12 Facts About Pure Maple Syrup You Should Know

Maple syrup has been a cherished ingredient in North American culinary traditions for centuries, from well before the advent of European settlers. Native American tribes found that they could produce a delectable sweet nectar to sweeten their food, use as medicine, or trade with other tribes by boiling down sap from sugar maple trees. European settlers later adopted this practice, and today, maple syrup remains an essential part of many traditional and modern dishes.

Pancakes and waffles spring to mind, of course, but maple syrup can sweeten all manner of baked goods, marinades, and drinks, some of which can be greatly improved with a splash of maple syrup. Plus, it has antioxidant properties and a lower glycemic index than sugar. In even better news, its unique, caramel-like flavor can give your food and drink more depth of flavor without the need to do any fancy footwork with regular cane sugar. This flavor is one of the factors that make maple syrup interesting, but there is so much more we would like to share with you. To that end, we've put together a list of important facts about maple syrup you should know and spoke to Josh Leab, co-owner of Ioka Valley Farms – a family enterprise producing maple syrup since 1992 in Hancock, Massachusetts – for the inside scoop.

A lot of people think that maple syrup comes in a single, monolithic variety that looks and tastes the same. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, Josh Leab finds that many people who come to the farm shop are completely unaware of the different grades. For instance, a golden syrup might be a little sweeter and work especially well as a sweetener for tea.

More specifically, there are four types of maple syrup grades, and they are ordered by lightness of color and taste: golden, amber, dark, and very dark. Golden syrup is collected close to the beginning of the maple syrup season in mid-January, while very dark is collected in April at the end of the season. Golden maple syrup tends to have a more delicate, milder flavor, while amber is still fairly light but has a denser consistency than golden syrup. Dark is more dense and has a more intense flavor, while very dark has the most robust flavor and is ideal for cooking and baking. Meanwhile, you may have heard of the Grade A and Grade B classification system for maple syrup, but there's no need to get confused. This system has been largely discontinued.

If you've ever bought maple syrup before, you may have noticed that it's slightly on the expensive side, at least when compared to the fake stuff. This is in part because it takes up to 50 gallons of sap from a sugar maple tree to make just one gallon of finished maple syrup. The process of gathering that sap can also take a long time, depending on the weather and how many taps you have. 

According to Josh Leab, of Ioka Valley Farm, "if you had one tap, it would take 40 days. We have about 17,000 taps," which means that the farm can gather a gallon of sap per minute into their tanks if weather conditions are ideal — overcast and about 40 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. This means that, ultimately, a farm can be as productive as the number of taps it has. However, according to Leab, each tree can really only have two taps at a time, or its health may become compromised.

Maple syrup is an undisputed staple of Canada and the northeastern United States, and that's partially because it has been produced in these regions for centuries, even before the land was colonized by European settlers. Native American tribes, like the Mohawk, developed the first techniques for gathering and processing maple syrup. Back in the day, this meant drilling a hole into a tree, placing a wooden spout in it, and letting the sap drip into a birch bark bucket placed just below it.

Indigenous tribes found some great uses for maple syrup that we've emulated to this day, including using the liquid to cure meats. They also employed maple syrup in medicine and as a local anesthetic. In some cases, they processed the sap beyond the level of maple syrup, effectively turning it into solid maple sugar, which could be more easily transported.

If you think you're ready to start producing maple syrup on your own property, you may want to adjust your expectations, at least in terms of timing. In fact, a maple tree must be about 45 years old before it can start producing sap for syrup. At that point, according to Josh Leab, you can start putting one tap on a tree that is about 8 inches in diameter and two taps on a tree once it reaches 16 inches in diameter. 

More than two taps on a single tree are unnecessary, as the tree won't yield significantly more sap that way. More importantly, a tap should be placed on a new spot on the tree every year. Old taps leave scars, and those spots tend to yield less sap, so a new spot will be more productive. Maximizing productivity is essential given how much sap is needed to produce a gallon of maple syrup and how long it can take to gather it.

With its sugar content, one might think that maple syrup could last forever on the shelf or in a doomsday prepper cellar. But while that may not be far from the truth, it's important to note that maple syrup can expire once the bottle is opened and the seal is broken. Once opened, it needs to be refrigerated, or it may soon go rancid. You can also freeze maple syrup without having to worry about thawing it before pancake time -– the liquid doesn't freeze solid because of its high sugar content.

That said, if you find an open bottle of maple syrup in your pantry and have no idea how long it's been there, don't throw it out before first checking for signs of rot. It may be salvageable if your pantry is a cool, dry place and the syrup has been there for a short while. In particular, look out for mold growth on the surface or a distinct change in color. Above all, use your nose: If it smells off, it's probably off.

Some people say that maple syrup is "healthier" than cane sugar. But what exactly does that mean? Well, several things, as it turns out. First of all, no matter what grade of maple syrup you select, whether darker, denser, or more intense, it will invariably have a lower glycemic index than cane sugar — about 54 compared to 65. This means maple syrup raises blood sugar at a slower rate than cane sugar. Slower is better though, as fast spikes can cause people to struggle with blood sugar content, which in turn can lead to a high risk of diabetes or obesity.

In other news, maple syrup contains health benefits that cane sugar does not, including calcium, potassium, iron, zinc, and manganese. That said, maple syrup is still a significant source of sucrose, so as with cane sugar, it is best to consume it in moderation. But more importantly, make sure that you can tell the difference between real and fake maple syrup when you buy it from the store. Fake maple syrups, sometimes called pancake syrups, are packed with high-fructose corn syrup and other ingredients and have nothing to do with the real maple syrup that comes out of our beloved maple trees.

Regardless of the type of maple syrup you like to buy, it is probably some shade of brown. Golden, amber, dark, and very dark, in short, all refer to some sort of brownish hue. This seems to be a fact we've all come to accept unquestioningly, but have you ever wondered why maple syrup is brown, specifically, and not some other color?

The answer is that a chemical process called the Maillard reaction which causes the liquid to take on a brown shade. This occurs after the sap is collected and boiled down to form the substance we know as maple syrup. The sap begins to evaporate, causing its amino acids to react with its sugar. This process is also present in other foods, such as in steaks, when their crusts harden and brown during grilling, or the top of a baked loaf of bread, which becomes gold (or brown) in the oven.

Having a maple tree or two in your backyard doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to produce maple syrup anytime soon. You'll need the right kind of maple tree, and only four native species (out of 13 species native to North America) can produce the type of sap required to make maple syrup. So, if you don't have one of those, you might be out of luck.

But if you have silver, black, red, or sugar maples, you can certainly try your hand at collecting sap from them. Norway maples, which are not native to America (as the name suggests), can produce sap for maple syrup as well. Ultimately, though, the sugar maple is king when it comes to producing maple syrup. It has the sap with the highest concentration of sugars, at around 2%. Although this amount can vary from tree to tree, the processing of the maple syrup ensures a consistent sugar level across bottles.

Maple syrup lovers typically find it to be a very satisfying and tasty sweetener, but apparently, there's a way to make it even more satisfying and tasty by adding salt. This may sound counterintuitive, but salt is known to enhance the flavor of food in general, including sweet food, and maple syrup is no exception. Indeed, as you may have noticed, practically all sweet baking recipes require at least a pinch of salt, which helps enhance the sugar, chocolate, and overall flavor of a cookie, brownie, or what have you. 

Salt can improve your maple syrup by enhancing the sweetness, and the caramel tones and nuttiness that come along with the golden nectar. The more flavorful the maple syrup — such as when you opt for dark or very dark varieties — the more flavor you'll get when you add that pinch of salt.

Pure maple syrup is available on supermarket shelves throughout the year, but that is only because maple syrup producers manage to pace themselves when selling their product. In fact, maple syrup has a season, which is typically mid-February to mid-April, and it is only possible to gather sap for maple syrup during this period.

In particular, the sap cannot flow and taps run dry when the temperature dips below freezing, as happens regularly in December and January. Thus, the ideal conditions for maple syrup are more reliably present in the early spring. This is when the days are typically 40 degrees Fahrenheit and overcast with freezing conditions at night, which, according to Josh Leab, gives the trees time to reset. Once mid-April has come and gone, the weather usually stays above freezing both day and night, which causes the tree to slow its sap production, effectively ending maple syrup season.

Since maple syrup production has been going on for hundreds, if not thousands of years, it stands to reason that the equipment used to make it has changed drastically over that time. Indeed, from simple wooden sticks acting as taps and birch bark buckets to collect sap, we have now moved onto an era where things look very different.

For instance, as Josh Leab told Tasting Table, "a hundred years ago they were burning wood in open pits" to boil down the sap. "Now we have wood pellets and electric evaporators. We've added vacuum systems, which help collect more sap, and monitoring systems with wireless technology." The vacuum systems have been particularly helpful: They keep an air-tight seal around each tap, which encourages the tree to produce more sap. Before, when more oxygen could reach the tap hole, it would trigger the tree's healing process, closing the hole up faster and slowing the flow of sap.

Have you ever noticed how maple syrup is consistently sweet, no matter where you get it from? Year after year, whether it's in season or not? This happens because, during processing, producers ensure that each batch of maple syrup they make reaches a sugar content of at least 66.9%, according to Josh Leab.

This means that if you gather sap from several trees, where the sap may not always have the same sugar content depending on the year or the tree, if you boil it down to the correct density (which is required of the process), you will eventually reach the ideal sugar content. More specifically, if the syrup ends up too thin, it will have a lower sugar content, while a higher sugar content will create something denser, even solid, like crystallized maple syrup. This quality control parameter ensures that you can buy pure maple syrup anywhere, at any time, and you will have a product that has about the same sugar content.