To welcome you to tonight's webinar
about maple quality in the marketplace today.
Folks will be trickling in a little bit,
but we're gonna just keep charging right ahead
and get started with the webinar.
Mark Canella is going to be watching the chat,
so if there are questions,
especially technical things that are making it difficult
to enjoy the presentation, please pop those in the chat.
Also, if you're interested in signing up for more,
there's three more in this series,
and the next one will be on SAP business finance.
Make sure that you register for the upcoming webinar.
It's 48 hours in advance,
so it closes at the end of the day
on the Monday before the webinar.
If you have questions, feel free to pop them in the chat.
Mark will interrupt if they're timely
and need to be asked right away.
Otherwise, we can do some Q&A at the end.
And without further ado,
I appreciate everyone showing up,
and we'll get started.
So just to give you a little background
on what we're gonna be talking about,
this is a project that was funded again
through an (indistinct) Access Project.
And Mark and I,
Mark Cannella and I wrote this section of the grant
to kind of look at what is the status
of maple syrup quality in the marketplace.
And specifically we wanted to do online purchases.
We wanted to see really just the basics.
How much of the syrup that you order online
meet the basic standards
for color, clarity, density, and flavor?
And then there's some secondary topics
that we are curious about.
Trends as far as how packaging was done,
container types, and shipping.
Tonight we're just gonna be focusing
on the syrup quality aspect,
but stay tuned for more information
about what we're learning
in terms of shipping costs, container types,
and really just the nature of how sugar makers
have chosen to ship this product.
So really what we're talking about
are color, clarity, density, and flavor.
Those are the fundamental basics of grading maple syrup.
They relate to specific regulations and laws
across the the maple region,
and they are written down,
and they're something that no matter what size producer,
if you're choosing to sell it in the marketplace,
you have to meet the minimum standards
in these four key areas.
What is important to remember though,
is that some of these basic,
some of these regulations have a very quantitative measure
and others are a little bit more subjective
or a little harder to measure.
I think we can all agree that flavor
is not something that's easily measured
in a quantitative way,
but things like density,
we have instrumentation to do that, color.
Typically we'll use a color comparator.
And clarity is one of those ones
that's not really written down in a quantitative way.
The regulations can be sometimes hard to find,
so if I've compiled some of them
on the UVM Extension Maple page, you can go to that.
It's a sidebar at that regular maple page.
Just search for UVN Extension Maple and you'll get our site.
And it's important to realize
that there are both state and federal regulations.
If you're tuning in from Canada,
provincial and federal regulations,
for almost 10 years now
since the harmonization of the grades.
So they're a little less confusing
than maybe they were before,
but you'll see from the results of our work
that producers still struggle in some places
to meet these standards.
So I really encourage everyone to refresh your memory
about what the regulations actually say,
how they relate to the products that you're marketing,
and just to make sure
that you're meeting those minimum standards.
And it's not just us looking into this.
The Agency of Ag in the state of Vermont
has been doing retail inspections for a few years now.
Essentially what it is inspector
for the consumer protection section of the Agency of Ag
will go into a retail marketplace,
identify that maples being sold,
check a certain number of containers
and really grade them for the basics,
color, clarity, flavor and density.
It's not anything more complicated than that.
And we're finding as a result of these inspections
that issues are coming up,
and you can read more about it on the agency website.
They post the results of these inspections.
But just realize that this is part of making sure
that consumers are getting what they are paying for.
And Maple is a high quality product
that derives a lot of its value from the purity
and the high quality of the product.
And if there are defects,
it's less likely that you're gonna have a repeat customer
and it's entirely possible that consumers
will find something else to use for sweetener
if they have repeated problems.
So unfortunately, the agency has found defects.
Color tends to be the most common defect.
Syrup that is graded as a lighter grade.
So when the inspector goes and tests
that it's actually too dark for the grade,
and would fall out of the standard.
So that's 2021.
We won't go too deep into those results,
but the work continues.
This is actually...
I should have changed the title.
It is 2022 results.
Continuing to be an issue.
And actually perhaps 2022 was worse than 2021.
There's close to 40% of all samples
or just over 40% of all samples were out of compliance.
And color continues to be the number one issue of defect.
And as you can see, both years, 2021, 2022,
these inspections are done
between January and June of the year,
and presumably that is syrup
that was packaged and produced the year before,
but the inspector has no way of knowing
how or when that syrup was packaged.
It's a bit of an oddity about these rules
in that it's the producer's name on the package
who's responsible for the product to meet the standard,
not the store owner, not the distributor.
It's really the producer's name on there.
And that can be a challenge for the producer
if the retailer is not cycling their product quick enough.
So it does seem a little odd that a producer
might indefinitely have to expect their syrup
to meet the standard,
even if when they delivered it, it was fine,
and in a reasonable amount of time,
it would've been still in grade.
With color especially, that is a bit of a challenge.
2022, the state also identified some issues
with lead, with mold, buddy and metallic off flavor.
So it's not just color.
There are other issues found as well.
[Mark] Question come in from Meg for you, Mark.
"How often would you recommend testing samples
from your inventory to double check color?"
Right.
That's a great question.
So we know,
and I'll get into the research a little bit later,
but we do know
that there's a fairly steady rate of darkening
in plastic containers.
We don't have great data
on the darkening in glass containers
or honestly, darkening in barrels,
so it really depends.
With plastic, the rate is fairly well known.
It's just over 2% per month,
2% light transmittance per month in plastic that is uncoated
and it's about a little less than half of that
in coated containers.
But I'll go over that data in a little bit.
Another issue that comes up in Vermont
is the issue of labeling,
but also labeling with a batch code.
The Vermont maple regulations require
that a producer has a batch code,
a way of identifying a particular batch of syrup
from all others.
And I think that's information
that really hasn't gotten widely absorbed
by the maple industry.
So the inspectors are continuing to find
that issue with labeling and lack of batch code.
So trying to spread the word about that.
The other issue that is perhaps unique to Vermont
is that the expectation from the agency
is that when syrup is purchased in Vermont,
it meet Vermont standards.
So this is directly relevant to the project
we're about to talk about
in that if you sell syrup into the state of Vermont,
it needs to meet those minimum standards.
It just so happens that the minimum standards in Vermont
for density are higher than all other,
at least virtually, all other states and provinces.
So it is something that needs to be contemplated
when you're selling syrup into the state of Vermont.
The color breakdown, the ranges for color
in the four grades of syrup remain the same
across all states and provinces however.
One last bit of information
before we get into the data and the methods
is maple contest judging.
It's something that I'm able to do
as part of my job as maple specialist.
Last year, excuse me,
I helped with five different maple contests.
These are generally held with the county maple organization,
especially those that have a volunteer sugar house
at a county fair.
So Orange County, Caledonia, Orleans, Lamoille,
and Chittenden County all have sugar houses
at their county fair and they have a maple contest there.
And as you can see, the rate of rejection
ranged from 25% in Orange,
to as high as 66% in Chittenden County.
Relatively small sample sizes
the most being in Orange with 28 total
and the fewest in Lamoille with nine.
All of those contests,
the most common rejection was for color,
too dark for the grade.
And here you see an an example of syrup
that was entered into the golden delicate category,
the standard from the grade kits in the middle,
and then both the sample jar
and then the majority of the sample that was entered
is on the right.
So very much too dark.
And unfortunately it continued again.
It's an issue 2022.
I've done three this year.
The Maple Festival in St. Albans, 49% rejection.
Chittenden County, it was quite high, 62.
And Orleans, which actually just happened today,
was 52.5% rejection.
And it could be...
Color is definitely a very common.
We saw issues with density.
And this sample here had an issue with clarity
with something floating in that sample that was entered.
If I could give just one simple bit of information
or guidance to anyone entering a contest, well, two,
one would be definitely enter a contest.
It's a very cheap way
of checking your quality of your product.
You have unbiased judges who are trained
to judge on the basics,
and they're gonna give you honest feedback
on what your syrup is.
So it's a really good idea
to enter as many contests as you can.
And then the other is always check your sample
before you enter.
It doesn't have to be hot packed
when it's entered into the contest,
it just has to meet the standard when the judges judge it.
So find out when the judging will happen,
enter it right then,
and you'll have the best chance at not getting rejected.
Okay, so the methods for this project
were to order samples of golden delicate syrup
and dark robust syrup.
And the way Mark and I handled this
was ordering from two separate locations
using the same search terms
and we wanted to make sure we could get
a pint of both samples
so we had enough to run it with a hydrometer.
Obviously the way search websites work,
they're gonna have a slightly different mix of results,
but in general, we ordered samples from the highest,
the ones at the top of the list
until we filled our quota for samples
that we needed to order.
We ordered three of each so we had some replications
so we would feel confident about those statistics
when we analyzed them.
So a total, as I said, six pints,
two from each individual's market,
and I both ordered separately for both golden and dark.
And then there were also some unique things
in that at least one state in the US
does not require grading.
I know there are others.
And we also wanna just keep track of unique packaging,
container size, if it wasn't a pint
or a pint wasn't available,
we also wanted to make note of that.
So some of the methods,
it's also important to realize
that we were dealing with COVID lockdown.
So the syrup was purchased
between October 15th and November 15th, 2020.
The university prevented us from getting right on it
as far as access to space to do this judging,
so they were stored for several months.
They were two different storage areas.
One was in a cold storage
where it was 33 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit
and one was at room temperature
fluctuating between 64 and 68.
Interestingly enough, we compared the results.
So we had two separate groups,
cold storage and room temperature storage.
In those months, from October, November, 2020
to March and April, 2021 when we did the testing,
we saw no differences between those two groups
in those same samples,
which I thought was a pretty interesting result to throw
in the middle of a method section.
So we did end up getting time and ability
to get in to a space
and do the grading of the syrup
between March and April of 2021.
So now, again, we don't know when the syrup was produced,
presumably it was produced the year before,
so March, April, perhaps some February, 2020.
So now we're talking 12 calendar months
from whenever it was produced,
to when it's actually being graded.
And that's very important,
especially in terms of syrup color,
and we'll talk about that as we dive into the results.
The instruments and the methods used for judging this syrup
were no different than you would use in a sugar house
other than we're not in the middle of production.
So we're checking clarity
just with a visual examination in the sample bottle.
If there's anything floating,
anything obvious of a defect in terms of clarity,
then it would be noted and it would be rejected.
The regulations, the wording is slightly different
in different states and provinces or at the federal level.
Most of the language around clarity says something
like syrup must be practically clean and clear.
Now that doesn't give you a quantitative measure.
There's no instrument,
there's no turbidity meter
that is used in the maple industry
so we can't compare it to a certain standard.
We know that in practice,
sugar makers use a variety of filtering methods.
Everything from a relatively simple technique
of pouring hot syrup through a cloth cone filter
or a flat filter,
all the way up to a diatomaceous earth filter
or a filter press.
Given that the standard does not say anything specific
about a measure of clarity,
the interpretation in terms of that clarity
is practically clean and clear.
So it could in theory have a slight haze
as long as that haze is uniform
and doesn't represent a significant defect in clarity.
And again, that's not very satisfying
as far as knowing whether or not
you're meeting the standard,
but in my understanding of that regulation,
as long as it has uniform clarity,
even if it might have a slight haze, that's acceptable.
What's not acceptable is very cloudy
or some foreign body floating in that syrup.
And it'd be great in the Q&A to have a discussion
if this is something people are interested in
because the regulations are pretty thin
when it comes to this standard.
For density, we used both hydrometers
that were temperature corrected
as well as digital refractometers,
which were calibrated.
And those are the two standard pieces of instrumentation
used for measuring density.
In color, we use three different techniques.
We use a temporary grading kit,
which is a mix of caramel color and glycerin,
which is mixed up every year and sold
through the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers Association.
It's really important that people highlight
that the temporary grading kit is an inexpensive guide
to grading color.
It is not the standard.
It is not a precise instrument, it's a guide.
And I think there tends to be
perhaps a little bit of overreliance on those grading kits
because anyone who's used them knows
the hue isn't exactly right,
there can be a range in redness in pure maple syrup
that just isn't reflected in these temporary standards.
So really, be mindful when you're grading syrup,
especially when it's right on the edge between two grades.
And also recognize that these temporary standards
will change color over time.
They tend to get lighter over time.
So it's really important to know that.
And the best practices
if you're gonna rely on these temporary grading kits
is to buy a new one every year.
We also used a Hannah meter,
which is a single wavelength photo meter
that relies on shooting a beam of light through a sample ,
through a very specific glass vial,
and then the sensor reads light transmittance
on the other end.
The Hannah meter is an affordable instrument.
People like it because it gives you a precise number.
I will throw a little caution here and say
that although it gives you a digital number,
there are some issues with the error with these instruments.
So there's plus or minus 4% light transmittance.
And if you think of a whole grade,
golden is a 25-point range.
Each grade is a 25-point range of light transmit,
and so plus or minus four
is a relatively large chunk of that entire grade.
So there's an issue there.
And then there are things that can happen to the cuvette,
the little glass vial, thumbprint, scratched,
poorly filtered syrup, hot syrup,
all kinds of things can lead to getting an erroneous number.
So just see it for what it is.
It's an inexpensive way of measuring light transmittance
but it's not foolproof.
And then in terms of color comparator,
there's also the Lovibond kit.
This is robust in that it's a permanent glass standard,
which doesn't change over time.
However, it's quite expensive.
When you add the whole thing up,
including the vial that you need to use, it's over $300.
So it's very expensive.
It's probably close to $400 now.
And although it doesn't go old,
it is a big investment
and not everyone can justify that that expense.
The last method or issue that we grade is flavor.
So the language in a grading regulations
talk about flavors being progressively stronger
as you go darker in color.
Each state and province have a slightly different wording,
but in general,
lighter syrup is gonna have a delicate flavor,
darker syrup will get progressively stronger
and defects significant off flavors are not acceptable.
And so for all our samples, we followed the same protocol.
And just so you know, the regulations are available.
I guess I already mentioned that earlier,
but if you want to check them out you can review them there.
So we produced a variety of samples
and we had 25 producers able to provide golden,
and 28 producers were able to sell us dark samples.
Of those, we ended up with 116 usable samples.
And for golden and in dark, 129 reusable.
Just a little quick shot of of how shipping was done.
The most common was UPS at 44%,
next most common was the US Postal Service,
followed by FedEx,
and then like just a couple of percent with another method.
Where these samples came from?
Almost half came from Vermont.
Next most common location, New York.
And then you can see the breakdown.
There was some from New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Maine, and so forth.
That was for golden.
And for the dark robust,
again, half the samples came from Vermont
and almost a quarter came from New York
and the rest came from other states.
The breakdown of state of origin was slightly different
for darks than it was for goldens.
Now we'll jump into the results.
So with clarity.
Clarity was not a huge issue.
We had only about 4% of the samples in Golden
were unacceptable for clarity.
And this meant that something
like I talked about in the standards,
something floating in the syrup,
unacceptable levels of cloudiness,
something that rose to the level
of failing to meet the standard.
In dark, it was the same.
About 5% failed to meet the clarity.
And I think that's a great, that's good news,
that it's not a huge issue.
This is syrup that was packed in both plastic
but also glass.
And clarity, it shouldn't matter what type of container
it's being packed in
that the samples were by and large acceptable
in terms of clarity.
Again, color,
these are the instruments we used, variety of cost.
And here are the results for color.
So when you just take the sample
at the moment that we graded them,
so remember this is several months,
let's see, it was close to five months
from when we purchased them, six months actually,
we had zero of those samples graded out as golden,
and that would be at 75% or lighter
in light transmittance.
80% of the samples were graded as amber, 20% as dark.
And that red bar represents the mean value
of all the light transmittance of all the samples.
Now, I'll come back to these color results at the end
when we're discussing the results,
but I just want to go through them first.
Now for dark, remember the range for dark
is between 25% and 50% light transmittance.
We found that 44% were actually within that range,
and 56%, so more than half,
were actually darker than the lower limit for color
in dark robust syrup,
and were graded as very dark.
And interestingly enough, we actually had,
at least according to the Hannah meter,
four and a half percent had a light transmittance of zero.
So no light penetrated that syrup at all,
sort of the black hole of maple syrup if you will.
But there were certainly more samples in the dark
that met the standard than in the golden.
Now with density, like I said,
we used a hydrometer and we used digital refractometer.
And just a quick note about digital refractometers.
They are much more appropriate device to use
at room temperature with syrup,
even expensive digital refract refractometer like this one
that are temperature compensated,
they really can't tolerate hot syrup.
Even if you let it cool after it's been hot,
there can be issues with that tiny little bit of syrup
becoming more dense in that sample well.
So really digital refractometer kilometers
have a place.
They're good precision instruments, they can be calibrated,
but it's not in the moment of making syrup.
They really are...
It's inappropriate for hot syrup.
Hydrometer is a much more appropriate tool in the moment
when you're producing syrup in the sugar house.
So density.
For golden, we found that there was a range in densities,
everything as low as 64.9, all the way up to 69.7.
This is degrees Brix.
38% of the samples in golden
were below the range for minimum density in Vermont,
the Vermont standard of 66.9,
but only 3.4% were below the standard,
the USDA standard of 66 Brix,
and that's important when we think about
where some of these samples came from.
And the other interesting thing to note
is that of the samples that were below that 66 Brix,
43% were from Vermont.
So we can't just say it was producers
from outside the state of Vermont
not knowing what that minimum standard was.
A good chunk of those were actually Vermont producers.
Interestingly, there's very few who above the range.
Only three,
just under three and a half percent of the samples
exceeded the legal limit, which is 68.9% Brix.
Now for dark, similar, it was a fairly wide range.
Everything is low as 63.3 Brix
and all the way up to 71 Brix.
Just as a reminder,
if you have syrup that's below legal density,
it's more at risk for mold and fermentation
and becoming off flavored in that way.
And the higher you get above the legal standard,
the more likely are to have
what we would call a super saturated solution
that would result in hard crystals forming
in the bottom of that container
that would really be unusable to the consumer.
So you wanna try to hit that two degree Brix range,
which is the legal range for pure maple syrup.
For dark, eight and a half percent of the samples
were below the range for Vermont,
but only five and a half percent
were below for the 66 Brix standard.
And of the samples that were below the 66,
91% were from Vermont.
So clearly it's not producers
from out of the state of Vermont
not understanding the Vermont regulations.
And similar to golden,
we had a few percent or above the range
that were just a little bit too dense.
Now for flavor, we found some differences.
We found that not unlike the results for clarity,
only about 5% of the golden samples
failed to meet the flavor standard.
So 5% rejected for some sort of flavor.
There was a mix.
It wasn't any particular strong trend one way or the other.
There was a little bit of buddy,
little bit of metabolism, little bit of sour,
so no significant trends there.
And that's encouraging that 95% of the samples
were acceptable.
A higher percentage of the dark robust samples
were rejected for flavor.
No clear reason as to why other than darker syrup
has more flavor in general,
and occasionally producers may not pick up on the fact
that some of that more flavor,
which is in those samples,
is actually a defect and not just strong flavor,
it's actually something that would be identified
as an off flavor and need to be not sold
in a retail container.
So like I said,
the defects included buddy, ferment, metabolism.
There were, I believe, a few sours in there as well,
but no strong trends one way or the other
as far as which flavor was most common.
Looking at container type,
we found that plastic was by far the most popular.
And this is syrup that is shipped,
so you might maybe make an argument
that we would see more plastic
just because we're shipping the syrup,
we're not picking it up in a retail brick and mortar.
Location of the plastics,
the most common was Sugarhill,
followed by Bacon.
There was, in golden, 19% glass,
whereas 15% for dark packed in glass.
But in general, about two thirds were packed in Sugarhill
with another 15 to almost 20% of...
No, sorry, 10 to 17% more
in another type of plastic container.
So essentially three quarters of the samples we received
were in plastic,
and that's not necessarily something
that the consumer is prompted.
We didn't select for a specific container type,
we just wanted the syrup in a certain volume
and we get what we get.
As far as batch codes,
just wanted to remind folks,
we did pay attention to badge codes.
It was certainly an issue on some of those containers.
Regardless of where the syrup is coming from,
if you're selling it in to Vermont,
you need to have that batch code.
It doesn't have to be anything fancy,
it doesn't have to be an automated labeler.
It can be as simple as a indelible marker
on the bottom of the container
with a code that you specifically come up with.
And it really makes good sense in a lot of different ways.
From a business standpoint,
you can track your inventory
if there's a problem in the retail marketplace
after it leaves your location,
you can easily identify what day that syrup was produced,
and it has implications in terms of food safety and quality.
It's really important to maintain good records
on when the syrup was made,
any issues that you maybe identified,
and then where that syrup goes
once it leaves your operation.
Of course if you don't have a batch code
and can't isolate a certain batch of syrup
and there is an issue, at least in Vermont,
the state of Vermont can impound all your syrup
until the issue is resolved.
So it would help immensely in terms of your business
if you can isolate just the batch of syrup
that has the defect.
When we found that, on the goldens,
about three quarters had a batch code
and just over a quarter did not have a batch code.
Interestingly, it was slightly different
for dark robust syrup.
A little bit more were missing the batch code,
but they were sort of in the range.
So overall the issues we found.
Number one issue was certainly color.
We did see issues with density.
And we're gonna talk a little bit about that density data
in just a second here,
but just wanna make sure folks recognize
that the importance of these regulations,
they're on paper to protect the consumer,
their investment in a high quality product,
it also helps the maple industry making sure
that the name maple syrup really stands for quality.
And the reason these regulations exist,
and going back historically,
is that there was a lot of fraud.
Early 1900s, there was a lot of,
quote, unquote, "maple syrup"
produced that was either cut with cheap sweeteners
like glucose or some other corn syrup,
or had no maple whatsoever but was labeled as pure maple.
And so the maple industry a hundred years ago
really responded forcefully to institute these regulations
because you are asking consumers to pay a high price
compared to other sweeteners.
So these regulations have a place,
they still are relevant,
and they really do help stand the maple industry apart.
So in terms of color,
Missy's question about about darkening,
there are some research done by Tim Perkins and others
at the Proctor Maple Research Center,
and they found when you had syrup
packaged in coated and uncoated plastic jugs,
the rate of darkening
was about two and a half percent per month in uncoated.
Actually, I misspoke it.
It's less than half of that rate in coated containers.
So just less than 1% per month in coated containers.
So when you calculate back the amount of time
from when we did these assessments of color
to when we received them
and even earlier to presumably
when they might have been canned,
we, of course, have no idea when they were bottled up,
but that could explain some of that darkening.
And I did a little quick math
and I'll show you that in just a second.
So here's results again.
Across the top, you have the goldens,
across the bottom, you have the darks.
Let's look at the color data on the left.
So like I said, none of the samples
when we measured them in March and April 2021
met that minimum standard for color.
However, if you calculated back
using that rate of darkening from Tim Perkin's work,
we would find that 50% actually would be in grade
and 50% would be out a grade,
and that's based on when we received the samples
in October, November,
not when some theoretical date in which they were produced,
but actually when we took possession of those samples.
So that's better than...
50% is better than zero,
but it does highlight the fact
that some consumers will purchase it,
and then not consume it right away.
So it is something to think about.
And some retailers won't revolve their stock very quickly.
So if you're selling directly to a retailer,
you really need to make them aware
of the issue of darkening.
It was even better I would say, in terms of the dark.
So if we backcalculated
based on that pretty linear rate of darkening
identified by Tim Perkins in that work,
virtually, all the very dark strong
would be in grade and only 5% out of grade.
As far as density, the golden,
just over 41% were out of the range,
but only about 6.8% are out of that international range.
The minimum being 66 Brix.
And similar, only 22% were out of Vermont range for dark,
so it was more compliance there,
and just under 10% would be below or outside the range,
not just below, it could be above in the international.
So best practices moving forward.
Understand that rate of darkening,
it's a real thing,
it's fairly linear relationship,
and you can count on that happening
once you put it in that retail container.
A lot of that darkening is happening through oxidation,
so fill height is important.
We know from other work
that if you leave a huge amount of head space
in your container,
even if it meets the stated weight or volume, I should say,
of the syrup in that container,
that extra oxygen and head space
can result in some darkening.
So one possible solution to that is to fill it right up,
and then account for that extra weight in your pricing
so that you're not giving away a ton of syrup
and you are also not having that added effect
of extra oxygen in the head space
that can lead to darkening.
Understand how instruments work,
understand their accuracy,
and also understand their limitations.
Understand that just because an instrument
gives you a digital reading,
it doesn't necessarily...
It isn't free of error.
Understand that not everyone is highly trained
in terms of grading.
Flavor can be difficult.
Make sure you have multiple people tasting samples.
And if you have an issue,
get a second opinion or a third opinion
and make sure that you're not putting substandard syrup
in the marketplace.
And that pretty much wraps up what I have.
I'm excited to hear the questions if Mark has some.
I'm gonna take off the slide here.
You did a nice job explaining the different tests
we use for color,
and then the more specific you showed
were all based on the Hannah light transmittance,
and you discussed the error factor
that's built in that, plus or minus.
And can you just explain,
I believe that we sort of...
I believe we factored that in.
I just wanna get the explanation right to people
how we factored in that plus or minus four.
I think we gave syrup the benefit of the doubt,
let's say, right?
We didn't...
We sort of...
I can't explain if we went up or down with it.
If it was within 4% of the minimum,
then it was counted as acceptable.
-Acceptable, great. -Yup.
And then the other thing that I should have a slide for,
but we saw really good agreement
across those three grading methods for color.
We saw good agreement between the Hannah meter,
the temporary grade kit, and the Lovibond,
which was encouraging because one of them is quantitative
and the other is essentially a comparator.
The other two are comparators.
So we didn't see massive differences
in what the Hannah was grading out at
compared to the temporary kit, is what I'm saying.
All right, everyone, I believe that I've clicked it
so you can enable your mic.
You just have to do that manually,
but feel free to use the chat as well.
So I see Nick is asking,
"Was there a difference in grading when sliced by state?"
So that's one of the secondary analysis
we haven't done, but it's a great question.
It would be interesting to note.
Clearly, with over half the samples coming from Vermont,
they're contributing quite a bit to the overall averages
and they weren't perfect by any means
in terms of meeting the standards.
So good question.
We'll definitely include that in in subsequent work
or stuff that we're gonna write up as a result of this work.
[Meg] Do you recommend canning or bottling up whole barrel
in one go to prevent mold from developing
sort of once there's air in the barrel?
Oh, yeah.
Hey, Meg.
I think it's entirely possible
that once you open that hot pack barrel,
it's now no longer hot packed.
And that we know that mold can grow
on correct density syrup,
and that you're just probably asking for an issue
by leaving it partial.
That does present a problem
as far as handling your inventory, right?
Maybe you don't have a whole barrel's worth
of retail containers spoken for.
You have to anticipate how quickly that's gonna move,
because, especially in plastic, once you put it in plastic,
we know it's darkening from the start.
But, yeah, I would agree
that leaving a partial barrel that's open is not ideal.
If you can keep it cool, that's gonna help some,
but it's not gonna prevent everything.
[Nick] Yeah, I'm curious more
about the findings on cold versus room temp storage.
Are there general best practices on storage over that time
and are you finding data that might challenge those myths?
I mean, I think in general,
it's ideal to keep surface cool as possible.
But it was interesting that we didn't see differences
between keeping it at just above freezing
versus a room temperature.
I think the issue, it's probably not linear.
They probably start to get towards a temperature threshold,
and then you start seeing effects.
So maybe higher than the room temperature samples we saw.
But as far as challenging best practice recommendations,
it wasn't really the nature of this project
to answer that question,
so I wouldn't really propose a big change in practice
as a result of this.
I just thought it was an interesting thing to include.
And personally, I think I would've expected to see
a little bit more difference than we did.
[Nick] Makes sense.
Thanks.
Other questions or...
Oh, yeah, Meg.
[Meg] What are some of the grading schools
that sugar makers could go to?
I think Maine has one.
That's a great segue.
So I've been working with...
Just to start off, the Maple Syrup Grading School
was a program started by Henry Marcus
with the State of Vermont Agency of Ag,
Kathy Hopkins with UMaine,
and Sumner Dole with UNH Extension.
And it's about 20 years now, they've been doing it.
It's a two-day intensive training.
And it's great program.
I don't know if anyone's on the call
who participated in that,
but it's a really great training,
but it does take quite a bit to hold one of those events.
And what we found is that there's a lot of demand
for training in syrup quality.
And so Jason Lilley who took over
for Kathy Hopkins at UMaine
and I have been working with the IMSI,
International Maple Syrup Institute,
to continue that offering, that two-day training,
but also try to dramatically increase access to training.
That's not the same two-day training,
but high quality and more accessible.
So the idea is that there'll be a kit of samples,
both loaners for a county organization
or some group of individuals who wanna host a training,
the samples will go out to those individuals,
and the trainers, Jason and myself
and perhaps some other content folks,
will come in remotely.
And so it'll have a lot of the same aspects
of the grading school hands on,
but it will allow us to offer this training
much more frequently than we can with the in person.
If you're hungry for doing the two-day training,
you can go to La Crosse, Wisconsin in October.
There'll be a two-day maple grading school,
the full thing there.
Jason has offered a one-day partial training
in Maine as well.
And we also offer some training at maple conferences,
and we're gonna be doing one this December as well.
But it won't be the full two-day training
that folks who have attended in the past are used to.
It's challenging, right?
You want to have the hands on,
you want to have the communication between individuals
to work through some of these practices,
but it's challenging for folks to travel
and set these trainings up all over the place.
So we're trying to split the difference
and do kind of a hybrid.
And look for more information coming out
about when those will be available.
We're hoping it'll be a good solution.
I will say, just in terms of grading,
we do have some stuff on the Maple Extension page.
We've got four videos.
One that goes over the basics of grading color,
clarity, flavor, and density.
They're about six to ten minutes long.
You can check those out.
They've had pretty good feedback.
I also have some cards that,
one for each, color, clarity, flavor and density,
which are...
You can't diagnose every issue,
but on one side of the card,
it talks about what the standards are
for the color, clarity, flavor and density.
On the other side of the card,
it talks about what the most common reasons
syrup doesn't meet that standard.
So, it could be anything
from not measuring the temperature of the syrup
when you use a hydrometer or not hot-packing,
that sort of thing.
Even those little bits of information
can really help remind folks
about how to make sure their syrup meets the standard.
And then the contest that I've been judging,
I've been providing those cards
to the folks who were rejected from the contest.
We have the the card to go along with it
to hopefully give them a little bit more information.
And I'll also say that there's some longer format.
Presentations talking about...
There's at least one on maple syrup flavor,
also on the UVM Extension Maple page.
More questions?
"Where are those cards available?"
How about I just go right now to the website
and I will add the address to the chat.
Any comments or questions
while I'm searching the page?
This is Mark.
I'll throw a question in for you Mark,
and for any of the participants to chime in as well.
I got to work with you on this project
and did a lot of learning myself.
From your experience,
are there producers that are actually using the Hannah meter
or the Lovibond kit,
and how would that compare to people
that are potentially almost exclusively using
the temp grading kits?
So that's a question for you Mark,
and then also to the participants.
Is anyone using anything
other than a temporary grading kit for color evaluation?
So we haven't really taken a survey,
like an actual survey that we would say
could feel confident in the numbers,
but, anecdotally I would say,
vast majority use a temporary kit.
The Hannah meter is getting popular
because it is only like 60, 65 bucks.
I would say very few people use the Lovibond,
but those that do like them
for the reasons that I already mentioned.
It's permanent.
Visually, it's easier to work with, I think.
I think it has a better form function.
I think it is a better device,
but it is a big outlay of cash to start.
No, that's great.
Dan and Dave both using the Hannah and the Lovibond.
And for me as a business person,
learning the standards from Mark,
when I see the $300 to the Lovibond
and he says it's really expensive,
I'm thinking, that's like the cheapest thing
in the sugar house for people
compared to all the other investments.
So it's an interesting sort of relativeness
of what investment level people are at.
But that's cool
that we've got a couple people on here tonight
with a small group
that are using the alternative color tests.
Alternative is not the right word, additional.
So I just put in the link to the grade cards directly,
but also the page that has the grading videos.
And you should know that the grade cards
have a QR code you can scan.
It goes right to those same grading videos.
Interesting.
Meg's got a comment there.
"We've used the Hannah and the Lovibond,
but I had some issues with the grades
being completely different."
-Yeah. -Meg, any clarification?
Is that between the Hannah and the Lovibond
or between one of those and the temp kit?
[Meg] We haven't used the temp kit,
although I'm gonna get one this year.
We've been using the Lovibond forever
and I just got a Hannah,
I don't know, just because I thought
it would be more accurate.
And then they were both like completely off at whole grade.
And then we ended up grading with the Lovibond,
but we sent some syrup off to a contest somewhere.
And I think some of it was graded by color,
and it was rejected by color.
So we were assuming our Lovibond was off.
And I think we got it since the grades were changed,
so it should be correct, from what I'm hearing,
but maybe we need another color wheel.
Yeah, I mean, you would know...
If it says golden, amber and dark on the wheel,
then that would be the most up to date standards.
When they were first coming out with those wheels,
there was an issue I think with the golden like glass chip,
but that was so early.
I don't even know if they made it in the marketplace.
I know they sent some to us at Proctor to check.
Boy.
Again, there's so many things...
The Hannah meter gives you a precise reading, right?
But air bubbles and, you know, it can be...
There are several things that can throw that number off.
I guess if I had to go with one,
I would probably go with a Lovibond
because it does represent the minimum of each grade.
But it's interesting that you had used the Lovibond
and it got rejected.
-Did you get a number back? -When we are testing...
Oh, yeah.
-Go ahead. -No we didn't.
We didn't.
When you're testing with the Hannah,
is it better for it to be hot syrup or cold?
No, it should be room temperature.
-Room temp. -Yeah.
Hot syrup is...
And I don't have the manual with me,
but I'm pretty sure they suggest a temperature range to use.
Okay.
The manual is available online,
but, in general, things are happening,
things change so quickly with hot syrup.
I mean, it's not great to do hot syrup in a grade kit,
even a temporary kit, really,
just because it can be the density,
you have some expansion.
It's not huge, but it's different than when it cools.
So, in general, grading cooler syrup is better.
Not always possible, I recognize.
So I see Dan has a question.
"Any assistance advice with packing larger volume batches
in relation to density?
I haven't been as happy with the digital read
for syrup density."
Dan, is it possible for you to unmute
and clarify your question a little bit?
Are you seeing issues from start to finish of the batch?
Across the batch.
So are you using gas fired,
a fairly simple canning unit
or do you have a water jacketed canner.
It seems like that might be part of it, or could be.
"Steam pan through a press
and then water jacketed canner."
And so you're seeing big ranges in density
from when you start a batch to when you finish, I guess.
Is that...
Just clarifying.
"Almost one and a half Brix across."
Yeah, that's...
Considering that's almost all the way
through the range of density.
That's tough.
Are you filling one at a time
or do you have multiple fillers going at once
that you're just trying to shorten the time it takes
to get through a huge batch.
That's a big batch of syrup at a time.
Well, I don't have a ton of experience, Dan,
so I'm happy to ask around and try to get you an answer,
but I don't have anything.
It sounds like you're doing a lot of things
that I would expect to be ideal.
And you're taking it to 185 Fahrenheit,
not some extremely higher temperature.
All right, last question.
This is kind of funny.
Talking one and having the text come back.
But how long does it take you
to get through that 160 to 300 gallons?
Obviously it depends
on the type of container you're filling and stuff,
but how much time do you budget for that?
Few hours?
Okay, well, we do have your contact information
through registration,
so let me try to track down some answers
from people who have more experience and get back to you.
Any other questions?
Well, it's a lot to digest.
Appreciate everyone's attention and time and showing up.
I know we're coming out of this thing
and people are tired of webinars,
but we really appreciate your registering and showing up.
And there are more,
so please don't forget to sign up for the next one.
It's gonna be about SAP business.
And check out all the past webinars
that are available on maplemanager.org.
We got a ton of content there as well.
And, Mark, do you have anything to add
before we say goodnight?
No, thanks for the presentation, Mark.
It's great to have your knowledge.
Thanks for the questions, everyone.
And, yeah, have a great evening.
-All right. -Thanks, Mark.
-I really appreciate it. -Take care everyone.
Yup.