Maple Beer!

This past weekend, I finally got another batch of beer in the fermenter: my World** Famous Maple Syrup Porter!

This recipe is so easy it's silly. I start with a beginner-basic Brown Porter recipe (the lightest and least-roasty of the porters; just a single step darker and more "dark toast" than a British Brown Ale like Newcastle or MBC Nut Brown); munich, crystal 60L and some pale malt for the base malts, some chocolate male for color and toastiness, cascade hops at bittering and aromatic. So simple as to be boring and unremarkable. This is important.

The real magic is when I crash my hour-long boil by turning off the flame and adding a generous quart of freshly-drawn maple syrup. A friend of mine taps his own trees, and in return for a quart of the fresh stuff, he gets a couple of the beers.

Look at the yeast cake on THAT one!!

The beer is happily fermenting away. I'll take it out of the Primary this Saturday or Sunday, let it hang out in a secondary fermenter for about two weeks, and package it. I thought about kegging the entire 5 gallons, but I think I actually want to bottle some of this too so I can take it places and give it out to some people. Keg 2 1/2 G, bottle 2 1/2 G (about 20-24 bottles), call it good.

A few things went wrong with this batch; I brewed as we were holding a "Mud and Suds Party" at my house. A friend of mine is a potter. He brings some of his wares for sale, he sets up his wheel in my garage and throws pots while I conduct a beer tasting and brew a batch. Well, some distractions led me to not be as judicious with clearing out some husks as I boiled, and the syrup was slow coming out of the bottle, so I'm not sure I got all of it. I am hoping for a solid beer (as Charlie Papazian says: Relax, Don't Worry, have A Homebrew), and it'll probably be fine, but it's my nature to obsess over my process.

At any rate, I'll let you know how it turns out in about 3 weeks!