Yes, maple syrup has a season. If you live around maple trees, you may spot some buckets hanging from trees during late winter to early spring. Ideal temperatures for producing the sweet, amber treat are when the temperatures fall below freezing at night, but the days are above zero degrees. The sap from the trees drips clear and looks a lot like water, so how does it become dark and sweet? And how did this process begin?
Origins of maple syrup
The Indigenous people of Canada knew about harvesting sap from maple trees and shared their knowledge with the European settlers. Settlers learned how to tap maple trees and convert the sap into maple syrup. The product proved popular and the process of making maple syrup spread to local settler communities c.1700-1800. The photo on the left, taken at the Westfield Heritage Village’s maple syrup event in 2022, shows different types of taps used throughout history. Can you put them in order? I’ll post the answers at the bottom of this page.
Sap vs. Syrup
Maple sap can be consumed straight from the tree and has nutrients like potassium and calcium. It has a very mild flavour, which my husband can confirm as he was brave enough to taste some straight from the source…a tree. This is because it is mostly water and only has about 2% sugar at this stage. (1) The intense sweet maple taste comes after boiling the sap to reduce it into a darker syrup.
The Indigenous people also used another method of producing syrup by separating the water from the sap through repeated freezing. (2) This method would remain transparent without the strong flavour associated with boiled maple syrup. (3) Today, if you visit an old-fashioned sugar bush, you will likely see and smell wood smoke billowing from a sugar shack, as experts boil sap in a large pot. It’s a wonderful smell!
Syrup to Sugar
Delicious, real maple syrup! I love it so much! And so did the early Canadian settlers. Only refrigerators were not yet invented and the short shelf life of syrup in the hot summer months posed a problem to the pioneer community’s growing sweet tooth. (4) So they solved the problem by reducing the syrup further to produce maple sugar! (5) The end product was much less yield than the buckets of maple sap they began with, but reduced and dry, it could last much longer without spoiling. At this stage, it looks a bit like dark brown sugar.
On the right you will see a photo also taken at Westfield Heritage Village’s maple syrup event that shows the three stages of reducing the sap. It looks like a long tedious process, and it probably was, as pioneer’s began holding sugar bees. (6)
Sugar bees
You may have heard of quilting bees but the term “sugar bee” refers to people gathering to help make as much maple sugar together as possible. I like to imagine how hyper everyone must have gotten at these bees, especially when sugar was such a novelty.
Turning maple syrup into maple sugar as a method of preservation was a new concept for me. One of the knowledgeable actors at Westfield Heritage Village was kind enough to explain it. A few months later, I was thrilled (seriously, I was!) to find a jar of maple sugar at the grocery store. I immediately thought of the large amounts of sap that would have been needed to produce the small container.
You better believe I pictured log cabins and cozy fireplaces every time I sprinkled maple sugar onto my food! It was particularly nice on muffin tops.
Many ways to enjoy
There’s a vast amount of maple products on the market including tea, coffee, ice cream and more. People still enjoy traditions of maple taffy cooled on snow, maple butter, maple cream filled chocolates and maple sandwich cookies. My favourite way to enjoy maple syrup has to be over hot fluffy pancakes, rolled and eaten with my fingers. I was taught this trick in grade two by a kind school volunteer who was making pancakes for Pancake Tuesday…and I was at a loss looking for a fork. He told me I didn’t need a fork, just roll it up and dive in because it tastes better that way. Decades later, I still do this because it does somehow taste better and is loads more fun.
A Canadian Tradition
Canada is filled with maple trees — umm, just look at our national flag if you need proof — and it also produces nearly 83% of the world’s maple syrup. (7) Historically, maple syrup/sugar was the standard Canadian sweetener, until about 1875 when sugar cane became available. (8)
A few interesting facts about maple syrup
- It takes 40L of sap to make 1L of maple syrup. (9)
- Trees that are tapped are often marked (e.g., with an orange ribbon) to prevent them from being tapped the following year.
- In 1918, the cost of a gallon of maple syrup as listed in the Toronto’s farmer’s market cost $2.50. (10) I entered that cost into an inflation calculator (11) and the equivalent cost today would be $45.80.
- I found locally 4L of maple syrup (a gallon is roughly 3.75L) sells for $55. Dusting off my very rusty math skills, a gallon would cost $51.56 today making it a slightly more expensive product than it was about one hundred years ago.
Time to call it!
Maple syrup season is too good to last forever. Once the sap begins to look cloudy, that’s a sign the tree is starting to have buds and to stop tapping the trees (it will not taste good). The start of spring, usually the beginning of April in Ontario, signals the end of maple syrup season.
Footnotes
- Lipson, Alanna,“Sticky facts about maple syrup every Canadian should know.” Canadian Living magazine, March 23, 2018. Accessed on February 24, 2023. https://www.canadianliving.com/food/food-news/article/sticky-facts-about-maple-syrup-every-canadian-should-know
- Ibid.
- Canadian Museum of History, “Maple Sugar Time,” https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/barbeau/mbf0100e.html, accessed February 24, 2023.
- Westfield Heritage Village, Maple Syrup Season, visited April 8, 2022. https://westfieldheritage.ca
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Canadian Museum of History, “Maple Sugar Time,” https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/barbeau/mbf0100e.html, accessed February 24, 2023.
- Agricultural and Agri-food Canada, “Quality is in our Nature: Canadian Maple Syrup,” 2011. Accessed February 24, 2023. http://www5.agr.gc.ca/resources/prod/Internet-Internet/MISB-DGSIM/CB-MC/PDF/4689-eng.pdf
- Ibid.
- Georgetown Herald, newspaper, April 24, 1918. Accessed online on February 24, 2023 at https://news.halinet.on.ca/89396/page/2?q=Maple&docid=OOI.89396.
- Bank of Canada, Inflation Calculator, accessed online February 24, 2023 at https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/
Sources and additional learning
Agricultural and Agri-food Canada. “Quality is in our Nature: Canadian Maple Syrup.” 2011. PDF accessed February 24, 2023. http://www5.agr.gc.ca/resources/prod/Internet-Internet/MISB-DGSIM/CB-MC/PDF/4689-eng.pdf
Bank of Canada, Inflation Calculator, accessed online February 24, 2023 at https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/
Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre. Maple Syrup. Accessed February 24, 2023. https://www.brucemuseum.ca/collection/maple-syrup/
Canadian Museum of History. “Maple Sugar Time.” Accessed February 24, 2023. https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/tresors/barbeau/mbf0100e.html
Lipson, Alanna. “Sticky facts about maple syrup every Canadian should know.” Canadian Living magazine, March 23, 2018. Accessed on February 24, 2023. https://www.canadianliving.com/food/food-news/article/sticky-facts-about-maple-syrup-every-canadian-should-know
Sweet Ontario, Pure Maple Syrup. https://www.ontariomaple.com. Accessed February 24, 2023.
Westfield Heritage Village. https://westfieldheritage.ca. Accessed February 24, 2023.
Published on March 6, 2023.