Over the years we’ve tried several things to increase the shelf life of our maple candy. The largest improvement came in 2020 with a new recipe and candy machine, utilizing vacuum cooling and temperature controlled pouring to reduce crystal grain size, making an incredibly smooth candy that resist drying out. This winter we bought a new vacuum sealer to further prolong shelf life. The suction also provides the additional benefit of keeping the candy in place during shipment, resulting in less broken pieces. We have a retractable nozzle style sealer that is compatible with a wide variety of bags material/size/textures, allowing us to lower costs compared to typical FoodSaver bags or the Mylar bags we’ve used in the past.

This slideshow shares one second every day of our 2022 maple season here at Nova Maple Syrup. This year was very similar to 2021, we ended up making around 85% of a crop in a 3 week period. January and February were very cold and filled with snow. The snow pack slowed our droplines replacement and tapping progress, but we didn’t lose much sap because of it. The season then sprang into full gear for the first two and a half weeks of March, but like last year we couldn’t  get a hard freeze to extend the season. After the taps ran dry we tried turning on one pump again during the first week of April. To our surprise wee actually got a couple gallons of sap per tap, but the run was short lived and the syrup was not table grade. Given the weather and how the season went for other local producers we feel like we did alright this year, but we’re definitely looking forward to the 2023 season!

If you haven’t already heard, the crew at Russell’s BBQ in Linesville, PA has been using our maple syrup to concoct some delicious BBQ sauces! They also crafted a maple rub using our maple sugar. We just picked some up to have on hand at the sugar shack and you can now order them on our website. Check them out HERE.