# Pancake syrup

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pancake-syrup/699827>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [September 29, 2014, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pancake-syrup/699827 "2014-09-29T02:44:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\
**Post date:** [September 30, 2014, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pancake-syrup/699827/61 "2014-09-30T05:07:22Z")

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> [@terentii](#):
>
> Like wine grapes, the soil maple trees grow in can affect the flavor of their sap. I once had fresh maple syrup, boiled on the spot, at a nature reserve in Wisconsin, not far from Milwaukee. It had a distinctly metallic taste that I did not like at all.

I should also mention that maple syrup can indeed ferment, especially when not refrigerated, as I once learned to my chagrin. So you may have actually been tasting alcohol after all. One particularly nasty aspect of this is that there’s a buildup of pressure inside the bottle as a result of the gas produced, and the syrup can come fizzing out even if it’s tightly sealed (I was probably lucky the damned thing didn’t explode). I was about to throw the contents out, but decided to heat the syrup and see if the alcohol would evaporate. It did, and the syrup tasted fine again.

Even worse is that mold can grow on top of the syrup once the bottle is opened, so keep it tightly sealed and in the coldest part of your fridge. If it gets moldy, the only thing you can do is throw it out. Considering the high cost of real maple syrup, that’s something you don’t want to do.

BTW, I would assume that the metallic taste in Wisconsin was due to the minerals present in the soil.

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**Author:** ![MikeF](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MikeF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeF)\
**Post date:** [October 1, 2014, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pancake-syrup/699827/62 "2014-10-01T17:40:35Z")

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For breakfast - Vermont maple syrup. But am I the only one that has had pancakes for dinner? My grandmother used to make them and serve chicken giblet gravy for the topping. I’d pick out the nasty organ meat but he gravy was awesome.

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