WATCH: Are you brave enough to drink garlic?

• Over a thousand pounds of garlic are used per season
• Involves a network of regional garlic farmers

When people think syrup, the next thought is usually pancakes.

When people hear garlic, they may think meats or pasta.

But what about garlic syrup?

“Well, it’s something that you don’t come across every day,” Stu Smith, owner of Stoke the Fire Small Batch told Kelowna10. “It’s pretty versatile how you can apply it.”

The basic ingredients for the curious elixir are garlic, apple cider vinegar, and honey. It takes about a month to create a batch.

In a typical season he uses about a thousand pounds of garlic. The exact process to make the syrup is confidential.

“My wife would be horrified if I was to be giving away our secrets on that,” he said.

Popular uses for it include as a finishing drizzle on rice, vegetables, or roasted meat. It can be used as a salad dressing and mixed with equal parts olive oil or white wine vinegar.

Others have used it to cook salmon or shrimp. Smith learned from a customer, how effective it worked with popcorn.

Perhaps most surpassingly, Smith’s favorite way to enjoy it is just as a drink, sometimes neat.

“We’ll just have a sip on it, even in a mug of warm water with a squeeze of lemon on its own,” he explained. “Maybe in a splash of a Caesar.”

Smith understands how, at first, garlic syrup sounds like unusual.

He puts up a sign offering to let passers-by try a sample. He finds joy in cautiously curious people drinking the syrup from small paper cups and seeing their faces light up.

Until a year ago, Smith was growing all the garlic himself until realizing the value in creating a regional network of farmers to help with supply, driven in part by a stronger local focus due to the pandemic.

“As a company, as we grow, we’re also growing these farms with us,” he said. “The tide raises all boats at that point.”

This allows his company to scale up production while maintaining the local focus and integrity. He partnered with four farms, including those in the north Okanagan, because just one couldn’t supply the number of garlic bulbs he needs.

The logo for Stoke the Fire shows a hot pepper and garlic holding hands with a heart over their head; a nod to how, besides garlic syrup, Smith crafts hot sauces with varying degrees of intensity.

On the extreme end, he sells hot sauces infused with Carolina reapers and scorpion peppers – some of the hottest varieties in the world.

He recommends cucumbers for spice relief and has been known to keep some on hand for tastings.

Smith brings his pop up to the weekly Kelowna Farmers’ and Crafters’ Market on the corner or Dilworth and Springfield every Wednesday.