Making Maple Syrup: Good and Good for You!

The Old Farmer’s Almanac headquarters in New Hampshire is surrounded by maple trees. Wherever you look, there are sap buckets on those trees—at the local school, in neighbors’ woods, and along the road.

And if you drive by a “sugarhouse” and see steam billowing, they’re boiling the sap to produce maple syrup—or, what I call “liquid gold.” There is NO comparison between real maple syrup and the corn syrup confection sold in grocery stores.

What is Good Maple Syrup Weather?

Sugar’s sweet, but sap is sappier;
Cold nights make the farmers happier!
–The Old Farmer’s Almanac, 1989

Maple trees are tapped when temperatures alternate between freezing and thawing. Nighttime temperatures must drop below freezing (in the 20s), and daytime temperatures must reach 40 to 50 degrees. Before winter, the maple trees store starch in their trunks and roots, which gets converted into sugar. As spring nears, the sap thaws and the sugar in the sap rises up the tree.

You need cold nights to make “sugarers” happy, so unseasonably warm winters isn’t good for the harvest. What happens when it’s not the right temperatures? Well, some seasons are good, some aren’t. Agriculture’s not for wimps! We weather the ups and downs.

How Do You Tap a Tree?

Do all trees produce sap? Yes, but it’s the sugar maple that has the highest content of sugar in the sap. Red maples can be tapped, too.

There are many ways to tap trees to allow the sap to run out freely. Here’s the most basic way:

• Drill 2 to 3 inches into the south side of the tree at a convenient height, making a hole ⅜- to ⅝-inch in diameter (larger holes for larger trees). The hole should slant upward slightly.
• Then drive a metal sap spigot (available at hardware stores) into the hole, stopping short of the full distance of the hole.
• Hang a bucket on the spigot to collect the sap. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.
• The sap is clear and almost tasteless—and very low in sugar content. Boil the sap to evaporate the water, producing a liquid with the characteristic flavor and color of maple syrup and a sugar content of 60 percent.

Maple Syrup Health Benefits

Native Americans used maple syrup both as a food and as a medicine—and taught the age-old process of sugaring to the colonists.

Maple syrup contains fewer calories and a higher concentration of minerals than honey. It’s an excellent source of manganese and a good source of zinc, which sweetens your antioxidant defenses, your heart, and your immune system. It may even have special benefits for men’s reproductive health. 

Real Maple Syrup Taste

Now, if you’ve never tasted “real” maple syrup, there’s no way to describe its unique flavor and pure goodness. It’s a natural wonder of the world!

The “syrup” that I grew up with was filled with corn syrup and artificial “maple” flavor. Whether you like it or not (and I did at the time), it has never met a tree.

Pure maple syrup has an earthy, naturally sweet taste and a more viscous quality than maple-flavor syrup. I guess I’d say that it’s as different as store-bought apple juice is to fresh-pressed apple juice.

At our local sugarhouses, they sell Grade A and Grade B.

• Grade A comes in light, medium, and dark amber. If you’re not used to pure maple syrup, you’ll want to go with Grade A light. This is what I buy for friends. (Maple syrup is my go-to gift for out-of-town hostess gifts and holiday-time gifts.)
• My husband, however, loves Grade B. It’s much richer, bolder, and thicker. Many people just use it for cooking, but he just loves the strong stuff on his pancakes.

Of course, maple syrup is great for more than pancakes. See some of the Almanac’s best maple syrup recipes!