A slightly different "Is it infected?" thread (w/ pics)

[SenorPepe]

I wasn't sure where to post this but the collective HBT knowledge has got to cover this. Some time around the holiday season, a friend of mine brought back a quart or so of homemade maple syrup from their land in Minnesota. It was unbelievably good but that has nothing to do with the story. I'd guess that it's now about 3 months old. I last used it maybe a month ago and it was fine. I took it out today and noticed a powdery layer on top of the syrup. It smells moderately sour, and kind of beer-like. Lacto? I didn't really think anything would take hold in it. Anyway, I don't know anything about homemade syrup or identifying infections so, pics:

I'm curious, and I'm sure a lot of you can make a more informed guess than I can.

 

[FRS]

Is it thinner than syrup you'd get at the store? Bacteria have trouble living in highly concentrated sugar solutions, but if your friend didn't boil enough water out of the sap it may become infected.

Other than that idk. I've kept maple syrup for 14 months or so and not had any issues.

 

[bierhaus15]

I've had this happen to homemade maple syrup when I've left it unrefrigerated. It is a type of mold and is non-toxic. However, if you want to save the syrup, skim the mold off the top before heating it up to near boiling before cooling again.

 

[SenorPepe]

Thanks for the input, guys. FRS, it is indeed thinner than Aunt Jemima's or even supermarket maple syrup, but they've been making it for generations. Of course that doesn't mean it's impossible they screwed up but I think this is how it always comes out.

I guess bierhaus hit it on the head; I didn't refridgerate it. Figured it would be concentrated and anhydrous enough to stay in the cabinet. Thanks for the advice. My question is this: It's in a bottle with a small opening. It's tall and the syrup is less than half full. Skimming the mold in this container would be impossible. Will this crap keep floating or if I pour it out into something will I just mix it all together?

 

[SenorPepe]

By the way, from blog.mycology.cornell.edu :

"Water activity (aw) is a measure of “available water.” Water itself has an aw of 1.0 (all the water in water is available!); for dried milk powder aw=0.2 (hardly any water is available). To protect food from spoilage by molds and bacteria without refrigeration, you want to reduce water activity below 0.8. You can do that by drying out the food, or brining it with either a high salt or a high sugar treatment. According to this site, maple syrup typically has a water activity of about 0.87 to 0.88, pretty hostile to most molds. Only a few xerophiles can live in it,1 including our surprise guest, Wallemia sebi.



What a handsome fungus! Wallemia sebi is a xerophilic mold that specializes in growing on things of low water activity, like dried fruits and jams, and salted meats and nuts. It grows in salterns (the evaporating beds in which sea salt is produced), and its bumpy little spores are found fairly often in indoor air.

A nice study by Zalar and colleagues2 reveals that Wallemia is a distinctly weird mold. It’s so weird, and so distantly related to most other molds, the authors erected a whole new class of fungi just for it, class Wallemiomycetes. Within this entire class there are only three species, Wallemia sebi, W. muriae, and W. ichthyophaga."

I also would not have expected any molds to grow in salterns...hardy bastards.

 

[JacobS]

I'll take a Sample of the mold Being non-pathogenic, I could go for some fun brewing experimentation.

 

[crackhead7]

Last spring we got some locally made Ohio maple syrup that we kept unrefrigerated. Then one day I noticed bubbles to the top of the bottle, it took me a few minutes to realize that this whole situation looked familiar. By golly gee it was fermenting, threw it in the fridge used the rest with no perceptible off flavors. Never occured that this might happen.