How to eliminate an odd aftertaste

I have 20 gallons of maple syrup with a slightly fruity aftertaste that I find unpleasant - I have very sensitive taste and my other family members do not detect it. Can it be treated to change this in some way - like diluting and re-boiling or something like that.

I think the cause may have been sap fermentation in the evaporator. At the end of the last boil, 60 gallons of cold permeate was accidentally let down into the flue pan. This would have cooled the sweet, and watered it down considerably (3x8 flue pan). I should have tossed some more wood on the fire and made sure it boiled, but the night was already too late. When we boiled again today after it had sat there for 48 hours and the syrup had a distinctly sweet odor and that odd aftertaste. 20 gallons of syrup later and it was gone. As-is, I would rather not sell the syrup. It is a DR with good flavor, but as I said, a weird after effect.

Advice?

Take a small amount and bring it up to 240 degrees and then add distilled water to bring it back down to density and then check the flavor.

Re-boiling will not get rid of the taste. May make it more noticeable. The only way to get rid of an off flavor is by blending it with good flavored syrup and that does not work all the time. Depends on what caused it and how strong it is. If you don't want to retail it take it to a large buyer such as Bascoms and let them handle it.

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Originally Posted by Super Sapper

Take a small amount and bring it up to 240 degrees and then add distilled water to bring it back down to density and then check the flavor.

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That can work for Metabolic off flavor at least. I don't know about your particular case.

Last spring much of our syrup had metabolic off flavor, and based on a paper from Proctor, I carefully brought the offensive stuff up to 240°F and held it between there and 235 for about 3 hours in batches on a turkey fryer. After that long time, the smell of the vapor over the pot got better and I diluted it carefully back to density. The result was a much darker syrup, not as maple flavored as I would like, but really pretty good for our use and gifting. I considered the uncorrected syrup unusable.

In the dairy industry a slight fruity aftertaste in milk and cottage cheese is the result from bacteria. I do not recall if ice cream (higher sugar content) has the same effects. It would not hurt to do a thorough clean of the whole setup.

Please let us know how you turn out!

SDdave

Sounds like sour sap off-flavor. Can’t be boiled off like metabolism.