Moving Maple Syrup Barrels

This’ll be a two-day process of refiltering the maple syrup, heating it up in the finishing pan and transferring it in batches into our packing unit. We’ll be dealing with three different maple syrup grades from three different barrels, putting it into containers ranging from five gallons to 50 ml maple leafs. That should set us up to be ready for demand in the next few months, as we expect to have less time available with the coming baby.

One element I’ve been thinking about: if we’re boiling down extra strong, the sugar content of that syrup is obviously higher than normal. A New Hampshire syrup might be below 68 percent sugar. A Vermont syrup should be just above 68 percent. We’ll pack it at about 70 or so. But when the sugar comes out of solution like this, folks say it’s just back to normal syrup. Except, I think it’s not. You see, those sugar crystals don’t taste like maple syrup. They’re just pure sugar. Which means that all the extra maple flavor associated with that volume of syrup remains in the bottle. Here is a picture of the same bottle in the evening…

[This is, quite literally, stored energy]

I need to test this more carefully, but I believe that a bottle of overstrength maple syrup that has been brought back to normal strength through sugar crystals forming will have a higher rate of maple syrup flavor than a bottle that was just brought to normal density in the first place. We could probably best test this with some Grade A Fancy, where the normal strength maple syrup lacks the strong flavor of the darker grades of maple syrup. Sounds like a great excuse to do another tasting.

The method I used to draw this conclusion has two key flaws, one obvious and the other less so. The obvious flaw is the fact that we cannot precisely predict the 2009 crop. However, we can use the running averages and trends, and factor in new developments (such as the vastly increased equipment sales) to predict various pluses and minuses. We must also apply that same logic to the changes in demand, such as the delayed effect of large food industry players moving away from maple to protect themselves from high prices and volatility.

The less obvious flaw in the system is the fact that the world market is largely controlled by the Canadians, who have in there very Canadian fashion set up a bureaucracy that holds over oversupply from one year and dumps it on a future year, making charts of production versus price a somewhat indirect measure of actual supply. We have a few data points we can throw in on this, and I have calls in to various Canadian bureaus to see if they’ll part with the specifics of their market movements over the past five years. If I can find that, I’ll update the model.

[Update: on 12/21/08, I received Bascom's new catalog in which Bruce Bascom writes on 2009 pricing. He predicts $2.50 to $3.00 per pound on the table grades, with commercial grade coming in about half a dollar lower. That translates to a Grade A price of $28.50 to $34.20 per gallon. Bruce has a vested interest in low producer prices, but he has proven highly accurate in the past.]

(Data to 2007 from USDA. 2008 estimates from Bascom report on market.)

The chart above shows the relative production of Canada and the U.S. in terms of gallons of syrup. The obvious trend: the proportion of Canadian production that the U.S. is also able to produce roughly doubled from 17 percent in 2003 to 34 percent in 2008. This trend is due largely to weather happenstance, particularly in the latter two years. Combined, the world’s two maple producing countries produced much less syrup over this same time period.

This fall-off in production forced the marketing board that controls bulk syrup sales in Quebec to dip into their once-overflowing stockpiles, depleting them in 2007. It is that depletion that is likely the single most shocking event to the market, causing wholesale and retail prices in 2008 to burgeon from the 30’s to the 50’s and 60’s.

[Footnote 1: A cross-town neighbor actually engaged in local syrup arbitrage earlier in the year, noticing that some of the producers - who generally run to the older and crankier sort - were insisting on selling syrup in the low $30s, probably out of embarrassment for charging anything higher. This fellow went around asking to by batches in 50 gallons and 100 gallons, with the intent on unloading it on one of the big packers, which at the time were paying $44 per gallon.]

The reason both the wholesale and retail prices are roughly the same shows a wonderful and curious example of the sort of microeconomics of small towns that doesn’t often make it into the textbooks. The books might refer to it as a lack of “price elasticity,” but that doesn’t begin to cover the social dynamics that affect the retail price of maple. Most maple producers are small-scale in the U.S., and less so in Canada. These small producers don’t have the scale to conduct formal marketing, transport their syrup great distances or generally waste much time on the whole affair. They sell to friends and family, over the years developing a highly valuable customer list that year-in and year-out allows them to sell all their crop. These individuals on the list feel as though they are – and they are – on the inside track with something very special. There is a relationship between these small-time farmers and their customers that doesn’t abide 40 percent price hikes in a year – no matter the global commodity price rationale.

Yesterday evening I had a phone conversation with a producer on the other side of town. I had a big order I couldn’t fill by myself, and I was trying to marshal together a few of us to meet the demand. As most folks around here, she was sold out, but she added that she’d sold her gallons at $48 a piece. I pointed out that she could sell it wholesale to Maple Grove for $50.16. She replied that she knew that, but that she’d spent more than 20 years building that list and she’d be darned if she were to do it over again.

It seems that in the U.S. market, there is a price premium effect due to the non-commodity nature in which the product is often sold, yet this price is very inelastic when price pressures attempt to move it upward.

U.S. producers almost always sell a higher proportion of their product at retail than the Canadians do, which makes for a generally higher average price as well in the U.S. This is not only because of the retail premium, but also because the smaller sizes that are typically the best sellers at retail command a further sizing premium. Canadians, with their enormous operations, sell the brunt of their product in bulk and wholesale.

[Footnote 2: It should be noted that the USDA data on pricing among states and sizes does not seem accurate in some aspects. In particular, at the lower size packages they appear to show an inversion in the retail and wholesale prices, which is highly unlikely. This may be due to a low number of people in their poll at these more obscure sizes. Similarly the full gallon pricing is very volatile in the past year or two, as many, if not most retailers stopped selling the size in favor of the higher-margin pints and half-pints. The Maine prices also did not look at all consistent with prices I checked in the summer of 07 along the coast. While I was in just one area, it was the expensive area, and in high tourist season, so the fact that I was seeing lower prices makes me think this data set should be used with caution.]

(Data from USDA and StatCan)

The chart above shows the movement of prices over the past six years, showing the general price – which really means the U.S. and Canada – in blue, with the red line of the U.S-only price above it. Figures for 2008 are estimated based on current December 2008 wholesale price offers from New England packers (which currently range from $44 to $50.16) and an informal competitive survey of retail syrup prices sold during the same period.

Over the time period shown in the chart above, the Quebecois have depleted their syrup reserves – the last drop reportedly being sold in 2007. This may help explain the ground the Canadians seem to be making up, pulling somewhat closer to price parity with their southern neighbors. Two warnings on this assumption:

- About 56 percent of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. That’s several times what the Americans make themselves, so pretending that U.S. and Canadian markets are discrete is a bit deceptive.- Maple producers in Quebec have strict reporting requirements designed to limit bulk sales outside of their Federation marketing scheme. If producers there evade that scheme by selling syrup at the higher U.S. rates directly, the lack of reporting on those transactions would – and probably does – skew the U.S./Canada pricing data.

- When wholesale prices ratchet up, as they have in the past two years, it opens up a much greater temptation for U.S. producers to skip the hassle and expense of retail operations, with both price and friction factors coming into that decision. In fact, we see that surface in the data, with the USDA reporting that all New England states but New Hampshire showing significant movement from retail to bulk and wholesale sales methods between 2006 and 2007. I expect that trend to continue at a faster pace in 2008 due to the spike in wholesale prices. This may also be affected by a trend away from old-school hobby bucket operations – which tend to be retail-only – and toward larger mainline operations. That trend depresses U.S. prices as seen from the producer’s perspective.

Which brings us to the relationship between the supply and the price. We see the prices going up in the chart above. Look at the one below, where the annual production figures are pasted in…

(Data from USDA, StatCan, Federation des producteurs acericoles du Quebec. First data point is 2003, on left. Right-most data point is 2008.)

This certainly suggests that declining production spiked prices, but the real story is a bit more complex than that. The second to last set of data (2007) shows the biggest production decline, yet the price rose merely along with the continuing trend. This is likely because, according to Bascom, the Canadians dropped their last batch of reserve syrup (about 35 million pounds) on the market that year, more than making up for the supply drop. And then, in 2008, the unmoderated market forces broke loose as supply sank with no reserves to make up for the deficit.

THE DEMAND SIDE

The demand side is poorly understood. We have a great deal of public data on the production side, and even some on the supply side, with the Canadian market moves, but our understanding of the demand side is still wrapped up in an old fashioned and increasingly out-of-date impression who buys maple syrup and why.

The map below shows the geographic breakdown of domestic interest in a maple syrup sales message to a maple retail website during the holiday season 2008. Interest is consistent with population centers, not surprisingly. Actual transaction data showed increased interest in those regions of the country (Northwest, San Francisco, Colorado, Alaska and Hawaii) where children of Vermonters are more likely to settle.

While it may be true that pancakes are pointless without maple syrup, there are a lot of other reasons why people use maple syrup. The rise in Polynesian and other Asian-style “fusion” cooking has added demand, along with the Maple Syrup Diet – a terribly disgusting fad weight loss program that is best not described – as well as the opening of new sizable markets in Japan and Germany, along with their respective currencies rise against the U.S. dollar.

For our purposes of determining syrup price for 2009, it’s instructive to see how these trends are moving relative to this past year.

- Asian and other culinary interest: Very consistently positive

- Maple Syrup Diet: Fading fast

- Japanese, German, other markets opening: Very consistently positive, with perhaps downside risk temporarily due to economic troubles. This may be somewhat offset by decreasing shipping prices.

- Currency exchange rate effect: The U.S. dollar has strengthened quite a bit since its days of falling earlier in 2008, although it has not made up lost ground. Interestingly, Canadian exports to Germany declined 54 percent in 2007, made up with commensurate gains in exports by U.S. sugar producers. This is very likely due to the U.S. dollar’s decline versus the Loonie.

Domestic direct consumption will likely prove a slightly downward trend in light of the current prices. Domestic industrial consumption is likely to move downward faster, as companies that required plant resetting time in order to accommodate a more reasonably-priced sweetener will likely come online in 2009, reducing commercial demand as a latent effect to 2008’s very high prices.

The net of all of this – heavily weighted to the domestic consumption side of things – is rather negative. We have seen demand rising in all of the preceding years, and next year is likely to be the first where that actually reverses.

Bascomb Maple Farms, the biggest market maker in New England, writes on its website that the world demand for maple is about 110- to 120 million pounds of syrup. In 2007, that was about what was supplied when the surplus was added back in by the Canadians. In 2008, only about 80 to 90 million pounds of syrup hit the market, as that was all that was produced and was available. Which means that there is quite a bit of demand that can leave for other sweeteners without necessarily jumping prices down drastically.

One hidden factor is how much demand was lost in the current 2008 pricing regime. We know we sold only those 80 to 90 million pounds, but we cannot know how much more we could have sold at those prices. I think it is safest to assume additional supply would have significantly affected prices. We see evidence of that regionally, where Maple Grove in Vermont offered wholesale prices about eight percent higher than Bascom’s during the year. Visiting the Maple Grove website at different times over 2008, the larger sized packages were out of stock, or taken down entirely, replaced by very small packages at relative premiums. This caused the average price per gallon of their sales to be extraordinarily high.

It was only a couple years ago, the industry used to stratify their pricing based on grade. Those days are over, with the advent of bubbler systems that change the color of syrup. It seems that the new stratification mechanism is unit size, and retailers can create an impression of great demand and price by not carrying the larger sizes. This is a volatile situation, as the reverse is true as well. Faced with a normal crop and low demand, retailers will price the product to move, and in the face of fewer transactions will increase the unit size. This will quite possibly happen in 2009, creating a record price decline to match the record price rise.

2009 PRODUCTION

Ask an experienced sugarer how the next year looks, and almost always, you’ll get a sour answer. Listing the reasons why things probably won’t go well makes a normal year seem all the more positive. That sugarer has a lot of evidence on his side this year.

People have been making very deliberate efforts and capital expenditures to increase their production capability for the 2009 season. The two largest equipment manufacturers in northern New England indicate they are having near record years for major capital equipment, such as upgraded evaporators and technologies such as reverse osmosis and various types of preheaters and preboilers, perhaps due to sugarmakers attempting to take advantage of the high prices. Those near record revenues, however, may also come from the record steel prices that factor into their equipment.

The Federation des producteurs acericoles du Quebec announced it is increasing quota amounts among its farmers by 12 percent this year, encouraging still more production increases.

If the weather cooperates with a “normal” season, North American sugarmakers should be producing roughly 10 million gallons of syrup, a 10 to 15 percent rise over the average actual production of the earlier part of this decade, which back then was then supplemented with reserve syrup.

If that comes to pass, the effect on price will depend on how quickly that supply is brought to market. The maple sugar industry typically has a short season with a long dormant season, encouraging many operations to dump syrup on the market at the same time, around late April. If wholesalers and packers determine that the season is a normal or good one, they will likely low-ball the price early on in the hopes that a great deal of April and May syrup will flow to them. Only if the season appears to be poor through the first month or so will packers be willing to offer the price premiums seen in 2008.

Precedent shows that supply will be brought to the market in large chunks early on, encouraging a return to the pricing regime of 2005 and 2006, when (coupled with Quebecois maple syrup reserves returned to the market) effective supply was around 10 million gallons. A possible downside risk is that demand will have been more stymied than many sugarers anticipate, having caused a lot of pain on the part of industrial companies using maple syrup as an ingredient. Those companies changing their recipes and processes would likely be able to roll out the reformulated products only in 2009.

MOST LIKELY SCENARIO

Because of this relatively pessimistic brew of factors, I predict average syrup prices in the U.S. to be about $36 per gallon in 2009 among the higher-paying packers. That translates to $3.16 per pound of syrup. With demand subsiding and supply returning to “normal,” the price could be lower than that, but I am also anticipating that the most recent price records will provide pressure on sugarmakers to withhold syrup from wholesalers in an effort to exploit what they perceive as a less price sensitive retail market. The $3.00 per pound of syrup psychological barrier may provide a great deal of price support at that level as well.

OTHER SCENARIOS

The pessimistic scenario would involve prices seen in the earlier part of this decade, around the $28 per gallon mark. There is limited downside risk below that point because of the likely market actions that the Quebec federation would take if syrup prices were to fall further.

The optimistic scenario would involve either a poor season’s production, a more controlled release of the year’s crop onto the market, and/or the growth of international markets despite curtailed consumer spending. Pricing would average about $40 per gallon.Barring ice storms or other acts of God, I do not see prices returning to the $50 per gallon at wholesale level once 2009 production starts to flow.

As always, I welcome feedback on the data and logic used for this analysis. Please feel free to comment either publicly below, or by emailing me privately. Perhaps readers will be able to contribute further data points and additional observations.

CITATIONS:

Agri-Food Canada

http://www.ats-sea.agr.gc.ca/supply/3310_e.htm

Industry Canada

ic.gc.ca

la Federation des producteurs acericoles du Quebec

http://www.siropderable.ca/AxisDocument.aspx?id=503&langue=en&download=true&document=Info-sirop_ete_2008.pdf

USDA

http://www.nass.usda.gov/Statistics_by_State/New_England_includes/Publications/0605mpl.pdf

Bascom Maple Farms

http://www.maplesource.com/Press_Room/Releases/2008_crop_report.pdf

(Kit used for grading syrup samples by color)

Grades of maple syrup probably cause more confusion than clarification. They meant one thing a hundred years ago, another thing five years ago, and now new technologies have yet again shifted the significance of the various grades.

The upshot: the closer to Grade A Fancy, the lighter the color. In the past, those grades also meant “more subtle flavor” to those who liked light syrup and “less flavor” to those who were fans of the darker stuff. But nowadays, due to the new technologies that lighten the color of syrup, there is less of a connection between grade and flavor. This new factor is now reflected in the syrup market, where maple producers are being paid the same amount of money for Grade A Fancy syrup and Grade A Dark Amber syrup.

The Evolution of Grades

Since before the Civil War, and especially during the Civil War, New England maple sugar was the primary sweetener used locally. The country’s poor transportation network, and the great distance to the can sugar plantations down south caused that sweetener to be more expensive. Almost all maple production was made into granulated sugar, rather than the syrup we most often see today. Because this was used in great quantities in cooking, people often wanted to avoid the strong maple flavor, depending on the dish. Cooks preferred the lightest and least flavorful maple sugar, which is why the top of the grading scheme is reserved for the lightest syrup.

Today, maple sugar is sold mostly in the form of syrup, usually for a few specialty purposes where the strong maple flavor is very desirable. Many consumers mistakenly think that the higher the grade, the more maple flavor it will have. An old professor of mine who used to sugar nearby once did a taste test at the local country store to see what local folks actually preferred. He determined two things: that everyone likes free syrup taste testings, and that if people can’t see what their tasting, they tend to like either Grade A Medium Amber or Grade A Dark Amber.

The Destruction of Grades

A very few years ago, some producers introduced a bubbler machine into the maple boiling process, with the intent of allowing air bubbles to create yet more surface area through which water could be evaporated out of the boiling sap. It actually worked, and to the surprise of all, lightened the syrup grade to boot. No one knows why or how; probably something to do with an interference with a complex set of protein reactions known as Maillard reactions that give maple syrup its color and flavor. The sap going in would have made dark syrup, and the final product does indeed taste just like dark syrup, but the bubble process took away much of the color.

Not a lot of producers started using the bubbler machines, but the ones who did install the expensive machinery were some of the largest syrup producers in the country, trying to squeeze out yet more efficiencies in their operations. The result: a huge additional quantity of Fancy syrup that doesn’t actually taste at all like Fancy. Consumers now can’t tell the flavor of the syrup from the color, so grading is more an exercise in tradition than anything more useful.

Alternate Grading Systems

If you think about it, there are two different variables that really matter with maple syrup, after the basics such as cleanliness and clarity are taken care of. There is flavor, and there is thickness. The Canadians put together a “flavor wheel,” that sets out many different subtle flavor aspects together. Using that flavor wheel would make you sound like a wine snob when tasting syrup: “this has a hint of blooming flowers with a woody finish.” Some University of Vermont folks are putting together a less foofy version of that wheel, but I still wonder if it should be considered a wheel at all, instead of merely a list of known flavor possibilities.

Small syrup producers often find that their unique operations produce different flavors than the traditional “maple” flavor you get when you mix hundreds of producers’ products together. These individual flavors can sometimes be especially wonderful, and a few producers are actively marketing their syrup as unique flavors, as do wine makers or cheese makers.

State regulators have long put requirements on a syrup’s thickness, mostly so that customers don’t get cheated with dilute syrup, and thereby hurt the reputation of the syrup produced in the state. Most states call a solution with 66 percent solids in it syrup, and Vermont goes a little further, requiring at least 67.1 percent. That might seem a trivial difference, but it is not. The human tongue is especially sensitive to the difference in texture of fluids between 65 and 70 percent solids, with most people being able to easily tell you which of two fluids is the thicker, even with solutions separated by only 0.1 percent solids.

I have a theory as to why this is. I suspect humans evolved that taste sensitivity because foodstuffs like syrup that are above 67 percent solids have so little water in them that most molds and bacteria cannot grow well in them. Fluids with just 62 percent solids are fantastic places for pathogens to grow, so perhaps those forebears of ours with less sensitive tongues didn’t make it through life long enough to pass on their insensitive tongues to us.

Syrup finished off to 68 percent solids has a thick, smooth feel to it that makes it seem like a meal. Syrup finished to 66 percent feels thin and runny. Syrup finished much past 68 percent solids packs a super flavor punch and thick texture, but over time loses its thickness to sugar crystals that come out of solution, usually at the bottom of the bottle. It’s a special treat that can’t last very long, so people typically don’t sell it. Last year we made a special “Overstrength Reserve” run that proved very popular. It started out about 72 percent solids, and was great sipping straight out of a wine glass.

While I would like to see subtle gradations of thickness be incorporated in a new grading standard, the state folks, when they get around to creating one, will almost certainly use flavor as the controlling factor. This will make grading syrup much harder to do, and less consistent, but much, much more informative.

I replied that it is, and that by indicating “Vermont maple syrup” on the label, it’s required to be both. But I also realized that most maple users aren’t familiar with the terms, and the profusion of various labels actually does the industry a bit of a disservice by causing uncertainty.

Here’s the upshot:

- You want to make sure the maple syrup you buy is just maple syrup, and not some maple-flavored corn syrup concoction. If you get the cane sugar or corn syrup variety of syrups, you might as well just use store-bought cane sugar. It’ll taste pretty much the same and serve your sweetening needs. It will not, however, contain the soulful flavor of the sap that runs through trees at the break of winter.

- If the label says “Vermont maple syrup,” you’re fine. There’s actually a nice fellow here in Vermont whose job it is to go around trying syrup and making sure that no one is selling an adulterated product. Syrup from other states can probably be trusted if it has on it the label “100 percent pure.” This fellow who wrote in today taught me a lesson, and I’ll probably add that language onto our next batch of labels, with the expectation that most people can’t be bothered to know all this.

- Speaking of the different states, I have to relate an old story handed down about the sugarers in the different northern New England states. Back in the heyday of buckets, people would once in a while find a red squirrel drowned in sap when they came to collect from the trees. The story goes that in Maine, the sugarer would throw out the sap and the squirrel, wash the bucket and then set it back up. In New Hampshire, sugarers just throw out the squirrel and keep the sap. In Vermont, the sugarer throws out the collects the sap and makes sure to remember to wring out the squirrel to get the last drop. Of course, I’ve heard this story with any combination of those and other states in various orders. It’s considered politic to use your own state as the punchline.

- Back in the 1870s, syrup grades made a lot of sense. Ever since then, they haven’t. Back during the Civil War, people up here used maple sugar as their primary sweetener, having lost access to most of their cane sugar supply, and it being so expensive to ship it great distances. As a result, the most flavorless syrup – the lightest – was the most highly valued. This was the basis for our current grades, with Grade A Fancy being the least flavorful. The different states have slightly different terms for the grades, but you can use Vermont’s as the basic model: Grade A Fancy, Grade A Medium Amber, Grade A Dark Amber, Grade B, Commercial. The further you go along that list, the darker the syrup (in fact, as of now grade is determined solely by color). Usually, the further you go along that list, the more flavorful the syrup. Most people find that in taste tests they prefer something close to Medium Amber or Dark Amber, as they are quite flavorful, but not quite so strong as the others, which can often also have caramel and other “off flavors.” In another post, I’ll deal with the fact that new technology has broken the link between color and flavor, but for now suffice it to say that people paying more for Fancy syrup are more often not getting what they would prefer, were they to know the difference. This is one reason why prices for Fancy syrup, once at a premium, are just about equal to most of the lower grades.

(This is medium amber held to the light)

- TillinghastMaple.com has been conducting a rolling poll of people’s preferences for syrup grades and thicknesses. People who indicate that they feel they know their favorite most often choose Medium Amber. In most years, the vast majority of our syrup produced is Medium Amber and Dark Amber. As the season rolls along, syrup tends to get darker as it is produced, in part because of metabolism reactions in the tree sap and in part because of the collected carbon and other elements collecting on equipment as it is used through the season.

- Different regions have different syrup flavors, but my own informal research into this seems to show that very local conditions and production methods produce these flavors. I don’t find that a particular region of a state has a consistent flavor, but rather that individual sugar producers have consistently different flavors, and that these flavors may or may not be different from those produced by their neighbors. As a syrup shopper, you should try several different syrups over time and home in on the ones you prefer best. If you’re not buying syrup from multiple places each year, to have side-by-side tests, then you’re just never going to see this wonderful variation. For the record, my favorite syrup isn’t produced by me. There’s a fellow in the town next door named Gerard Stevens whose syrup would, in the words of my grandfather “put hair on your chest.”

First some useful facts:

- Syrup brought to proper thickness (>67 percent sugar) won’t develop any molds. Any syrup you purchase should already be to this density, so you shouldn’t have to thicken it.

- However, temperature changes can sometimes allow a microlayer of water to form on top of that syrup through condensation. That sugary water layer is a perfect environment for things to grow.

- Syrup packed between 180 and 190 degrees Fahrenheit will start off sterile, making it very difficult for growths to take hold, so long as the container is air-tight.

- Raising syrup past 190 degrees can cause certain particles called sugar sand to come out of solution, causing the syrup to become a little cloudy. This affects appearances, but not flavor or texture.

- Hot syrup spilled on people will continue to burn for a great deal of time. It is much more dangerous than hot water, so you need to take great care not to allow the hot syrup to touch anyone.

So, with these facts in mind, here is a series of steps to take a gallon of syrup and repack it – a common task.

(How NOT to heat of syrup. John with is “mini evaporator”)

1- Take your smaller containers and make sure they are clean. My favorite smaller container is the classic Ball jar – either a quart or a pint. Boiling them is best, but some people just pour the hot syrup right in out of the package, as it will sterilize anything inside. For more on container choices, click <a href=”/2008/11/29/containers-and-maple-syrup.aspx”>here</a>.

2- Set them aside, with caps off or ready to be taken off, in a place where you can comfortably and safely pour.

3- Heat up the syrup in a stovetop pot that has a very steady handle, or better still, two handles. Insert a candy thermometer in the fluid so you can get a sense for how quickly it is heating up. Optimally, you will just hit 190 degrees. The longer that syrup is hot, the darker it will get, and the thicker it will get, although it would take some time to increase the syrup’s grade or make it so thick as to cause texture problems.

4- Once the syrup makes it to temperature, turn off the heat. Then, pour the syrup into the containers, trying to leave only a little space left over. These relatively full containers will provide less room for air, which can hold moisture that can later condense. You will spill some syrup in this process; just make sure you don’t spill it on you.

5- Immediately affix the caps onto the containers and tighten them. If you are using jars, you will likely want to be wearing gloves for this, as they get quite hot. If you would rather not wear gloves, you might try putting the caps on after each pour, as the glass will not yet have absorbed as much heat from the syrup.

6- Turn the containers over on their sides, so that the heat of the syrup can sterilize the underside of the cap. Leave them there for 10 minutes, and then turn them upright.

7- Space the containers out to cool. If you stick them next to each other, they will take a great deal longer to cool, and they will darken.

Once you complete this process, you can use the smaller containers one at a time to ensure your year’s syrup supply lasts without growing anything interesting on top. In general, you can expect packed syrup to last about a year before it does something bad – usually developing a growth or sometimes just fermenting. Once you open syrup, put it in the refrigerator, and so long as it doesn’t develop a layer of moister on top, it will last a similar amount of time.

Oldtimers say that when syrup molds over, you can cohesively pour off the junk on top and just continue to use it. We prefer to just make more. If your syrup ferments, it is a sad and completely lost cause.