Have you ever had maple syrup that didn’t seem quite right? You’ve poured it on your pancakes. It tastes a little weird. You sip it from the container… Oh, that’s even worse!
It may not just be you. First, maple syrup can go bad! If you haven’t seen our blog post, “Does Maple Syrup go bad?” check it out. Even if maple syrup has not exceeded it’s shelf life, it can still have an off-flavor and taste bad.
Here are a few categories to look for:
Nature
Sour Sap
A good friend once said to me, “Mother Nature: The hardest woman you’ll ever work for.” Boy, was she right! Sometimes mother nature just has her way with the syrup. You can have sour sap, perhaps it sat in the tanks too long before it was boiled? When the sour sap is boiled into syrup, it can have a ropy an appearance. When you hold it up to the lake, are there floaters? Chances are it’s ropy. It could be fermented, have a sour taste, or even chunky when you sip it. Yuck. Chunky.
Metabolism
Mother nature can also have an impact on the metabolism. This can make it taste grassy have a lack of maple flavor or even peanut butter flavors and leave your mouth dry.
Buddy
Finally mother nature can also make your syrup taste buddy. This means the trees were budding, but the sap was still running and it was later used to make maple syrup. Now, this syrup is still sometimes used for brewing beer – we know friends that still harvest this crop for this purpose!
Defoamer Challenges
Safflower, Vegetable and Canola Oil
There’s also the issue of defoamer challenges. Sometimes people use safflower or vegetable oils to prevent their maple syrup from boiling over. This can make your syrup, taste, oily, or waxy in your mouth. Another issue is if people use canola oil, this can make maple syrup, taste pungent at the finish or even sometimes spicy.
Processing
Burnt Flavor – Burned Pans & Niter
As you can imagine making maple syrup is quite the process. This means there’s many things that can also go wrong during this time. As an example, people have that try to use maple syrup that has burned in the pan can have syrup that taste burnt after. Additionally, if pans are not cleaned frequently, the residual impact of niter can be detected. This will often come across as a burnt flavor, chalky, and even gritty in your mouth.
Storage
Fermentation
Additional processing challenges include storage. Syrup that is not stored properly can ferment. This will make it yeasty, have an alcohol aroma, and even foamy and appearance. If it’s foamy, chances are the severe fermentation.
Metallic
The last challenge with processing syrup and storing it can be a metallic taste. This often happens when maple syrup is stored in a tin can. This will leave a metallic taste in the back of your mouth.
Chemicals
Perhaps your maple syrup tastes off because of chemicals. Here are a few examples: Minerals and niter can make maple syrup feel gritty. Chloride can make it taste salty. An acid can create an acid or caustic odor. These chemicals are often used in a cleaning process and if not rinsed, they can find their way to the syrup barrel.
Other Challenges
Even after we covered, all of that, there are still some things that can go wrong! Maple syrup can get musty or moldy. It can have a perfume or floral aroma caused from the use of different detergents. Finally, things like lubricants and fuels can make us way into maple syrup. Even filters can cause defects from misuse or miss handling of syrup filters.
Perhaps, you are interested in learning more about how to sample maple syrup. Check out University of Vermont Map of Maple to learn more! Don’t forget to review our blog post, “Maple Connoisseur.”
Let’s hear from you!
Tell me – what’s the worst off-flavor you’ve detected? Let us know in the comments below!
In the meantime, if you want to see what some of the best syrup on the planet taste like jump over to our website and key in BestFlavorEver to get 15% off your maple syrup order.
References
University of Vermont (n.d.) “Map of Maple.” Retrieved from: https://www.uvm.edu/sites/default/files/Map-of-Maple.pdf
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About the author:
Stephanie Lussier, Owner
Agribusiness entrepreneur. Beginner blogger. Wife, Mama, Adventure seeker and Lover of Mother Nature. I’m not sure where this blog will go, but thank you for following along.
Disclaimer:
Some of these blog posts are created for a Social Media Marketing class at Southern New Hampshire University. The review of case studies is used to prompt discussion and blog topics. It’s a lot of fun finding connections with scholarly topics and our farm!
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