Today I discovered a 1/4-full bottle of pure maple syrup had gotten moldy, so searched this site and came across this question: Should maple syrup be stored in the refrigerator?
My follow-up question is: Will there be any ill effects (such as altering the flavor or changing the molecular structure such that it's dangerous to eat, etc) from repeatedly heating maple syrup for serving, and re-cooling in the fridge?
If so, I'll try to only heat as much syrup as I'm likely to use at a time, although this will be more hassle, naturally 🙂
Best Answer
Flimzy,
If you use a lot of maple syrup, you won't need to refrigerate it; it'll keep at room temperature (depending on the temperature of your room) for a few weeks.
Repeated heating and cooling, in my long experience with pure maple syrup at home, does not affect the flavor or color of the syrup. This makes sense when you realize that maple syrup is boiled for hours in its manufacture.
However, it can cause the syrup to crystallize, and I haven't found a good easy way to decrystallize syrup (the hard way is dissolving it in water and boiling it down again). For this reason, I only heat up the amount of syrup I intend to use at a time.
I am not a food safety expert; I'm just speaking from my experience at home.