My maple syrup has a bit of mold on it

Maple syrup goes in the freezer. Then warm it up when you need some. Parents own 2 farms. One of them they dont charge land fees, instead they work out an amount of food they get. My gf works on the farm doing the syrup tapping when it is ready. We get a lot of food.

I've done some work with fungi found on low water activity substrates, they are pretty cool. The species diversity is usually fairly low on sweet or salty foods because it is a really stressful environment that basically selects for a certain group of species capable of handling it.

Made me lol.

I never would have thought to put it in the freezer before. It's great, otherwise the syrup invariably goes mouldy in the fridge after opening.

Are you in Ontario or Quebec? I know a few people who tap trees, all but one do it as a hobby though. Ever make birch syrup? I can't say I was a fan of it, but it was certainly interesting.

Excellent, informative post. I, for one, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

>he doesn't know what dry aging is

>shit maple syrup goin' in now I did not know that 1) it goes bad and 2) you can freeze and reheat.

No problem. always glad when mycology-related threads pop up.

The farms are both in North east Ontario.Never tried birch before. One property is a hunters playground. Everything up there. I fish more than I hunt, we eat a lot of fish in my family, mainly trout. Nice to be able to grow weed up there. There is nobody around for the most part. I drive up here from Toronto most weekends in the summer

I know exactly what it is. It's what happens to women's vaginas once they get married.

Kek. Tell me you learned that from experience

it's really good maple syrup from my friend's property that i helped make

Genuinely interesting read

any idea how the spores got there in the fist place?

is it from my house or from production?

Just eat it with the mold. There is literally nothing harmful in it.

Maple syrup is boiled/cooked for some time and usually bottled hot and presumably heat treated. Chances are, it is going mouldy after you open it, which means the spores were airborne in your home. You open the maple syrup, lots of spores from a variety of species land on the surface, but only species capable of growing on the sugary, low water activity substrate germinate and colonize the syrup.

There are some moulds that are osmophilic/xerophilic/acidophilic and produce heat-resistant sexual spores. The spores often won't germinate unless subjected to certain high temperatures ("thermal activation"). Fungi with these attributes, especially Byssochlamys species, can be important spoiling agents of pasteurized juices.

There has been a lot of work on these fungi because of the implications in food microbiology. For example, Byssochlamys nivea ascospores are reported to require 75 C for 5 min. Byssochlamys nivea is often found in soil, so you could imagine that this heat resistance and activation is probably an adaptation that allows the fungus to survive and flourish following a forest fire. Humans came along with their interest in heat-treated juice and now the fungus has a new niche.

A similar example involves opportunistic fungal pathogens. The vast majority of fungi are unable to grow at mammalian body temperatures, which excludes them as pathogens. Aspergillus fumigatus, a causal agents of aspergillioisis, which can have very high mortality rates depending on the patient group, is a fungus that is thermophilic. It is often found in self-heating compost piles, so you can imagine that its ability to infect and kill people is a result of its adaptation to warm environments and specific substrates.

There is a cool paper speculating the role of mammalian body temperature, fungal pathogenicity, and dinosaur extinction. It's worth a read:

einstein.yu.edu/uploadedfiles/casadevall/2005/4.pdf

Have you heard of this (pic related) stuff you ignorant cu/ck/?

pics or gtfo

>survive and flourish following a forest fire.

I would assume this means it's found relatively deep in the soil, then, because temperatures near the surface during a forest fire would be too hot for it to survive, correct?

>Byssochlamys species

Question. I always heat my fruit to 180F to pasteurize it prior to pitching my yeast to avoid using sulfates and I've never had an issue with mold in or souring of my wine. Is that because it reaches a high enough alcohol level relatively quickly to kill it off, or because it's a relatively acidic environment?

Soil is a good insulator and not all fires are the same... I shouldn't saying just forest fires, but all types of fire, e.g.: grass fires. A quick grass fire or surface fire won't sterilize the soil.

Some/all spores will die depending on intensity and depth, but it gives the fungus a better chance. Keep in mind the fungus produces a massive amount of air-dispersed asexual spores, so this is more of a long-term survival mechanism.

I couldn't find an open source copy, but here is a recent paper looking at fungal "spore banks" and fire:

nature.com/ismej/journal/v10/n5/full/ismej2015182a.html

There are definitely some moulds that can survive 180F, maybe not for hours, but probably for your treatment time.

It's probably a combination of good asceptic technique (e.g.: keeping things relatively sterile and not leaving equipment wide open to airborne spores) and the generally inhibitory substrate you are creating. You are basically creating a founder effect or bottleneck by encouraging the fast-growing yeast to grow, so even if the odd spore capable of growing in your wine gets in, the yeast may prevent it from doing damage to your product.