Marketing Syrup as Reverse Osmosis or Pipeline Free

[ecolbeck]

I cant wait to get a copper kettle. Your heads will explode with that label.

what is this supposed to mean?

[ecolbeck]

Just because something changes doesn't make that change significant or meaningful. A change in body weight from 175 lbs to 175.0000001 lbs has no practical meaning.

[TonyL]

Before we installed tubing, we promoted our syrup as being collected in buckets, made in small 1-2 gallon batches in a pan over a wood fire, cooked for hours at a time. In the same fashion our grandparents made syrup. And that was absolutely true. Now we use tubing, and will probably go with an RO next season. We no longer make that statement. It has nothing to do with taste, and everything to do with perception. The typical, romanticized syrup scene on labels and postcards has buckets on trees, horses pulling a sled, and/or wood stacked up against the sugarhouse. Their is a market, a premium market in many cases, for product made with nostalgia.

Never going to be a big operation doing it that way, but I still wonder if our move away from buckets and towards an RO, has caused us to lose something along the way. We’ll see I suppose.

[prairietapper]

SCM I agree with others that feel that your statement on the label implies that Ro'ed syrup is inferior.

To me it just means the process is not coal fired via the grid. LOL

[prairietapper]

I know this is an aside to the original question but I have to wonder..
How many of you that feel RO makes a lower quality of syrup based that opinion on some trials with an early hobby RO ?
and did you run it many passes to get high Brix when doing it?

[Scm]

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[Scm]

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[DrTimPerkins]

... but I still wonder if our move away from buckets and towards an RO, has caused us to lose something along the way. We’ll see I suppose.

If anything, it lost you a great deal of time sitting by the evaporator and NOT sleeping. It also cost you a good deal of time cutting firewood. It may well have also lost you a good deal of lead in your diet.

Not many people who go from buckets to tubing go back. Even fewer ever go back to boiling raw sap after using an RO.

[3GoatHill]

It does have meaning. Like I said above. RO changes the flavor. That’s a fact of the study. Page 15. What I didn’t say was that it makes the flavor better. Simply stating that its RO free, does not automatically imply RO is bad.

But to the general public, it DOES imply that it's bad. The general public is uneducated and when they see a label that says GMO free or BPA free or RO free it insinuates that those things are bad, otherwise the producer wouldn't have gone through the trouble of putting it on the label.

[TonyL]

If anything, it lost you a great deal of time sitting by the evaporator and NOT sleeping. It also cost you a good deal of time cutting firewood. It may well have also lost you a good deal of lead in your diet.

Not many people who go from buckets to tubing go back. Even fewer ever go back to boiling raw sap after using an RO.

I doubt our aluminum buckets contributed much by way of lead to our diets, but I get your point. The point I'm after is just what you mentioned, Dr. Perkins: Time. I have a saying, and while it's not that great of a saying, I think it illustrates my take on a great many things..."Anyone can write a check for something, and call it theirs. But to really appreciate the ownership, you need to sweat, cry, and bleed over it before you can rightfully call it your own."

Not for one second am I implying that the big producers haven't sweated or bled to get where they are now. I know better. But I ask myself how many would continue to produce syrup with RO's, tubing, vacuum pumps, giant continuous evaporators, and several hundred or even several thousand taps, if they lost money every year doing so? We made almost 17 gallons this year. Kept some, gave some away, and sold all the rest for $1 an ounce. And lost money doing so, if you count the time spent for anything. We've lost money every year so far, and we'll continue to lose money. Still going to make and sell syrup. Because it isn't about how many drops of sap we can wring from the trees, or how efficient our evap. runs, or how much we can reduce boil times by using an RO. It's about the blood, sweat, and tears. We make delicious syrup if our customers are to be believed, but that's not why they purchase from us....they want our product because there's something besides great tasting syrup in the bottle. I believe it's the flavor of traditional, bygone era family sugaring that drives the purchase. I believe that those who question RO and tubing use, glimpse this aspect also. Believe it or not, a market exists for it, and it can be premium. Enough of a market to make the effort involving several hundred taps, viable? I doubt it, but it's there nonetheless.

Science wants to quantify everything, and I get that and appreciate it. Scientists are taught to be factual, analytical, and to ignore emotion to the best of their abilities. But in this case, and in my opinion only, there's something else at work here that science has not, and probably can not, factor in.