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This document provides judging outlines for Maple Syrup, Maple Sugar (hard and soft), Stirred Maple Sugar, Maple Butter/Maple Cream, Maple Jelly and Innovative/New Maple Products. Sample score sheets are provided for both individual and combined contest entries.
After producing maple syrup for over 40 years and teaching seminars on maple syrup production for close to 20, I have made or personally witnessed most of the common mistakes that lead to off flavors and poor syrup quality. In this article I will go over some, but certainly not all, of the factors that lead to poor syrup quality. The good news is that most of the factors can be controlled by producers with best practices, in turn meaning you control the quality of your syrup. The Map of Maple Off Flavors (linked above) identifies 5 primary areas where off flavors occur: Mother Nature, defoamer, processing, chemicals and others. I want to address each area in order of how they would occur from start of season to finish.
The final rules for the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) have been issued, after several years of drafts and revisions, and concern about what the new regulations would mean for maple producers. Based on a read of the rules, and a discussion with Jenny Scott, Senior Advisor at the Office of Food Safety of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, for most sugarmakers the impact will be minimal.
The purpose of the present experiment was to test the precision of a variety of digital refractometers available to maple producers. Additionally, the effect of temperature on refractometer accuracy and precision was investigated, in order to assess the reliability of the automatic temperature compensation feature now present in the majority of refractometers.
Summaries of Research Presentations from 2015 NAMSC Annual Meeting.
Between 2008 and 2011 we conducted a series of controlled experiments performed with commercial maple equipment to investigate the potential effects of the use of RO on the composition, properties, and flavor of the maple syrup produced.
Near the end of each sugaring season, producers must make a decision when to stop making maple syrup. Sometimes the decision is an easy call, such as when the onset of bud break and cessation of sap flow coincide. The decision to stop production can also be the result of careful economic analysis of the cost of production versus value of the product. The variable costs (fuel, labor, filters, etc.) of any maple operation are a key component to this sort of analysis.
The level of invert sugar in maple syrup affects how well it crystalizes when making value added products such as maple candy and cream.
Knowing how to detect and avoid metabolic off-flavors is critical to producing high-quality syrup.
Plastic is made from hydrocarbons derived from petroleum or natural gas. The hydrocarbons are formed into chains called polymers or plastic resins. Different combinations of hydrocarbon molecules produce different types of plastic. There are seven different types of plastic resins, each with different features. For example, some are resistant to acids and some to caustics. Others may be able to withstand high and/or low temperatures. Some plastics are rigid and some are flexible. There are impact resistant plastics and those that are not. Certain plastics provide a good moisture and/or gas barrier – several are appropriate for contact with food.