Merchantville Maple Porter is HERE at Eclipse Brewing! Yes, this beer, is made with syrup from Merchantville's own Sugar Maple trees. The Merchantville Maple Project, a hub of The Stockton Maple Project, was piloted this winter and early spring by Incredible Edible Merchantville. There was an outpouring of interest from workshop attendees and volunteers all over town who tapped trees, then collected and boiled sap over two months. Volunteers included many members of Merchantville's Sustainability Partner Organizations
like The Green Team, The Garden Club & The Shade Tree Commission who braved the elements to stoke the fire and pour off syrup.
As with all new projects - even those where we've received lots of education and training - IE took a trial and error approach - tackling challenges and problems as they arose. Our expectations were modest but we ended up boiling 900 gallons of sap, yieding 9.3 gallons of syrup, to bottle and sell in 6 ounce volumes at our Friday Night Farmers Markets. During the boiling and evaporation process we experienced an episode of oveheating near sugaring so we poured off 4 gallons of unuseable syrup and started anew. Rather than discard this syrup we reached out to Chris Mattern from Eclipse and begged the question...could he use our overheated syrup. Fortuately, the result is this unique and delicious dark porter. We look forward to sharing our syrup with Eclipse and other businesses in 2026!