Buidling on our [keg concept] from some months ago, Ellie and I installed a system the new counter top that sits on our dishwasher. For less than $50, we purchased the hardware needed to have a professional draft beer tap hooked into a 13 gallon keg of maple syrup sitting under our sink. Pressured up [...]

We packed some of our Grade A Dark Amber maple syrup into our square bottles a few nights ago. We pack it strong. They were left overnight on the cold concrete floor, as temperatures dipped pretty low. The maple syrup at that temperature can keep only so much sugar in solution, so some of it [...]

Retailers across the country have priced maple syrup higher than what government sources report. This year it became pretty clear that the maple syrup pricing reports don’t square with what we see in stores, so we went out and collected our own data set. One key difference between this and what a group like the [...]

It’s the stuff of maple syrup marketer nightmares: your ad appears on a site juxtaposed against content that puts your product in the worst possible light. When airlines sign ad contracts with TV networks, they have provisions for the ads to be pulled during news cycles covering plane crashes. But, no matter how much care [...]

We tend to make our maple syrup overstrength, ranging from 70 percent solids to 72 percent solids, about two to four percent higher than Vermont recommends. We just like it that way, even though some sugar comes out of solution in the form of crystals over time. When consumed before that happens, though, the extra [...]

Back in 1982, the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station put together a large series of studies into one document to help sugar makers employ some of the more interesting recent findings. That document is available here.
Some highlights:
- A good deal of what we know (which is still pretty incomplete) about how and why sap flows
- Optimal [...]

There is an art to sending maple syrup, especially if you’re sending a large volume, and extra especially if you want to spend less on shipping than you do on making syrup. Decisions early in the process – such as which bottle shapes you use, and which sizes you offer customers – come to have [...]

After reading data from the a wide variety of overlapping sources, I made a stab at predicting the average price of syrup for 2009. You can skip the rest of this if you’re looking for the dollar figure. That’s $3.16 per pound, or $36 per gallon in 2009. I know that will disappoint many producers [...]

Different states will have slightly different terms sometimes, but syrup grade systems are essentially the same: they all are based solely on the color of the syrup, and the lighter the syrup the “higher” the grade. In Vermont, the grades start at Grade A Fancy and move on, in order, to Grade A Medium Amber, [...]

This overview shows how people take the fluid in the veins of trees and concentrate it to make maple syrup. You can search this site for more specific articles on each aspect, but here it is briefly all in one place.
For some unknown reason, sugar maple trees produce much, much more sap and much sweeter [...]