Maple Syrup Facts

HISTORY OF MAPLE SYRUP

Hundreds of years ago, long before the white man came to the North American shores, Northeast Indians tapped maple trees by gashing the trunks with their tomahawks. As the sap dripped from the trees, it was collected into birch bark dishes. By continually adding heated rocks to a hollowed-out log, the Indians cooked down the sap into delicious dark colored syrup. Upon their arrival to the New World, North American colonists quickly adapted the art of maple syruping from the Indians. In fact, by using iron drill bits to tap the trees and copper or iron kettles to boil the sap, the white settlers were able to improve upon syrup production. Over time, the colonists began to rely heavily on maple syrup to flavor their foods, particularly when sugar supplies were low. Today these early methods have been refined, but the annual spring collection and production of maple syrup persists as a truly North American tradition.

HOW MAPLE SYRUP IS MADE

Maple syrup begins as sap in a maple tree. The sap is harvested in the spring, between the freezing low winter temperatures and warm days of spring when trees begin to bud. The season usually lasts about a month in length, but can be extended to nearly 8 weeks or shortened into days instead of weeks. Weather and temperature fluctuating between cold nights and warm days is essential for the sap to flow.

Using a drill, maple trees are tapped and a spike is inserted into the small hole to allow the sap to drip out. Maple sap is a clear, water-like liquid that among other things contains about 2 to 4°Bx (Degrees Brix, or percent sugar) of sugar and nutrients for the tree to grow. The spike brings the sap into either buckets or a pipe line into holding tanks. Maple syrup is produced by boiling the sap to extract the water from it, concentrating it into sweet syrup with about 66°Bx. It takes approximately 40 liters of sap to make 1 liter of maple syrup with the average maple tree producing 35 to 50 liters of sap per season. The sap is boiled in evaporators that are specially designed to boil off hundreds of liters of water very quickly concentrating it into syrup. Before bottling and consumption the syrup is rigorously filtered to remove niter or sugar sand.

GRADES OF MAPLE SYRUP

When the maple sap comes out of the maple tree it looks and tastes similar to water (no flavour/colour). The change in flavour/colour occur during the boiling process in the form of a chemical reaction called “Maillard Browning” which takes place between amino acids and reducing sugars. This chemical reaction is responsible for many colours, flavours, and scents in addition to maple syrup such as the browning of steak when seared/grilled, toasted bread, and roasted coffee. The more reducing sugars (glucose and fructose) present, the more Maillard Browning occurs and therefore the more pronounced the flavour, colour, and scent of the syrup.

The dominant form of sugar in maple sap is sucrose. The bacteria that is initially present in the sap feeds on the bonds that hold the sucrose together splitting the sucrose into the reducing sugars as the sap is warmed. This process stops as soon as the sap enters the evaporator since the bacteria are destroyed by the high temperatures. The amount of sucrose splitting that had occurred before the sap enters the evaporator determines how much Maillard Browning will occur and what the colour, flavour, and scent will be of the finished syrup. Syrup from later in the season tends to contain more bacteria as the warmer temperatures promote bacteria proliferation. Thus, the amount of sucrose splitting likely to occur is higher later in the season eventually yielding a darker coloured and more pronounced flavoured/scented syrup. Other factors that can impact the colour, flavour, and scent of the syrup are the soil type, genetics of the tree, weather conditions, and processing.

In Canada, the safety and quality of maple products is governed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). The CFIA is responsible for the “federal” classification of maple syrup into three grades and five colour classes. The colour class is determined by the percentage of light transmission of the maple syrup. Generally speaking, the darker the colour of the syrup the stronger the maple flavour. The following table summarizes the federal classifications:

grades_canadafederal

ColourGrades_Orig