To be filled with maple syrup barrels

Bruce was kind to take me through his new 45,000 square foot maple syrup warehouse facility, just about to come online. A lot of thought went into the design. Bruce is one of the people in the maple syrup business who sells enough and to sufficiently-sensitive food companies so as to have a lot of regulatory scrutiny on his operation. Some of the details in his warehouse may portend changes that will likely ripple through the maple syrup industry, for people selling maple at scale.

Bruce has an 18 inch curb around all internal sides of the buildings, for instance, to provide inspector access behind piles of full barrels. The receiving, storing and packing rooms are put in a certain fashion so that there can be a graduated set of cleanliness standards. In all, he mentioned a couple dozen items that most maple syrup makers will not think to design into a new facility until they’ve done it once or twice and had the food police come and look for trouble.

This new scrutiny, which is not a bad thing all around, might be a bit overkill for maple syrup, which isn’t as dangerous a product as, say, pork. Making forklift drivers in a maple syrup barrel warehouse wear hairnets, for instance, might be entertaining, but isn’t improving our food security. All that said, it’s coming our way, and it will likely be the sort of expensive compliance process that will drive the maple syrup business into farm gate producers versus big packers who can afford a 45,000 square foot maple syrup warehouse. This may prove to be a shift as significant as the dairy industry saw when they forced farmers to build milk houses in the early part of last century.

Price Check for Maple Syrup

Buying Maple Syrup, Price Predicting

If time allows, both will be updated prior to the next season. That will provide interesting longitudinal price data.

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.

Building on our maple syrup 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 bulk maple syrup sitting under our sink. Pressured up to 500 pounds per square inch, this guy will give us a year’s supply of maple syrup on demand.

We designed this originally for some of our small- and medium-scaled food manufacturer clients – folks like Ola Granola and Red Kite Candies, who use a significant amount of our maple syrup for their yummy products, and find it difficult to handle large barrels in their kitchen facilities. It turned out, though, that while the flow of maple syrup is fine for personal use, it’s too slow for efficient application when drawing a few cups at a time. But now we’re getting interest from folks looking to install a draft maple syrup system in their own kitchens. Nothing Vermontier than maple syrup on tap.

The problem that needed to get solved was transportation and dispensing of maple syrup to increasingly large bulk maple syrup customers. Once every couple months, I make the rounds in New England, delivering barrels of maple syrup to some very interesting – sometimes innovative – whole sale customers using maple syrup for everything from granola manufacturing to restaurant use to wedding favors, corporate gifts, all the way to theatrical blood simulation. A lot of these businesses have similar issues about storing wholesale maple syrup and using it in their various batch sizes, all the while trying to prevent it from spoiling, crystalizing, etc. Besides, open topped barrels are just plan sticky.

As with our bottles, boxes and other elements, I’ve discovered that borrowing items from other related industries creates a much better economy of scale than purchasing items designed specifically for maple syrup. For instance, our liter bottles of maple syrup fit into wine shippers that cost about one third as much as the equivalent box for the more obscure maple syrup container shapes.

Thus, I came up with the keg scheme for bulk maple syrup. They’re interchangeable, common, and have their own flourishing aftermarket of related products for moving, cleaning and doing pretty much anything to kegs.

The first thing I discovered when I hopped online to learn where to get one for experimentation, was that breweries own their own kegs, and it’s actually quite difficult to come by them. Only when I discovered a brewery going out of business did I get a chance to snag some.

On my way back up from one of these treks across New England, carrying my wholesale maple syrup rounds, I stopped last at the brewery in southern New Hampshire and picked them up. There, a nice young fellow showed me how to open them up and remove the mechanism in the middle that allows for dispensing and pressurization. What he didn’t realize was that the keg he was using as an example happened to have been sitting in the summer sun for a few months with the dregs of a soured stout. When he pushed in the spring-loaded ball, out shot a vile stream of beer-turned-vinegar, splashing all over us. I had 90 minutes to be back up in Vermont for an event, and I didn’t have a change of clothes.

Since then, though, the bulk maple syrup keg idea has taken on some steam. After acquiring some compressed gas tanks and various fittings, we have maple syrup dispensing out of some test kegs, and even have our first household client, who wishes to stick a keg under the sink and have a maple syrup tap on the kitchen counter. Because we’re using nitrogen to replace the air inside as it dispenses, aerobic bacteria cannot grow. Pretty clever, those beer-drinking people.

After a couple more weeks of testing, we’ll be confident that the mechanism won’t get gummed up with our maple syrup, which is just a bit thicker than most. After we do some refrigeration tests and carbonation tests, we’ll green-light the bulk maple syrup kegs to send on to a couple of our business clients.

In particular, we bolted on an I-beam just under the ridge beam, allowing a wheeled trolley to slide back and forth with very heavy loads. You can see from the picture on the right that we made the beam pop out the second story doors, allowing us to hoist loads from trucks below.

And given that our 55 gallon barrels of maple syrup weigh about 650 pounds, we added a surprisingly cheap winch crane to attach to the trolley. If this contraption doesn’t kill one of us, it’ll be very handy. Most of our bulk maple syrup, intended for wholesale use, will be hoisted up into this second story for storage over the year.

Once the barrels make it through the doorway, we can drop them onto dollies and push them around. To accommodate this, the floor system up there was built 12-inch-on-center, with heftier stringers than you’d put in a residential structure.

Just because they felt like it, the boys opted to build the barn post-and-beam. Its a pretty old-timey structure, with about all of the design conforming to specific sugaring use. That seemed like a compromise at first, but it’s the more beautiful for it.

Robert and the boys have since thought they  might build these sorts of structures for other folks, seeing how smoothly this one went up. They went and created the site Vermont Cedar Cabins and have been doing some work in this line.

Meanwhile, back at the barn, we need to get the 600 gallon sap tank installed up top. Lots of vacuum plumbing yet to be done. That tank will have a four-inch pipe coming out of it, where we can operate a big butterfly valve from below to start the sap filling up our utility vehicle tank for transport over to the sugar shack. This’ll be quite a tweaking process. It doesn’t take much time for a four-inch pipe of sap coming from 18 feet off the ground to get someone wet. Should be interesting.

I’ve set up a small finishing room in the back, and that’s been working out nicely. We’ll be able to get the barrels up stairs started with heating (purchased a used barrel warmer), and then pipe it on down to get to sterile temperatures for packing.

More typically, we see some very small crystals form in the bottom.

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.

(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.

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.