Sugar Tree

May 2024

16.4%

Maple Wine details-

This Maple Wine with Honey was made using 80% local Maple syrup from H&H Sugarbush out of Chelsea Michigan, and 20% Alfalfa honey. 

The yeast used for this was K1-V1116.

This Maple Wine was 6 months old before bottling. 

Karl’s tasting notes-

Now here we have an interesting one for you, folks, our first non-mead! Very exciting! Instead, we have a brand new experiment of us making a “maple wine” using a local Chelsea Michigan maple syrup and fermented in the style of a Maniacal Mead.

Starting off with the nose and it’s honestly not very impactful. Desperate enjoyers may pick up a faintly sweet maple smell, however. Not surprising or a red flag, given that this isn’t our average drink!

The flavor profile is where it’s at, where the nose lacks! The initial flavors are, in a sense, fascinating. There is a boozy flavor here from the higher abv but it actually plays very well with a follow-up of maple and sweet honey. We did indeed add a touch of Alfalfa honey, about an 80-20 ratio of maple syrup to honey and it shows! The boozy maple and sweet honey create a faux “barrel-aged” concept that’s a lot of fun. Following this is a debut of fresh maple syrup: decadent maple notes followed by the smoky notes from when it was boiled as syrup. Then we get nice wood notes, helping with those “barrel” notes no doubt, and a finish of a distinct “syrup-tasted-fresh-at-breakfast” ending. 

Overall an outstanding silky smooth maple wine brewed with a flavor style that is without a doubt “Maniacal Mead”. I doubt most would even notice if we didn’t tell them it wasn’t mead, and that’s a compliment!