When I first started this blog in 2006 I called it “Emptormaven” – from Latin emptor (buyer) and maven (specialist) – and I bought and hosted it under the domain name emptormaven.com. I had intended to write about lots of products, but the majority of my posts ended up being about firearms.

By 2020 I was dropping my pseudonym across my online content, so I moved the blog under my david.bookstaber.com domain and set up a 301 redirect for the last year I owned the emptormaven.com domain.

I recently discovered someone else bought the domain name and is hosting gun-related content on it! I guess I had created significant SEO value. So to whoever is using the name now: You’re welcome.

Maple syrup is typically made by reducing maple sap by a factor of 40. For some time I was wondering what raw maple sap tastes like. A recent stop in a local grocery store’s Expensive Water section turned up quarts of Vermont “maple water” selling for $4.50! To satisfy my curiosity I bought one of these:

It smells something like diluted coconut water and tastes relatively neutral, with only a hint of sweetness and a woodsy aftertaste.

Of course the economics of this are crazy: A quart of Vermont maple syrup runs under $15. Why not buy maple syrup and dilute it with water, 40:1, thereby reconstituting “maple water” for a tenth the cost?

I guess you wouldn’t get the fancy packaging advertising the not-from-concentrate version’s “electrolytes, antioxidants and prebiotics,” some of which might be lost in the process of reducing sap to syrup?