Humpty Dumpty Had A Great Fall Ale

[Richard]

Yeah I know I said I was doing a saison next but the yeast isn't here yet; instead, here's some fall-beer.
Looking for a very malt-dominant profile with a spicy finish and aroma. All spices are added at flameout because I've found additions before then get real muddy.

8lbs Maris Otter
2lbs Malted Wheat
2lbs Munich Malt
1lb Caramunich III
0.5lb Caramunich II
0.5lb Carafoam
2oz Carafa Special III
1oz Roasted Barley

1oz Nugget @ 60.

Flameout Spices (All ground, dried):
2 tsp Ginger
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Allspice
1/8 tsp Cloves

Flameout Sugars:
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup (~200g) turbinado sugar

Mash 4 Gallons at 156F, Sparge 5 Gallons at 168F.

S-04

Estimated: OG 1.063, FG 1.017, ABV 6.1%, IBUs: 33 (Tinseth).

[Richard]

Tasted the wort of this earlier, and the spices were barely detectable, but apparent. This was an attempt on the low end of the spicing scale (a little experiment prior to the saison), so I'm real curious to see what results.

[Gil Breau]

The second maple ale I made I added about a 1/3 cup at flameout, and I got this overpowering wood flavor that persisted in it.

Granted, the keg has been at my camp since July, I sampled it in August when I was up there and it had grown in the wood flavour. I just retrieved it this past long weekend and meant to see if it's still nearly undrinkable or not, but this week's been not so kind to beer tasting...

I've yet to determine if it's because I added too much maple in primary and not at keg time, or if using crystal malt paired with it just made it overpowering. My first batch had all the maple added at keg time, and I found it needing more flavor, but it still came out quite well. This one just was too much.

let me know when the fermenting finishes if you get that wood-infused strength or not...completely baffled on this last one's failure....

[Richard]

Will certainly let you know. I certainly couldn't detect anything of the sort in the wort, but it could shine out once the sweetness drops.

[Gil Breau]

I think what happened was once the yeast ate the sugar in the maple, all that was left was the sap. No sugar, all wood left. But I can't be certain either, since this was a one-off (so far anyway)

[Richard]

Well hopefully with a higher residual sweetness as this should have, that won't happen. We'll see...

[Richard]

Well... absolutely no problem with the maple syrup. This tastes like liquid gingerbread - the bittering borders the flavor in a similar way to the grated lemon you might have in a gingerbread recipe. Your mum's cookies probably aren't 6% abv, mind

Not sure if it's my cup of tea but it doesn't taste bad... that said I've only tried a few spiced beers, and the ones I'd preferred were more like a ginger-beer or pop. Will see how it changes with carbonation.

I'll bring some to the meeting.