more time. There are still large clumps of yeast floating on the top, so I would say it needs another 5-7 days. I also plan to do a secondary for this one. I was thinking of aging for 2-4 weeks, but I just read a post about someone aging their porter for 6 months in the secondary!
We should all agree on an amount for each stage (mainly secondary/ bottling) to achieve maximum consistency.
I just checked mine today and had the same observation: clumps of yeast on the top and a gravity of 1.020. Granted, it's only been 4 full days for me. I plan on letting it go through the weekend before checking on it again.
Just brewed the maple porter last night. Ended up with a bit more cinnamon flavor than I was expecting out of one stick, but it tasted pretty damn good! I'm sure that this will mellow in the primary and I'm considering throwing another one in the secondary with the rest of the maple. I picked up some chocolate flavor to it and a mild maple flavor that I'm geussing will be fairly non-existent by the time it reaches the secondary. Glad we're throwing more in the secondary. I wonder if this will spark a little extra activity from the yeast in the secondary. I plan on two weeks in the primary, probably two in the secondary and about a month in the bottle.
Well, Last I said, I would do my secondary in about 4 days. Well, it looks like I might be waiting a little bit longer with this one. It is still working hard, and still has lumps in it. Might be maybe another week. It does seem like everybodies is doing about the same. Anxious to see how this one goes.
k, supplies are ordered should have them in about a week.
Just finished brewing this - gravity was a bit low (1.050), but nothing too bad. Haven't tasted it yet, but I do have a sample set aside for tasting. I made a pretty large starter and will be watching the progress on this one very closely.
Overall seemed to be a good brew.
Just an update - finally tasted the sample that I took out to do my initial reading. Very sweet - like the others, I'm hoping this one mellows out a bit with time.
I followed up the brew session with something that every red-blooded male Minnesotan needs to do in his life: I grilled about 20 excellent burgers outside with my grill perched on 2+ feet of snow. The wife has a friend over for a cooking night, so it looks like more food for me. 
You know the more I think about this recipe, the more nervous I get that we're going to have a bunch of bottle bombs. If we add maple syrup to the secondary, there shouldn't be any yeast to break down the sugar in the syrup. then if we add priming sugar to the bottle bucket, that's adding more fuel to the fire.
What if we added some of that 2nd half pound to the fermentation after the gravity gets to say 1.020 that might get that added flavor and bump the abv as well. We could then add the rest as priming sugar. 1 1/4 cup for bottles 5/8 for keg (Papazian's Hombrewer's Companion p 181.).
Any thoughts?
We sort of discussed this idea earlier.. We agreed to use good ol' priming sugar for carbonation because it is a tried and true method... none of us were entirely sure how things would turn out using maple syrup to prime.
Also, I asked the question before about fermentation kicking in again once we add the syrup to the secondary... maybe it wouldnt be a problem if we agreed on 2 weeks in the secondary. My gravity as of 2 days ago was 1.018 after 11 days in primary.
Just checked last night.. did not take a gravity reading, but I still have large clumps of yeast sitting on top... although they are starting to thin out a bit.
BrewRob wrote:
We sort of discussed this idea earlier.. We agreed to use good ol' priming sugar for carbonation because it is a tried and true method
yup prime with sugar
Carmichael Jones wrote:
You know the more I think about this recipe, the more nervous I get that we're going to have a bunch of bottle bombs. If we add maple syrup to the secondary, there shouldn't be any yeast to break down the sugar in the syrup. then if we add priming sugar to the bottle bucket, that's adding more fuel to the fire. Any thoughts?
There actually should be plenty of yeast still in suspension, easily enough to chew through some maple syrup. If you've ever done a secondary before, you'll notice a nice sized yeast cake at the bottom, while smaller than the primary yeast cake, it's still a considerable amount. As long as you check your gravity before bottling you should be fine. The maple syrup is just like cane sugar in that it should pretty much ferment fully out...you just need to give it some time.
Now there also wouldn't be any problem adding it to the primary once the fermentation gets down lower, as you suggested. That's just like adding it to a secondary though, just without the racking. If you didn't use a secondary, you would essentially do this. By adding it when the ferementation is almost done, you avoid some of the scrubbing action fermentation might do to the syrup flavor/aroma goodness. That's why you are adding it when you are adding it.
Make sense?
As long as you have the expected gravity when you go to bottle, you should have no problems adding priming sugar. Now if you don't check gravity and it's actually something like 1030, well then you might have a bottle bomb on your hands...
DT
Update: After 20 days in the primary with a gravity of 1.013 (my lowest ever, for those of who have read my thread about not being able to get down below 1.020), I decided to rack to the secondary. I basically waited until all the yeast floating on the top had sunk.
I added the other 8oz of maple sugar and racked over. Now, I wait!
EDIT: I also dry hopped a cinnamon stick... I wasn't very happy with the lack of cinnamon taste!
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