Maple syrup

From ArticleWorld

Maple syrup is best known a sweetener made from the sap of maple trees. It is most often eaten with pancakes or waffles, but is also put on everything from ice-cream to corn bread. It is also used as an ingredient in baking or in preparing desserts.

Production

Maple syrup comes from eastern Canada and the northern United States. However, it can be made wherever maples grow. Most maple trees can be used as a source of sap, but the sugar maple and black maple are the most favored. A maple syrup production farm is called a sugarbush or the sugarwoods. In Colonial days farmers actually went to the woods and "camped" there while making maple syrup.

Canada produced more than three-quarters of the world's maple syrup. In Quebec, the process has become part of the culture where rustic meals are served with maple syrup-based products. There is a seasonal treat of thickened hot syrup poured onto fresh snow then eaten off sticks, like taffy, as it quickly cools. Maple tree's leaf has come to symbolize Canada, and is depicted on its flag. Making the syrup

Production is concentrated in February, March and April, depending on local weather conditions. To make the syrup, holes are bored into the maple trees and hollow tubes termed spiles or spouts are inserted. Modern use of plastic tubing with a partial vacuum has enabled increased production. A new hole must be drilled each year, as the old hole will produce sap for only one season due to the natural healing process of the tree, called walling-off.

Initially the sap has a very low concentration of sugars. The sap is fed automatically from the storage tank through a valve to a flat stainless steel pan to boil it down until it forms a sweet syrup. The sap/syrup flows among the baffles of the pan, gradually becoming sweeter as it flows, and is drawn off when it is a minimum 66% sugar content.

This process is slow, because most of the water has to boil out of the sap before it is the right consistency. It takes approximately 40 litres of sap to make one litre of maple syrup.

The best "sugaring" weather is clear, with days above freezing and nights below freezing. It is the alternating temperatures above and below the freezing point that cause the sap to flow from the trees. Syrup made late in the season, when there are very few night-time freezes, is dark, mostly due to microbial action.

Maple syrup is sometimes boiled down further to make maple sugar, usually sold in pressed blocks, and maple butter.

Today’s maple syrup

Most "maple-flavored" syrups on the market today in the United States are imitation maple syrups, usually with little or no real maple content, which are less expensive. They are usually thickened far beyond the viscosity of real maple syrup.