We are pleased to have a committed, knowledgeable, and industrious workforce because our firm is only as good as the people that work here. The woods crew, which battles the elements all winter and spring to create Vermont’s best maple syrup, makes up one-third of the workforce. Visit our blog at Maple 101 to learn more about the highly labor-intensive process of sugaring.
We have long outgrown our direct capacity to supply all the maple syrup we require for the business, even as we continue to expand our own maple sugaring facility. As a result, we only purchase maple, honey, and cider from family farms and sugarbushes that share our commitment to producing high-quality goods. We are pleased to contribute to this network of more than 50 family farms and to the larger agricultural community. We’ve highlighted a lot of our producing partners here.
The manufacturing staff at our plant in Fairfax, Vermont, which infuses, barrel-ages, and smokes our maple and honey is another member of our team. To ensure that our tasty products are delivered to you in gift-worthy packaging and with a high standard of quality and safety, everyone on our bottling, finishing, and shipping teams follows strict guidelines.
Describe Runamok.
one: in a ferociously furious, wild, or uncontrolled way; as in run amok Street rioters are running amok. Extremism had been given the freedom to flourish. 2: in a murderously maniacal mood. amok.
In the US, is authentic maple syrup available?
Vermont generated more than 1.5 million gallons of maple syrup in 2021, making it the nation’s top maple syrup producer. In that year, New York, the second-largest producer, produced 647 thousand gallons or so of maple syrup.
With an estimated 4.24 million gallons of maple syrup produced nationwide in 2019, the United States is a significant maple syrup producer. By installing a tap into a maple tree and collecting the tree sap, maple syrup can be obtained. After that, this sap is turned into syrup and packaged. In 2019, there were roughly 13.34 million maple taps in the US.
States in the US have vastly different average prices for a gallon of maple syrup. The states with the highest average prices for maple syrup are Connecticut and Minnesota. Vermont had the lowest pricing for maple syrup and was the top producer of maple syrup in the country. The most popular brand of pancake syrup among Americans was Aunt Jemima, followed by store brand.
Product Questions
Do you sell non-GMO products? Despite the absence of GMOs in our products, we are not non-GMO certified.
Are your items organically certified? With the exception of Merquen Infused and Sparkle Syrup, almost all of our maple syrup, maple cocktail mixers, and maple bitters are Vermont Organic Farmers certified organic.
Our honey is not organically grown. We exclusively utilize domestic honey from some of the top beekeepers in the United States, which is a commodity that is wild-harvested. It is, however, very challenging to establish and enforce a standard for verifying that every plant and flower visited is organic because bees travel great distances to collect their nectar. We adhere to strict quality standards for all of our producers and ingredients, and we support organic farming methods and environmental care. As a result, we utilize organic foods whenever possible and choose the highest-quality alternatives when organic is not an option.
Although our products and facility are not certified gluten free, honey and organic maple syrup are naturally gluten free. We advise anyone with Celiac illness or a severe gluten allergy to avoid our barrel-aged maple products because they are matured in barrels that were previously used to age alcoholic beverages like whiskey.
Although maple syrup and honey will never go bad if stored properly, they have a shelf life of 3 years for our maple syrup and 4 years for our honey products from the date of manufacturing. The shelf life of our cocktail mixers is two years. Our bitters have a five-year shelf life.
Do your goods require refrigeration? Once opened, both our cocktail syrup and maple syrup must be refrigerated. After being opened, bitters and honey don’t need to be kept in the refrigerator.
Shipping Questions
Accepting returns is it? We are unable to accept refunds because our products are food products.
Is delivery included? For orders worth more than $59, we provide free shipping. Orders that fall below the free delivery threshold are subject to a flat fee within the US.
Are you willing to ship abroad? Yes. For all orders placed outside the US continental territory, shipping costs are determined at checkout. You could have to pay extra customs taxes if you’re a buyer from outside the US.
What qualities should a good maple syrup have?
We choose these products on our own.
We might receive a commission if you make a purchase through one of our links. When the prices were published, they were all correct.
Consequently, rows of bottles of maple syrup are in front of you as you walk down the grocery store aisle or stand at a market booth. Many of the larger bottles cost more than $10, however prices start at $10. Although you’re willing to pay the cash, how do you choose which bottle to purchase? Each bottle not only has a unique label and description, but they were also all created in separate US and Canadian states.
Be not disheartened! The following three things should be taken into account before buying a bottle of maple syrup:
Look to see it’s made of real maple syrup.
Check the ingredients to ensure that it is made of 100% pure maple syrup and not maple “flavor or high-fructose corn syrup, which is the first and most obvious piece of advice. There might occasionally be a mix, but if you want to really taste the wonderful stuff, it has to be all syrup, nothing else.
Pick a region, and experiment!
Nine states, the majority of which are in New England, produce almost all of the maple syrup consumed in the US. The top 9 maple syrup-producing states in the country are Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The other main producer of maple syrup is Canada, particularly in the province of Quebec.
This raises the question of whether some states or regions produce syrup of higher quality than others. No, is the response. Like wine, the soil, climate, and genetics of a particular place have an impact on the flavor of maple syrup. The processing technique that the producer uses also affects flavor. (The Robb Family Farm, for instance, runs only on wood fire, which they say results in a more caramelized flavor.)
Any ensuing flavor variations and subtleties are designed to be sampled and enjoyed; any location and state is capable of generating great, premium maple syrup!
Vermont does generate slightly denser syrup than other states, it should be emphasized. Vermont mandates a 66.9% sugar density for its syrup, while other states cap off at a somewhat lighter 66%. Helen Robb informed me that this is both a need and a matter of personal taste. If you know you like thick, gooey syrup, Vermont is a wonderful place to start because Vermont sugar producers believe the added density provides them an advantage in the market because their syrup feels more substantial in the mouth.
Know how you plan to use the syrup.
Knowing what you intend to use the bottle of maple syrup for should be your last and possibly most crucial consideration. Do you want a flavor that is strongly reminiscent of maple? That is essentially what it boils down to.
The new grading system, which you can see above and about which I reported yesterday, aims to clear up any ambiguity around the Grade A and Grade B flavors of Fancy and instead focus attention on the maple flavor.
- Choose Golden Color with a Delicate Taste for buttermilk pancakes or ice cream if you want a very mild maple flavor (previously known as Grade A Light Amber, or Grade A Fancy).
- Try Amber Color with Rich Taste if you intend to use maple syrup in baked items where you want a noticeable yet mild maple flavor, like this Harvest Cake with Goat Cheese Frosting (previously known as Grade A Medium Amber).
- Choose a darker syrup with a strong maple taste, like the Dark with Robust Taste, if you’re making something where the maple flavor is the ultimate star of the show, like these Maple Pecan Blondies (previously known as Grade A Dark Amber or Grade B).
Remember to keep your purchased maple syrup in the fridge or freezer after you’ve opened the bottle. While plastic jugs will keep syrup fresh in the refrigerator for up to four months, glass bottles are ideal if you intend to store your syrup for two years or more.
Where did run amok start?
The term “amok,” often known as “running amok,” comes from the Malay verb mengamok, which denotes a ferocious charge. During his circumnavigation of the globe in 1770, Captain Cook is credited with making the first outside observations and recordings of amok in the Malay tribesmen. He said the affected people acted aggressively without reason and indiscriminately attacked residents and animals, murdering or maiming them. Amok attacks often claimed 10 lives, and they concluded when the perpetrator was either overcome or “put to death by his tribesmen, frequently losing his life in the process. In Malay mythology, “running wild” was an uncontrollable activity brought on by the “hantu belian, or an evil tiger spirit taking possession of a person’s body and causing them to act violently without realizing it. Malay culture members tolerated running amok despite its disastrous repercussions on the group because of their spiritual convictions.
Researchers in anthropology and psychiatry noticed amok in tribal groups in the Philippines, Laos, Papua New Guinea, and Puerto Rico soon after Captain Cook’s report. Following the confirmation of this theory by these observers, culture came to be regarded as the accepted explanation for the etiology of amok in these geographically distant and culturally different people. Amok incidents and interest in it as a psychiatric disorder decreased throughout the course of the following two centuries. The Western civilization’s influence on the prehistoric tribes was said to have reduced the prevalence of amok by eradicating the cultural elements supposed to be responsible for the aggressive conduct. Amok incidents in the remaining tribes today are incredibly rare, and records in the psychiatric literature stopped about the middle of the 20th century. Unexpectedly, whereas amok violence among tribal communities was becoming less common and less popular, it was becoming more common in industrial civilizations. However, because the idea that amok is culturally produced had grown so ingrained, its relationship to recent outbreaks of mass violence went unreported.
The case studies that follow demonstrate the typical violent conduct mentioned in amok incidents in Malay tribes:
A respectable elderly Malay man shot three people in the Penang province of Malaysia in 1846, killing them and injuring ten others. When he was apprehended and taken to court, the evidence showed that he had lost his wife and only kid unexpectedly, and that the loss had left him emotionally disturbed. 2
In 1901, a Muslim man aged 23 who had previously served in the police force attacked 5 people while they were asleep or taking opium in the Malaysian province of Phang. He killed three people, nearly decapitating one of them, and severely injured the other two. 2
Case reports of amok are analogous to tales of several homicides committed by one person nowadays. The bulk of modern murders are spontaneous, unprovoked, and carried out by people who have a history of mental illness. The attackers are described by the news media, witnesses, and police reports as being strange or irrational individuals, which raises the possibility of personality pathology or a paranoid condition; or as brooding and grieving suddenly, which raises the possibility of a depressive disorder. Despite the usage of handguns and rifles as opposed to the Malay swords of two centuries ago, the number of victims in contemporary events is comparable to the amount in amok. Similar to amok, the attack’s result for the perpetrator is death, suicide, or less frequently, capture. The report that follows illustrates how modern aggressive conduct and amok behavior are similar:
Ronald Taylor, then 46, slaughtered four members of his family and a friend in Los Angeles in 1998 before jumping to his death from a motorway bridge. When the police went to Taylor’s house to tell his family of his death, they also found his victims. According to court documents, Taylor had debts totaling more than $64,000, including a $21,302 personal loan from his company and a $5,547 credit card balance from Sears, and he was facing financial difficulties. He was also filing for bankruptcy. 3
The majority of people who went amok were mentally sick, according to anecdotal reports and case studies, which led to the first classification of amok as a psychiatric disease in the vicinity of 1849. Before that, amok was a topic of study and inquiry for anthropologists. Observers have historically distinguished between two types of amok, but the DSM-IV does not. The less frequent type, amok, was connected to fury, a perceived slight, or a vendetta preceding the attack. The more frequent variant, beramok, was connected to a personal loss and preceded by a period of melancholy mood and brooding. Beramok is possibly associated to a depressed or mood condition based on these early case reports, whereas amok seems to be linked to psychosis, personality problems, or a delusional disorder.
According to the early case reports, amok is most likely only a way to describe violent behavior brought on by another mental disorder rather than a real psychiatric ailment. The numerous murders and injuries that take place in amok could be a rare outburst of a severe personality disorder, mental disease, or depressive condition. Additionally, it’s likely that certain people have a tendency toward displaying very violent conduct when they have personality or mood disorders.
