Mystic Shagbark Hickory Syrup

Shag(bark) Baby…
Mystic Shagbark Hickory Syrup
Purchased at BF Clyde’s

I know right? What is this page doing here? This isn’t like anything else on this massive website. Heck if I know how to write about syrup. Or food of any sort. To me, it’s just syrup.

But I have this section about the “unique and historic” restaurants and foods in Connecticut, and while you don’t know it just yet, this is a rather unique product – not only in Connecticut, but in the entire country.

Syrup made from the bark of shagbark hickory trees. Yup, Mystic’s Turkeywoods Farm makes New England’s only Shagbark Hickory syrup. I tasted some at BF Clyde’s one day we were there and although I found the price fairly ridiculous, I was intrigued and always like to help out the local businesses. I don’t really like real maple syrup, but I found I rather enjoyed the lighter and less sweet taste of the shagbark syrup.

According to the website, Turkeywoods products are all-natural, gluten and corn syrup free. The ingredients of my little bottle are: Sugar, hickory bark extract and molasses.

See, I told you I’d be useless writing about syrup. Fortunately my friend Dave absolutely doesn’t when it comes to writing about food and, lucky for us, he made some hickory bark syrup on his own.

Please read his whole blog post here.

Some highlights include that apparently there is only one other hickory bark syrup maker in America – in Indiana. See, UNIQUE! And Turkeywoods Farms is the ONLY maker of hickory nut syrup, which I’ll get next time I’m in the area. And I’ll write a useless page about that stuff too.

Back to Dave. Go check out what he did on his own, it’s really cool. And then find in the comments where the Turkeywoods owner congratulates him on a job well done, but then challenges him to a hickory nut syrup making contest.

Knowing Dave, he probably had some colorful words about that idea but rose above and didn’t bother responding to the challenge.

This stuff is pretty good. It’s light flavorful and different in a good way. Less viscous than maple syrup and sweet but naturally so. I dig it.

As you can see, I like to take pictures of me putting it on my oatmeal.