This text is part of the special book Plaisirs
Quebec craft brewers include various local flavors in their beers. At the dawn of sugaring off season, why not taste those that feature maple?
Few people know it, but maple syrup is completely fermentable by conventional beer yeasts. In other words, if the brewer is not careful when adding maple syrup to his recipe, the mouth-watering flavor will gradually disappear throughout fermentation. This explains the subtle signature of maple in many maple beers. The most creative brewers must therefore use their ingenuity to bring out the coveted character. Some soak wood chips in syrup before adding the whole thing when packaging beer. Some fill oak barrels with maple syrup, empty it all, then install their beer to mature for a few months in this soaked barrel. Others, like the Riverbend microbrewery in Alma, go even further by flavoring their beer with milk caps, mushrooms with a fascinating smell reminiscent of maple leaf cookies.
Get inside to better sip
Unsurprisingly, most maple beers are mouth-wateringly sweet, as much as ice cider or fortified wine, and provide great opportunities to indulge your sweet tooth by the fire. of hearth.
As proof, the popular Constantin sugar shack in Saint-Eustache recently opened a microbrewery and produces, among other things, Route 8, a seasonal beer as sweet as a syrup pie cooked by Mom. The microbrewery Les Beers Philosophales, in Mirabel, recently served two barrel expressions of their Magnum Opus, a powerful barley wine with maple syrup. In Lac-Saint-Jean, Le Saint-Fût microbrewery makes a rich maple stout called Pic du Grand Corbeau.
Going against the grain, other craft breweries prefer to feature maple in easier-drinking beers. At La Fût, in Saint-Tite, they offer, among other things, the British maple, a brown ale in which the typical notes of hazelnuts are one with the syrup. Tête d’match, in Kamouraska, and L’apothicaire, in Lanaudière, respectively make Best Bitter and Tête dans l’Sieau, with a large portion of maple sap replacing the brewing. The result is subtle and conducive to large sips.
What are we eating ?
Every month, on the magazine’s website Caribou (cariboumag.com), author and brewing globetrotter Martin Thibault presents a flavor that Quebec craft brewers showcase in their beers. Whether it comes from a simple addition of the star ingredient or from the chemistry between grains, hops and fermentations, this flavor proves that the world of beer is constantly expanding.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, relating to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.