Scaling up the Use of Downgraded Maple Syrups for the Production of Wines and Spirits

Downgraded maple syrups are a growing issue for Quebec maple syrup producers, especially as the increasing number of taps on the market and climatic disturbances are likely to exacerbate flavour defects. Maple syrup, whether is has a flavour defect or not, represents a rich source of sugar that could eventually represent a valuable raw material for biotechnological processes such as alcoholic fermentation.

As part of this project, the Distillerie CDSR du Granit will be scaling up to industrial scale the processes it has developed in collaboration with the Laboratoire des Technologies de la Biomasse (LTB) at the Université de Sherbrooke to extract value from downgraded maple syrups.

The aim will initially be to produce wine, and eventually spirits whose organoleptic properties will follow a standard despite the variability of the different downgraded syrups.