Maple Wine

[dhibbeln]

My wife called up and asked if I could put 5 gallons of sap aside for a co-worker who wants to make maple wine. Wine?

My question's are:

1) how high of a brix should I give her?

2) does she want sap or sirup?

3) how the heck do you make maple wine? has anyone done it or know of any links i could look at?

[maplehound]

a couple years ago at our local fair, the best of show in the wines was a maple wine. The winner told me he made it using grade B syrup. However I talked to another wine maker the other day and he told me his recipe for maple wine calls for light syrup. He never said at what brix though.

[Pete33Vt]

We made a batch last year. Used sap outta the back pans at last boil. On guy brought over the leftovers in his front pan. All we did was heat up sap and added some hops, let them seep together good and drain off, filtering out the hops, add that to a new stainless steel barrel and when all heated and seeped together, add some yeast. Put a water seal on the barrel and wait.( water seal plastic bung reduced down to 3/4 plastic line ran into jug filled with water to alow for breathing without sucking in air.) Turned out ok but potent. I had 13 bottles and had them on there sides to keep corks wet. Blew the corks off of all but five.
GOOD LUCK.

[dhibbeln]

Hmm... should have known better to ask a bunch of sap heads..
Found this on the web...Gives me a better clue..
Any comments...???


From: http://scorpius.spaceports.com/~goodwine/maplewine.htm

Maple Wine
Recipe file created January 24, 2005.

It takes about 40 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of syrup. It only takes 12 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple wine.

Ingredients

Recipe 1
4 1/2 cups maple syrup
10 cups water
2 oranges or 1 lemon, sliced thin
1 campden tablet
1 package wine yeast

Recipe 2
1 gallon maple sap
2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 oranges or 1 lemon, sliced thin
2 campden tablets
1 package wine yeast

Recipe 3
12 gallons maple sap, reduced to 1 gallon
2 oranges or 1 lemon, sliced thin
1 campden tablet
1 package wine yeast


Place maple sap in primary fermentor. Add water and sugar, if using. Add oranges or lemon and campden tablets. Let sit overnight.

Next day, Specific Gravity should be 1.090 - 1.100. Stir in yeast. Stir daily for 5 to 6 days or until Specific Gravity is 1.040. Strain out fruit and squeeze as much juice out of it as you can. Siphon into secondary fermentor and add airlock.

For a dry wine, rack in three weeks, and every three months for one year. Bottle.

For a sweet wine, rack at three weeks. Add 1/2 cup sugar or maple syrup dissolved in 1 cup wine. Stir gently, and place back into secondary fermentor. Repeat process every six weeks until fermentation does not restart with the addition of sugar. Rack every three months until one year old. Bottle.

The wine is best if you can refrain from drinking it for one full year from the date it was started.

NOTE:

If you have access to maple trees, try Recipe 3. Boiling the sap until you have 1 gallon left will give you the right sugar content for winemaking. The rest of us will have to buy maple syrup.
-- Rox

[Gary R]

I just started making wine a year ago. I made 2 gal. of Maple wine 2 weeks ago. If you have a wine making hydrometer, it shows specific gravity and potential alcohol content. I generally add sugar to get to 15% potential alcohol for regular wine. To get there you need about 26 brix. The Winemaking Homepage (Jack Keller) has a chart for hydrometer usage. I used some heavy sweet (about 1/2 gal. of syrup's worth) and an addition quart of syrup to get to that level for 2 gal. of wine. I added acid blend and tannin and yeast. Make sure it sits in the primary for about 10 days stirring twice a day. Then transfer to secondary and air lock.

Good Luck!

[eye8astonie]

We made 5 gallons of maple wine using recipe 3 of the list that you posted. I believe that is from Jack Kellar's site if I remember correctly. Only thing is, you can't say to use a certain amount of sap, because you don't know what the sugar content of the sap is.

We basically used the equivalent of 2 gallons of syrup to make 5 gallons of wine. But whatever amount you use, you can adjust the sugar content by adding more syrup or more plain sugar, and I would suggest getting the original starting gravity to 1.08 or more. (Get and learn how to use a beer and wine hydrometer if you don't know what this means).

You need enough sugar in there initially to make enough alcohol to act as a preservative before the sap/syrup spoils (and obviously, once you mix syrup with water, it's basically sap again....)

We have also started a batch of maple "beer"... can't really call it beer because it has no hops or barley in it, but we've let it soak with a vanilla bean and are going to carbonate it and put it in beer bottles and see what the hell happens... film at 11.

And last but not least, I am soooooo excited about our latest batch, which is a maple port wine.... it ferments three different times, adding sugar each time, to boost the alcohol content and the sweetness level both up, and then is fortified with brandy, and then adds sugar at the end to attain the right level of residual sugar (once the brandy goes in, the high alcohol content will kill whatever yeast is left, and all fermentation will stop, leaving any sugar that remains at that point to provide sweetness and not be turned into alcohol).... we won't know how it turns out for another year, but I can't wait to taste it... it's a lot of work, but it should be very worthwhile if everything goes as planned....

I don't know if I helped at all, but I had fun telling y'all about our experimenting.... if you have any questions, I may be able to help... been learning from my mistakes for a while now. The one thing I would say is... don't start out with too low of an initial specific gravity.... that's the one things that could ruin your batch right off the start.

Duane

[peacemaker]

i have a half gallon of last years syrup that didnt seal awelled up and formented i filtered it good and placed it back in fridge anyone know if i can use this to make wine or beer

[eye8astonie]

Hm... interesting question.... there are wild yeasts all around us, but from what I know of making wine and beer, they usually don't produce good flavors. I guess if you're confident that it didn't spoil (as in a high bacteria count) and that it was true fermentation (as in production of alcohol, which would act as a preservative), then pick a day when you're feeling adventurous and give it a shot!

[Gary R]

Wild yeast and bacteria abound. Best to reheat to boil, then it would have to cool to under 100 degrees before yeast is added or add campen tablets crushed and wait 24 hrs. before adding your yeast. Read up on basic wine making and follow the processes.

Good luck. There's more to maple than just syrup!

[SUGARSMITH]

START OUT WITH ABOUT 25% sugar(brix) that would be a good sugar content for a grape wine. It needs to ferment to 0% sugar and if you want a sweeter type wine you need to add potassium sorbate and then back sweeten it with sugar. This will prevent the secondary fermentation which causes the corks to pop out.

my 2 cents

[dhibbeln]

Folks,
Thanks for all the comments. I've sent 6 gallons of 6 degree brix sap via my darling bride to her co-worker... a year from now.. it will be maple wine or maple viniger..!!!!

[dhibbeln]

Oh, the maple wine make sent back of last years vintage. It tastes like a port or a sherry. Was a "rough" taste....little bit of maple in it..

[Gary R]

A good wine is not easy to make. There is a lot to learn and attention to detail is a must. I'm at the "drinkable" stage.:)

[eye8astonie]

We had to let our dry maple wine age for over a year for it to get really good. We used Recipe 3 from the Scorpius site that is posted earlier in this thread, and it took a while for the citrus taste from the oranges to smooth out. But it turned out really good, and in the end we wished we hadn't sampled so much before it aged.

We also made a maple vanilla port wine, fortified with brandy, and man if that won't warm you up on a cold night! It was triple fermented and then sweetened back up, with a whole vanilla bean soaking in it for about 6 months. Turned out awesome... only problem is that it took the equivalent of about 3 gallons of syrup to make 5 gallons of wine! We boiled 80 gallons of sap down to 5 gallons, and then corrected the specific gravity with syrup. Syrup was also used later on to sweeten it. It turned out very sweet and very strong.

But to answer the original question, as a rule you want about 2 gallons of syrup, or the equivalent in sap, for a 5 gallon batch of maple wine. That should get you around a 1.095 specific gravity, which equates to the 12% recommended potential alcohol that is needed to preserve the must.

Duane