Maple Syrup

I ordered some dark amber maple syrup from a producer from Oneida, NY (http://daveandjoanssugarhouse.com/) that I met on the Forestry Forum and was reminiscing about visiting my grandfather up in Lowville when I was a kid and the good times spent stoking the fire at his friend's sugar shack. He told me times had changed just a bit:

[FONT=&quot]"Ted,.... You’re welcome to come stoke a fire again for old times sake. Today however, we use vacuum to enable us to get more sap and to move it to a collection tank, then we reduce it using Reverse Osmosis to anywhere from 8% sugar up to about 14-15% sugar, all before it goes into the evaporator, thus cutting time and firewood to less than 20% of what it would have been. I have a 3x8 evaporator and with the concentrated sap feeding it, I can draw about 7 gal./hr. Far faster than the 5-6 qts I got before investing in the RO.[/FONT]"

Hmm, interesting - you'd think that would affect the flavor because the long slow cooking should cause some carmelization and maybe maillard reactions (and thus a darker color and richer flavor).

I think I need a selection of maple syrups prepared in various methods to do comparisons on... For Science!

I think it's still getting the cook. He's just starting with a higher sugar concentrate and reducing some of that boil off time.

Ted Calver said:

I think it's still getting the cook. He's just starting with a higher sugar concentrate and reducing some of that boil off time.

Click to expand...

Which in no way obviates my desire to do a delicious taste test, worst case I get a bunch of maple syrup.. best case I get a bunch of maple syrup!

Their web page under the "Our Story" section has quite an interesting description of the evolution of a maple syrup processing house from nano to (roughly I think) micro. Pretty neat stuff.

Side note; Ted clearly knows whats going on but for those that might be confused grade B and dark amber is the good stuff, grade A is for folks who don't like an intense maple flavor (nothing wrong with liking bland food, if that's your thing).