No, this isn't rude, despite what you are all thinking...
The weekend before last B & I went to
Westfield Heritage Village for their annual maple syrup festival! (I started this post over a week ago but have been too busy to finish it til now.)
In case you don't remember from previous posts, Westfield is a collection of old buildings with volunteer guides who will tell you the history of each. For the maple syrup festival they had three stations set up telling you how maple syrup was made by the native Canadians, how it was made by the pioneers and how it is made today! With tastings of the modern stuff...
I love education like this!
For those who don't know, the sugar maple is native to this part of the world. Other maples can be used to make syrup but the sugar content is so low that it isn't really worth it.
All maple syrup making starts by tapping the maple tree. You basically put a spout in the tree and hang a bucket off it to catch the sap. For good sap collection you need cold nights and warm days. It is the combination of the two which causes changes in pressure between the tree and the outside, which in turn means the sap will flow out. Further south they can't make maple syrup because the difference in day/night temperature isn't great enough.
You need about 40 litres of sap to make 1 litre of syrup!
The native Canadians used to make maple syrup by hollowing out a log, filling it with sap and then putting hot rocks in the sap to boil off the excess water. They always went to the sugar stage because that is easier to store (maple syrup does go off, so should be stored in the fridge or freezer). Apparently this leaves three layers: one of good stuff, sandwiched between two of crud! The native Canadians would stay up for 24 hrs or so making the maple syrup!
The early settlers used the same basic method, but instead of putting hot rocks into the sap, they could put the sap into successively smaller iron cauldrons and boil off the water that way.
The modern way is the same again, they just use more modern equipment.
Maple syrup has two flavours - molasses and vanilla. Cooking it for longer leads to more molasses flavour. Sap tapped later in the season has lower sugar content so it needs to be cooked longer to get the same final product. "Light" maple syrup has more vanilla flavour, "Amber" has more molasses and is recommended for cooking.
Once the leaves start budding on the trees it's time to stop tapping. At this point in the season the sap changes and tastes bad!
