The Maple Syrup Industry by Matt Molsen

January 14, 2014

Background Maple syrup is made from the xylem sap taken

from a maple tree Any type of maple tree can be tapped for syrup,

but only 3 can produce enough sugar to be used in the syrup industry.

Sugar maple Red maple

Maple syrup can only be made in cold climates because trees need to store starch in their trunks before winter. Then, in early Spring, the trees turn starch into sugar that comes from tree sap.

Maple syrup is the product most people think of being created from tree sap. However, you can also make candy!

Black maple

A Maple Tree

History Native American Indians have been making maple syrup since the 1540s.

They would chop a V-shaped hole into tree trunks so sap would pour out of the hole into a bucket they made of birch bark

The sap was boiled down into sugar in a hollowed out base of a wooden log and they threw hot stones into the sap to boil all of the water out or they would use pots and a fire if they had them

Indians Gathering and Boiling Sap

Production Today Trees are tapped in early Spring (usually February or March)

to get sap from the trees. Trees must be 10 inches in diameter or larger before they can

be tapped; that's usually around 40 years old! Each tree can yield around 10 gallons of sap. Trees that are

tapped correctly and kept healthy can be used to collect sap for more than 100 years!

Typically the Sugar maple tree is tapped for its sap, which is then boiled to produce maple syrup or made into maple sugar or maple taffy.

Production Today –cont. Then, they connect tube to the holes to get the sap from the tree and

attach a vacuum to the tubes to suck the sap out of the tree They boil water out of the sap to make the natural maple syrup Once the sap is gathered, the farmer takes the sap to his “sugar house”

were it is boiled down over low temperatures using an evaporator. The sap starts to become a golden color as it boils down to syrup. It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallons of syrup.

A Sugar House

Maple Grades There are different grades and types of syrup. There is light, medium, and

dark amber varieties, as well as Grade A and Grade B. They extract sap for about 4 months each season. The color is determined by the time in the season sap is collected. Early in

the season usually makes a lighter color and later in the season makes a darker color. However, it also depends on nature and weather.

Grade A maple syrup has more of a mild flavor.

Global Syrup Production Quebec, Canada produces 76% of the worlds maple syrup. The United States produces the remaining 14% of maple

syrup for the world.

U.S. Syrup Production• Vermont supplies 38% of the syrup produced in the U.S. and 5% of all maple

syrup produced • New York state produces 17% of U.S. syrup and Maine produces 13% of U.S.

syrup.

Any Questions?