Meet Sugar Bob, the Creator of Smoked Maple Syrup

Your tastebuds won't know what hit them

Robert “Bob” Hausslein sells heresy in a bottle. His Sugar Bob’s Finest Kind Smoked Maple Syrup—paper thimbles of which he proffered at the sprawling New York Fancy Foods trade show—is, in a word, challenging. Dark, viscous and infused with the acrid funk of a charred forest, the syrup dares you to love it. It lays waste to your griddle-kissed childhood pancake memories. Saturday morning’s buffalo china is irrevocably shattered. For his chutzpah, you want to reward Bob with a bloody mouth. Take another taste, though, and the cogs churn in wondrous directions. Toward bacon. Toward sausages. Toward compound butters. Toward a tablespoon dropped in your pancake batter. Hell, toward whisky and a rocks glass. Quicker than sugar registers on a taste bud, you’ve prostrated yourself at Bob’s work boots. How the hell did this happen?

Here’s Bob to tell you.

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