Wood Profiles - Sugar Maple/Sugar Maple Charcoal

[onewhiskyguy]

I've acquired a grip of woods. I'm currently at 16, but working on acquiring 20 more, or even more as I find suitable woods. I find this topic(http://ww.homedistiller.org/forum/viewt ... =4&t=33487" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow) interesting. Some of these woods are tried and true and very well known, but others are hardly used. I lurked around here for years and have tried a few of these and think it might be good to have a wood profile topic for each of these. My hope would be that people could discuss projects they have done, tasting profiles they have found, ideas relating to a specific type of wood. My personal interest is in Scotch type single malt Barley's. I hope to eventually have made a bottle for each type of wood and to let it age for years as I slowly taste. I want a Malt library unmatched by any other in the world.

I don't have any pictures as I used my last little bit. One cool thing about having Sugar Maple is being able to make charcoal.

For toasting I use Pigroasters profile to toast these(400F for 1 ¾ hours and 450F for 15 minutes. Result Medium Toast, 450F for 35 minutes for Heavy Toast). As I work my way through these I will likely char these to varying degrees. For making charcoal I just use an aluminum can(I found a pineapple juice can works for this purpose). You have to cook it on the grill to remove the lining. Once the lining is gone put your sugar maple sticks in it and cook at 450 for a few hours(Must keep the lid closed). It'll smoke a lot, but eventually you'll be able to tell that the sticks are black through and through, allow it to cool(or throw in water). I throw it in water believing that the temp differential creates lots of small cracks in the wood.

As far as flavor profiles I found that Sugar maple in a Bourbon recipe gives it a basic Maple Syrup flavor. The charcoal gives it the smokiness, but also blunts the taste noticably as it filter out some of the flavors. I think it works better for spicy, harsher spirits evening out the overall flavor.