Confession - Never had real maple syrup...

Hmm 20W-50 Maple. Fridge to table to hot pancakes, no change...
Haha! Admittedly, a lot of the conventional corn syrup brands are about as viscous as Aeroshell W100. Too thick for my liking! :)
 
What's funny about that?

Generally when you ask an American to name any strategic reserve, they will name the Strategic Oil Reserve. It's vitally important to us for national defense, economic stability, protection against worldwide catastrophes etc.

So when Canada names something a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, we find it amusing.
 
Generally when you ask an American to name any strategic reserve, they will name the Strategic Oil Reserve. It's vitally important to us for national defense, economic stability, protection against worldwide catastrophes etc.

So when Canada names something a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, we find it amusing.
I was experimenting with being ironic sans emojis. I'll chalk that one up as a failed experiment. :)
 
The party place in Kandahar was the Canadians' tent. They had all the good stuff. Horton's coffee and doughnuts and beer.

They all had maple syrup, sent from Grandma or Crazy Uncle Joe. That stuff was concentrated as hell and dominated anything it was poured on. Nothing like it anywhere (other than Canada)!
 
Generally when you ask an American to name any strategic reserve, they will name the Strategic Oil Reserve. It's vitally important to us for national defense, economic stability, protection against worldwide catastrophes etc.

So when Canada names something a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, we find it amusing.

Well, it's not necessarily something to brag about, that Americans have a history of insecurity with oil that required the establishment of the oil reserve. Canadians have not been in such a position of insecurity. (They've got way more oil than their population requires, so that they're the world's third largest exporter of oil.) Given that they're in such a good position with oil, if they want to have a Strategic Reserve of syrup, or beer, or fuzzy slippers, or whatever, well, good on them.
 
We got ours during a trip to Vermont. Damn that stuff was good. The Costco syrup actually comes pretty close to what we got in Vt. Cheaper too, if you add in the airplane trip.

We had such a good time Vermont. I do want to get back there some day.

This is exactly our experience. We spent two weeks in Vermont several years ago, and brought a quart of syrup home with us. Since then it's all we use, and the Costco stuff is pretty good. Vermont is a beautiful state with nice people.
 
The party place in Kandahar was the Canadians' tent. They had all the good stuff. Horton's coffee and doughnuts and beer.

They all had maple syrup, sent from Grandma or Crazy Uncle Joe. That stuff was concentrated as hell and dominated anything it was poured on. Nothing like it anywhere (other than Canada)!
I wonder if you ever ran into my brother-in-law there: big guy, senior Canadian NCO in signals with an interest in wines (now retired, and I won't post his name publicly here for reasons you'll understand).
 
This is exactly our experience. We spent two weeks in Vermont several years ago, and brought a quart of syrup home with us. Since then it's all we use, and the Costco stuff is pretty good. Vermont is a beautiful state with nice people.
Vermont maple syrup is like Australian wine -- good enough, if you can't get it from the real place. ;)
 
Also, here's a hot tip for maple syrup: if you're making hot cocoa/hot chocolate, sweeten in with dark maple syrup instead of sugar. The hot chocolate still won't taste like maple (so don't worry), but it will have a richer, almost-smokey flavour. You won't go back once you've tried it.

Here's my recipe for quick hot chocolate after you get back from a cold day at the airport (and you're in too much of a rush to slow-simmer in a pot):
  1. Almost fill a coffee mug with milk, and microwave for 1:45 (2:00 if you want it very hot).
  2. Add a heaping spoon of powdered cocoa and stir in thoroughly.
  3. Stir in a glop of dark maple syrup (the size of the "glop" depends on your sweet tooth).
 
I prefer my hot chocolate with a splash of rumpleminze. once you try THAT you won't go back. mostly because you won't remember how to get back, but regardless it's tasty!
 
If you want thick, find a Mennonite or Amish community nearby that sells sorghum molasses. It's so thick you'll be picking it out of your teeth till lunch!
 
If you want thick, find a Mennonite or Amish community nearby that sells sorghum molasses. It's so thick you'll be picking it out of your teeth till lunch!

Yep, that stuff is...substantial. I don't think I'd like it on pancakes, but I have a few BBQ marinades that require it, as does the old Durgin Park Indian pudding recipe. You can often find it in grocery stores; I've not tried the locally-produced options (none are really local to me).
 
If you want thick, find a Mennonite or Amish community nearby that sells sorghum molasses. It's so thick you'll be picking it out of your teeth till lunch!
Ha! My dad had a relative in middle Tennessee who ran a sorghum mill several years ago and we’d get a jar or two on occasion to use on toast and cornbread. That stuff nearly solidifies at room temperature in our pantry and usually has to go in a pot of boiling water just to get it loosened up!
 
Pardon my ignorance, but isn't native maple syrup normally boiled down to form a thicker stock?
 
I don't care for the real stuff either. Too sweet, and as pointed out above, not viscous enough. There is no accounting for taste - and I'm from Canuck heritage. As my wife would say - that explains a lot.
 
When I was a kid we did maple sugar, as I remember it was a lot of work.
My sister and her family still do about 500 gallons a year.
 
SAC, the modern maple syrup makers save energy with a reverse osmosis water treatment system. Pure water comes out the proper place, and the "dregs" comes out the other valve, and is then boiled down to syrup. The "concentrate" must be boiled to get the caramelized flavor, not to thicken the syrup, and when in an open vat, receives the smoky flavor desired by some customers.
The place in Virginia where they were using this process had all the trees tapped with plastic tubing, to larger lines, and by gravity to the reverse osmosis machine. Not much labor during the season.

Delicious, light amber, and slightly smoky, hickory and walnut.

He hinted that his machine could remove the water from other products, off season, profitably. Will reverse osmosis separate alcohol from water?
 
There's a Netflix episode of "Dirty Money" about the syrup heist. Serious stuff, indeed!

Apparently they take their maple syrup pretty seriously in Canada. You can't make this stuff up.

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...-for-18-million-quebec-maple-syrup-heist.html

Three men sentenced for $18-million Quebec maple syrup heist

...Jurors found the three men guilty last November in connection with the theft of 2,700 tons of syrup worth $18 million from a warehouse in Quebec between August 2011 and July 2012.

The case made international headlines after the sweet stuff was reported missing following a routine inventory check at a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Que.

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/supreme-court-of-canada-to-hear-the-maple-syrup-heist-case-1.5118589

Published Thursday, September 24, 2020 12:54PM EDT

Supreme Court of Canada to hear the maple syrup heist case
 
SAC, the modern maple syrup makers save energy with a reverse osmosis water treatment system. Pure water comes out the proper place, and the "dregs" comes out the other valve, and is then boiled down to syrup. The "concentrate" must be boiled to get the caramelized flavor, not to thicken the syrup, and when in an open vat, receives the smoky flavor desired by some customers.
The place in Virginia where they were using this process had all the trees tapped with plastic tubing, to larger lines, and by gravity to the reverse osmosis machine. Not much labor during the season.

Delicious, light amber, and slightly smoky, hickory and walnut.

He hinted that his machine could remove the water from other products, off season, profitably. Will reverse osmosis separate alcohol from water?

I have no experience separating alcohol from water, but apparently RO is used to make alcohol free beers and reduce wine alcohol content (like why would you want to do that??) so I would assume so. How efficiently it does that I don't know.
 
I have no experience separating alcohol from water, but apparently RO is used to make alcohol free beers and reduce wine alcohol content (like why would you want to do that??) so I would assume so. How efficiently it does that I don't know.
Some people don't metabolize alcohol very quickly, so they get to drink the reduced alcohol wine and beer (1 or 2%).
 
There is definitely nothing like the real thing. I grew up on Log Cabin thanks to frugal parents, but we're also on the apparently-long list of people that always have a bottle of the Costco maple syrup in the house.

I've also tried some of the ones where they age the syrup in bourbon barrels, which gives it a stronger flavor. Really good, but so expensive that I went back to the standard Costco stuff.

I prefer to sweeten mine with Kahlua
I prefer my hot chocolate with a splash of rumpleminze. once you try THAT you won't go back. mostly because you won't remember how to get back, but regardless it's tasty!

There are many things you can dump in hot chocolate in the winter that are all very tasty. In addition to the above, butterscotch schnapps is a favorite of mine.
 
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