WI: Maple Wine a staple among NA aboriginals

North American Aboriginal cultures are fairly rare in not having developed an alcohol based beverage. Many of the cultures had the materials and Mesoamerican cultures had alcohol. So what if NA aboriginals had developed, let's say, maple wine/meadbased on maple syrup?
 
Maple Syrup works very well as either the base or as an adjunct to alcoholic beverages.
I have made both a maple mead and for a long time I have made a maple stout. Unfortunately with the cost of syrup $50.00 plus a gallon I have stopped.
I see know reason except that the indians boiled there sap down into sugar.
If you are doing a Vinland thread have some norseman put some maple sugar in the beer and go from there. Most home brewers try many adjuncts.
 
I have to wonder. While camping, ive picked blueberries and boiled some for pancake syrup, yummy! Leftovers fermented quickly. Otoh, it wouldnt have kept well.

Similzrly with maple syrup. Im quite sure they did harvest it otl. Maybe getting enough withot irin kettles is too hard? You have to boil the sap down a LOT to get syrup.
 
I have to wonder. While camping, ive picked blueberries and boiled some for pancake syrup, yummy! Leftovers fermented quickly. Otoh, it wouldnt have kept well.

Similzrly with maple syrup. Im quite sure they did harvest it otl. Maybe getting enough withot irin kettles is too hard? You have to boil the sap down a LOT to get syrup.

True; if you just use the sap without boiling it first the resulting liquor will be pretty weak stuff. OTOH, if you do boil it down, ferment it, then distill it and store it in sealed containers it will keep very well (and might even be better after a year or two, as other hard liquors are).

Of course you're talking harvesting sap from hundreds of trees for a few gallons of liquor; not exactly a high return on your investment of time and effort. And that would be my explanation of why it was not done; the natives can't really afford the investment of time and effort required for that small a return, not when it takes away from more important activities like hunting to provide enough food to make it through the winter.
 
It takes about five gallons of sap for each gallon of syrup. Here in Vermont they used to make sap beer at the end of the maple run. At that time the saps gets darker and thicker. You use it in place of water when making the beer. Just remember that distilling requires a bigger tech base than fermenting.
 
North American Aboriginal cultures are fairly rare in not having developed an alcohol based beverage. Many of the cultures had the materials and Mesoamerican cultures had alcohol. So what if NA aboriginals had developed, let's say, maple wine/meadbased on maple syrup?

It sounds like you're aiming to make this product more than a historical curiosity. What direction are you angling for?

The initial reaction, I have to suppose, is that the NAs would be well used to alcohol and would not succumb so badly to the introduction of distilled spirits from Europe. OTOH, those spirits would still be far stronger than anything that could be produced in Native America.
 
i think that your right in that have even a low alcohol drink makes for less damage from the higher alcohol drinks. there would at least be cultural norms surrounding the imbibment of alcohol.
The indians had enough technology to make beer, wine or mead. They've been made for at least 7000 years.
 
There's some speculation that the Iroquois did, in fact, make alcohol from fermented maple sap... At least, according to some old books of Iroquois cultural practices that I've read.

I don't really think it would make a huge difference as far as Native American tolerance to European liquor goes. We know for fact that some North American groups, mostly in the Southwest, did have traditions of fermented beverages made from saguaro sap, agave nectar, cornmeal, and various fruits, yet alcoholism is still a major problem in Southwestern reservations. As Benkarnell suggested above, European distilled spirits were much more potent than anything the Native Americans could have conjured up.
 
The Mesoamericans to Oasesamerica had pulque,balche and tiswin. Black drink was common in Southeast with Mississippians through 1800's as well. So they did have fermented drinks but nothing really stronger and trade whiskey was notorious rotgut that was considered poison even back then. Let's face it, people from all races and lands have been looking for ways to get drunk all over the globe since the beginning.
 
Maple Syrup works very well as either the base or as an adjunct to alcoholic beverages.
I have made both a maple mead and for a long time I have made a maple stout. Unfortunately with the cost of syrup $50.00 plus a gallon I have stopped.
I see know reason except that the indians boiled there sap down into sugar.
If you are doing a Vinland thread have some norseman put some maple sugar in the beer and go from there. Most home brewers try many adjuncts.

Yep, I'm just getting started in home brewing and came across a really simple mead recipe that suggested maple syrup.

True; if you just use the sap without boiling it first the resulting liquor will be pretty weak stuff.

My understanding is that there isn't enough sugar in the straight sap to really get much in the way of fermentation.

Of course you're talking harvesting sap from hundreds of trees for a few gallons of liquor; not exactly a high return on your investment of time and effort. And that would be my explanation of why it was not done; the natives can't really afford the investment of time and effort required for that small a return, not when it takes away from more important activities like hunting to provide enough food to make it through the winter.

See calculations below.

It takes about five gallons of sap for each gallon of syrup. Here in Vermont they used to make sap beer at the end of the maple run. At that time the saps gets darker and thicker. You use it in place of water when making the beer. Just remember that distilling requires a bigger tech base than fermenting.

The numbers I was looking at suggested a quarter to half a gallon of syrup per ten to fifteen gallons of sap, the produce of one tree. And the recipes for maple wine seem to be running one gallon of syrup per five gallons of wine.

So, 1 tree's yeaply output = 5 gallons of wine.

And note, this would be fermented a la mead, not distilled.

It sounds like you're aiming to make this product more than a historical curiosity. What direction are you angling for?

The initial reaction, I have to suppose, is that the NAs would be well used to alcohol and would not succumb so badly to the introduction of distilled spirits from Europe. OTOH, those spirits would still be far stronger than anything that could be produced in Native America.

Curiosity mostly.

There's some speculation that the Iroquois did, in fact, make alcohol from fermented maple sap... At least, according to some old books of Iroquois cultural practices that I've read.

I don't really think it would make a huge difference as far as Native American tolerance to European liquor goes. We know for fact that some North American groups, mostly in the Southwest, did have traditions of fermented beverages made from saguaro sap, agave nectar, cornmeal, and various fruits, yet alcoholism is still a major problem in Southwestern reservations. As Benkarnell suggested above, European distilled spirits were much more potent than anything the Native Americans could have conjured up.

That's very interesting. I'll have to see what more I can dig up.

And ye, I didn't expect it to impact alcoholism. From what I understand, that's more to do with population genetics than exposure.

The Mesoamericans to Oasesamerica had pulque,balche and tiswin. Black drink was common in Southeast with Mississippians through 1800's as well. So they did have fermented drinks but nothing really stronger and trade whiskey was notorious rotgut that was considered poison even back then. Let's face it, people from all races and lands have been looking for ways to get drunk all over the globe since the beginning.

Forgot about black drink! But that was yaupon tea and was a caffine drink...
 
Here's a book that summarizes some of the findings related to Native American alcohol use north of Mexico:

http://books.google.com/books?id=B_y0ekzJvwQC&printsec=frontcover

If you do a search of the phrase "fermented drinks," you will find a link to page 92 which describes various indigenous, mildly-alcoholic beverages, including the Iroquois maple concoction, O'odham saguaro wine (also made from agave and mesquite, apparently), Apache tiswin made from corn, and a new one to me, wild grape wine made by Virginia tribes (probably Powhatan?).

Also, until recently it was thought that the Pueblo peoples did not make fermented beverages in the Pre-Columbian era, despite the traditional brewing of tiswin and other beers by their nomadic neighbors. This has recently been proven false by archaeologists (though most mainstream articles covering the rediscovery downplay its significance with the journalists' surprised lack of awareness that any Native Americans made alcohol pre-1492).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/2242165...rewed-long-ago-native-americans/#.T8xRsFI8V6Q
 
Osakadave use the sap instead of the water in the beer. You will still need the malt in the same quantities. It should give a nice subtle maple under flavor.
When I used Syrup as part of the beer I would put in about a half gallon for 5 gallons of beer and also purt in the malt.
Happy Brewing!
 
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