The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are promoting a boycott of Canadian maple syrup. They’re not so much concerned with the abuse of maple trees as they are the annual seal harvest. PETA apparently believes that getting folks to stop using maple syrup from Canada will bludgeon our northern neighbors sufficiently that [...]
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 [...]
This has to be categorized as taking one for the team. I was eager (at first) to test out three different fake maple syrup flavorings I ordered over the internet. But then I smelled them, and boy, it was a learning experience.
[The culprits]
Fake maple syrup is typically made with sugar, some sort of chemical thickener, [...]
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 [...]
I got an email from a recent customer today asking whether or not our syrup is “100 percent maple” and “pure.” He noticed that neither term was mentioned on the label, while it’s plastered on many others.
I replied that it is, and that by indicating “Vermont maple syrup” on the label, it’s required to be [...]
Nothing beats glass for a great looking syrup package, not to mention preserving flavor. The problem, though, is that you have to finish your syrup just right for it to consistently look good in glass over the long-haul. We like to make our syrup extra-thick, and this sort of syrup develops sugar crystals eventually, clouding [...]