Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know How to Drink a Tree's Blood About this episode Of course we're talking all about maple syrup today - the tapping, the processing, the eating.
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Transcript 10,435 words · 8 speakers
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1:41 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:51 Josh Clark? Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And we're talking today about maple syrup. And I'm not going to lie to you, dear listeners, I want something maple, like, right now.
2:05 Speaker 02 I do too. This was, uh, I don't know if this came from a listener or it came from many listeners or just my own brain, but we, um, not even thinking, I just, um, threw this one to Livia, uh, kind of forgetting that, I don't want to give, I don't want to dox Livia, but let's just say she lives in the New England area.
2:22 Josh Clark? Uh huh, sure.
2:22 Speaker 02 So she was like, oh yeah, baby, right up my alley. Let's do it.
2:26 Josh Clark? Yeah. I have the impression that she'll eat a thing of maple cotton candy if you hand it to her.
2:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, I could feel the joy coming through, uh, Livia's keyboard in this one, which is always nice.
2:36 Josh Clark? For sure. And the timing's amazing too, because the sugaring season is basically just wrapped up as far as I can tell. And I think it was a good one.
2:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:45 Josh Clark? Yeah. Uh, Livia also just says a little thing. Remember we, we've said that she always has great, um, titles. And this one was how to drink a tree's blood.
2:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that's going to be the title.
2:58 Josh Clark? Oh, good. Okay, good.
2:59 Speaker 02 I mean, I might put in parentheses, maple syrup, you sicko or something like that.
3:03 Josh Clark? Sure. I like that. Anytime sicko ends up in a title, I think something great has happened.
3:09 Speaker 02 Including the movie Sicko.
3:12 Josh Clark? So, uh, is there a movie called Sicko?
3:14 Speaker 02 Yeah. Wasn't that, uh, didn't, wasn't that one a Harmony Carine's movie or Carine?
3:20 Josh Clark? I don't know.
3:21 Speaker 02 I think so. No, no, that was, uh, Michael Moore. Sorry.
3:24 Josh Clark? Michael Moore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:26 Speaker 02 The documentary. Yeah.
3:27 Josh Clark? Yeah, yeah. About the American healthcare system and how broken it is.
3:31 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:31 Josh Clark? So Chuck, um, all right. So let's talk about maple syrup. We both want some maple syrup. This is fair warning to anyone listening. You're going to want something maple and that's okay. It's okay to want something maple, even if you don't have it.
3:45 Speaker 02 That's right. Uh, but if we're going to start with maple syrup, we got to start with the maple tree. Um, there are all kinds of maple trees, but if you, and, and you can get sugary sap from other kinds of maple trees, but if you want the real gold, uh, and if you want the real gold standard industry wide, you're going to tap into that sweet, sweet sugar maple, the Acer saccharum, uh, because that's the one that has the real good stuff. That has the highest concentration of sugar in its sap. And, uh, like you said, you might tap a red maple if that's all you got around, but you need a lot more of it to end up with what you want. So you really want, you really want that sugar maple.
4:21 Josh Clark? Right. And if you say, okay, guys, I'll find a sugar maple, where do I go? They're all over the place, actually. They have a pretty great range. We're talking about North America, northern North America, which includes the northeastern US, southeastern Canada. We're talking New Brunswick. We're talking Nova Scotia.
4:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
4:40 Josh Clark? Don't leave out Quebec because southern Quebec is the, um, far and away the largest producer of maple syrup in the world. Parts of Ontario and then Maine, all the way down in North Carolina, you can find sugar maples. There are some places that sugar maples grow that they're not going to, they're not going to make maple syrup as much there because there's also in addition to the actual tree itself, there are environmental conditions, climate conditions that have to take place. And they're so variable that maple syrup production and maple sugar production has resisted industrialization throughout its lifetime. And that just makes me cheer.
5:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, because it's like you have to tap a tree that grows in the woods to do that. And I bet they've tried, but they haven't figure, uh, figured out a way to build a factory around a forest with trees going through it.
5:34 Josh Clark? Right. Um, yeah, as far as I know, no one's tried that. Well, I guess the biodome kinda counts.
5:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, probably so. Uh, but what we're about to describe, everybody, is one of the wonders of nature. I didn't know anything about this stuff, so it was all new to me and I was kind of blown away. It was kind of a mind bomb, if you will, for me. Uh, the, the magic to the maple syrup, obviously, is that sap. And that sap has a very specific function in a tree. Uh, the sapwood is a part of the tree. It's also called the xylem. Uh, it's in that tree trunk just outside of the heartwood. And it has tissue in that sapwood, in the xylem, that, that moves water and minerals around from the roots to the leaves. It's kind of like the freeway system, if you will.
6:16 Josh Clark? Yeah, or it's circulatory system, hormones too. That's what sap is. It's minerals, water, hormones, all the stuff that the tree's moving to itself to help repair wounds and to produce photosynthesis. And then also move the products from photosynthesis, which is like starches, back down to the roots, right? So you've got stuff moving up and down the tree trunk. But if you walk up to a sugar maple in the summer and you put a tap into it, it's going to just be like this, that was useless and it kind of hurt. There's a specific time when you want to tap a sugar maple to get the constituent maple sap.
6:57 Speaker 02 That's right. And that is in the major producing parts, which is what we described before. That will be generally between like February and April with a peak in March. And that is because, and this is the second sort of astounding part of this stuff. That xylem, that sapwood, it's moving stuff all around, but it's also really good at holding energy reserves during times where it needs it.
7:21 Josh Clark? Right.
7:22 Speaker 02 So there are these cells called ray parenchyma that use enzymes that turn those starches Josh was talking about into sugars. And it's a great way to store that energy, but that sugar also protects the tissue from freezing during the winter. So it's just sort of sitting there like in the perfect conditions, waiting to be tapped in those months.
7:41 Josh Clark? Yeah, because there's this kind of positive pressure that builds up in the tree. Because on nights where it's freezing and that turn into days that get above freezing, right? So when the icicles start to really drip, I've seen. The sap itself starts moving up and down. And when it moves up, normally when there's leaves on the, on the tree, transpiration or basically evaporation at the leaf surface, that relieves that pressure. But remember, this is a time when the sugar maples don't have leaves yet. So it can't kind of relieve that pressure and the pressure builds up and builds up. And so if you go to a sugar maple at specifically the right time, when it's freezing
8:23 Josh Clark? at night, not freezing in the day, and you put a tap into it, that's when the sap's going to come out. And like you said, those starches have been converted to sugars as energy stores. So that's also when the sap is going to be at its sweetest. There is a Couple of weeks that you can, you can tap a specific kind of tree in a specific location, under specific climate conditions to get the sap you're going to need to make maple syrup. And I mean, I just love maple syrup so much more than I did before.
8:54 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. It's, you know, once, once those conditions leave, that sap, it didn't dry up, but it stops running freely. If you could get to it, it wouldn't taste the same. Like you said, it would be kind of bitter, but you can't get to it anyway. And this is like a seasonal cycle. Like this is when the trees are beginning to bud again. You know, like we said, it peaks in March, basically. And if you, let's say you tapped a tree and you got a little bit of that good stuff and you put it on your tongue, it wouldn't taste like the final result. It's sweet. You can taste the sweetness, but it's about, you know, the, the sap ranges from about one to 3% of that sweetness at that point. So
9:36 Speaker 02 like, it needs to be processed after that point. Cause what you really want to get it to is a sugar concentration of about 66%.
9:43 Josh Clark? Yeah.
9:43 Speaker 02 Which means you have to boil it. You have to boil down about 40 gallons to get one gallon of syrup.
9:49 Josh Clark? Yeah, there's actually, there is this maple syrup researcher from the turn of the last century named C W Jones, and he came up with what's called the Jones Rule of 86. And I'm not sure how it works. It seems a little magical, but you can take the percentage of sugar that's found in the sap naturally that you just got out of the tree and multiply that percentage by 86 and it will tell you how many gallons you need to boil down to get one gallon of maple syrup at 66% sugar concentration.
10:19 Speaker 02 That's right. And usually it's about that 40 gallon range.
10:23 Josh Clark? Yeah.
10:24 Speaker 02 People have, you know, we're not the first persons to enjoy this stuff. Like it has a very long history among indigenous North American groups. And they used it for all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of different stories like, like, you know, who's the first person to eat an oyster? Like, how do they figure out this tree sap was something you wanted? Like the first person to tap it? And it probably, no one knows for sure. It probably happened by accident. There's a lot of- Stories, um, one of them is that, uh, there was a tomahawk in a tree that tomahawk got pulled out and there just happened to be a container below it that cat caught that sap. And, uh, some indigenous person was like, oh, well, let me take that water that's in this bucket from the rain.
11:05 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
11:05 Speaker 02 And boil some meat for dinner. And they're like, wait a minute, this is like, you know, it has a sweet taste to it. So it was a complete accident. Um, it's kind of a nice story. Um, my money's probably on just another kind of accident. Maybe someone just sort of tasted it with their finger, uh, because a woodpecker pecked a hole in a tree. And they're like, hey, maybe we can use this something because they had long used saps and gums for other things. So it wasn't like any big like revelation that something from a tree was useful.
11:35 Josh Clark? Sure. Yeah, totally. That's a good point. Um, another one, another suggestion is that somebody noticed a sapsicle, um, and tried that because the, the sugar content of the sap itself has a lower freezing point than the water. So the water separates out as it freezes. And then the sap, the sugary sap eventually freezes more with a higher concentration of sugar. And if somebody broke that off and licked it, they'd be like, where do you need to get to the bottom of what's going on here? Cause this is delish.
12:05 Speaker 02 I would love a real sapsicle. That'd be fun.
12:08 Josh Clark? Uh, we should also say this, so the, the, um, the Europeans who came over to colonize North America got this, like, learned about maple syrup directly from the indigenous people who were here, like the Abenaki, the Haudenosaunee, the Ojibwa, the Algonquin, all of them had methods and techniques for getting maple sap out of sugar maple trees. Um, and they, they had like their own techniques. Each group had a slightly different technique, but ultimately what it usually boiled down to was cutting a, um, laceration in the bark of the tree, uh, possibly putting like a hollow twig in there to serve as the tap. Sometimes they just let it trickle down the, the bark of the tree.
12:53 Josh Clark? And then they would usually catch it in like a little birch bark container. Uh, the ones that I saw look like little tiny rowboats, which I bet you could use as rowboats after the sugaring season.
13:04 Speaker 02 That's right. After they got that sap, you know, like I said, it was still, you still have to process it and boil it down. There were different techniques that they used, you know, depending what tribe you were from, but one of them most certainly was probably putting heated rocks into a container and kind of boiling and evaporating out the water that way. A lot slower process, actually. In fact, sometimes they would just put it over a hot fire and let it happen. Sometimes they would just leave it out in the sun and take like the real slow roll approach to get the water out of there.
13:36 Josh Clark? Yeah, also, they, they, from that, I guess, the sapsicle kind of thing, they figured out that you could also freeze it out, like you could freeze the water out, remove the ice, and you just basically evaporated a bunch of water from the sap. So you, there was probably different techniques that could also be combined to, just to get it more and more closer to what you wanted. And we should say that the indigenous peoples of North America who were doing this pre-contact, they were not making syrup nearly as much. From what we understand, they were making this into sugar, sugar cakes, granulated sugar. They were making sugar out of the maple
14:19 Josh Clark? sap, which is essentially the same thing. You're boiling it down further than you would syrup, but you, you let it dry. Once it gets to a thickened state, you let it dry it, then you break it up and you've got maple sugar on your hands.
14:31 Speaker 02 Specifically for one tribe, it was sort of a seasonal shift for the Ojibwe people. Like, in the wintertime, they would break up into smaller groups of like a dozen or so and travel around and hunt and ice fish and stuff like that. And in the spring, they would come back together and form like these bigger communities. And that sugaring process and tapping those trees was kind of the first big thing that they did, so they could, you know, store it as long as possible, hopefully all year long. And then, you know, did their other spring and summer stuff, like, you know, plant and harvest and stuff like that. But sugaring season kind of kicked off of the coming back together, which is kind of cool.
15:09 Josh Clark? That's another thing I love about it, is that's what it's called. When you go and you collect the sap. To make maple syrup or maple sugar from is called the sugaring season. The place where you boil down the saps called the sugar shack.
15:24 Josh Clark? The, the
15:25 Speaker 02 The sugar bush?
15:25 Josh Clark? Yeah, the stand of trees of sugar maples together is called the sugar bush. Kind of like a wooded area, another name for that, not the evergreen scrub bush that's found out in Chaparral country. This is just a group of sugar maples together in an area. That's your sugar bush. I just love this whole thing.
15:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, when they would pass, pass it back and forth, they would say, give me, give me some sugar, baby.
15:53 Josh Clark? That's right.
15:53 Speaker 02 Really, I love it. The word sugar is a very pleasing sound to my ears. So I agree.
15:58 Josh Clark? Especially and also when you think of the snow, I think of the snow and like the maples in the snow. Like visually, and then thinking of the word sugar with all that stuff too, it's just, gosh. That almost makes me want to go do, like basically move and buy like a little parcel of land that has some sugar maples on it. And just make like a gallon once a year or something like that. Seems like a lot to do just for a gallon of maple syrup that I could probably buy from somebody else for much, much, much cheaper. And less effort, but it just seems nice, you know, like a pleasant way to be.
16:32 Speaker 02 Oh, people do that. I mean, I know in this article, Olivia said that like doing it in your house isn't super recommended because all the steam it creates from boiling it down, but I've, I've seen videos, like there are definitely people that tap trees on their land. And just get small amounts of sugar and like, you know, kind of like somebody might get honey from bees and set a little stand on the side of the road.
16:53 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure. I was looking at like a maple or sugaring, I guess. Supply house and they had like three, $400 evaporation pans that you basically put on like a propane gas. Like heater or burner and yeah, you could, you could do it wherever. But yes, I think I would build a little sugaring shack or sugar shack, just to
17:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:16 Josh Clark? Just a wood burn into a sign to hang over the door that said sugar shack.
17:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. And if some peyote happened to find its way in there, so be it.
17:25 Josh Clark? So be it.
17:28 Speaker 02 We should mention before we take our break, you know, they were obviously eating this stuff in a lot of ways, the indigenous peoples, they were making cornmeal based breads with it. They would put it on all kinds of like meats and fish. And I imagine it tasted just so great. So it was the flavor for them, but it was also a very calorie rich thing in the early spring when their winter food was sort of dwindling.
17:49 Josh Clark? Right.
17:49 Speaker 02 And so, you know, and as we'll see later, their health properties too. So they, they probably had a hunch about that as well.
17:56 Josh Clark? And don't forget the tiny rowboats that you could put in like a lake or a pond after sugar.
18:00 Speaker 02 That's right. Yeah.
18:02 Josh Clark? Let's take that break.
18:04 Speaker 02 All right, we'll be right back and talk more about maple right after this.
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21:25 Josh Clark? So Chuck, I said that European colonizers got their just total awareness of maple sugaring or syruping from the the local indigenous people. One of the things that the local indigenous peoples got from the Europeans were metal pots, which vastly improved the process of making maple syrup and make maple sugar for the indigenous tribes. Like that no longer did you have to put a heated rock in in some sort of bowl with some sap and just wait like this. This just increased things tremendously.
22:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, I wonder if they collected in that or if they stuck to their baby boats.
22:06 Josh Clark? I hope I hope baby boats. That's my that's my wish.
22:10 Speaker 02 I think so, too. So early on in that colonization process, you know, the the settlers obviously were were doing the same thing, collecting it and using their methods. It was cheaper than importing cane sugar from the Caribbean.
22:24 Josh Clark? Yeah.
22:25 Speaker 02 Which is where that was all coming from. And it became like the de facto sweetener of the United States at some point. And then later became a sort of a cause, an abolitionist cause. I think in the 18th century abolitionists and Quakers were using like maple like as a as a way to say, hey, let's not especially founding father Benjamin Rush like, hey, let's not support these British slave based plantations in the Caribbean that are we're getting this cane sugar like we can get our own sweet stuff right here and export it and not promote slavery and it tastes great.
23:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, but in that export, if you made enough to export, you could also undercut the sugar market in Great Britain back home. So you were really kind of hobbling the slave slave based plantation societies by doing that. Thomas Jefferson was like, I'm on board. Let's do this.
23:19 Speaker 02 Of course.
23:20 Josh Clark? It fit into his vision of the United States being a collective of. Yauman farmers who are basically, you know, growing enough for themselves and a little to sell. They're like, yeah, just plant some sugar maples too, and it'll be great. Because one of the things that makes sugaring attractive is that it takes place in this weird in-between time where there's normally not a lot to do on a family farm. Now you have a whole other revenue stream and you're getting a bunch of maple syrup out of it too. Just by sugaring, adding that to like your yearly thing.
23:54 Speaker 02 So we did mention earlier that, you know, they probably tried to turn this into a large scale thing, but it just failed kind of time after time because it's such a labor intensive thing. And, you know, but as a result, you know, maple, you know, I think I said at one point, it was like the most common sweetener in the US. That kind of started falling away because it's so labor intensive. And by the second half of the 19th century, cane sugar prices fell a lot. And then beet sugar started being produced. So maple sugar, it just, you know, as far as being a sweetener, kind of fell by the wayside for a long time.
24:29 Josh Clark? Yeah.
24:30 Speaker 02 But they started, you know, people still like that, that flavor, especially on things like pancakes and waffles.
24:37 Josh Clark? Yeah.
24:37 Speaker 02 So they, they needed to, to unfortunately kind of cut it with other stuff. So they, maple producers started cutting it with that cane sugar I mentioned and corn syrup. And that's where we get, you know, Mrs. Butterworth. That's where we get that pancake syrup that we have today.
24:51 Josh Clark? I have Mrs. Butterworth written right there.
24:55 Speaker 02 I mean, what else is there? Aunt Jemima, those are the only two. And I don't even think it's called Aunt Jemima anymore, is it? Or is it?
25:00 Josh Clark? No, no, it's, I can't remember what they call it, like Old Mill or something like that.
25:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, they changed the name. Here's my secret, like if I go to the restaurant and they have the maple syrup at the nice brunch, I love it. I'm not going to turn my nose up and I know that's the gold, but man, I love that. That buttery pancake syrup.
25:19 Josh Clark? Oh yeah, me too. So I was thinking about what I was raised on. I didn't have real maple syrup until I was, I don't know, probably in my 40s, to tell you the truth. I finally was like,
25:28 Speaker 02 Same.
25:28 Josh Clark? I want to see what this, this is like. And I ordered some and it, I mean, it's pretty good, but it is a different animal from what I grew up on, which wasn't even Mrs. Butterworth's. My mom was like, no, that's too expensive. She would make a one to one, simple syrup and then put a little bit of artificial maple flavoring in it. And that was, that is maple syrup to me and I love it still. Like that's still my favorite kind of syrup.
25:55 Speaker 02 Now, when you say you ordered it, what does that mean? Ordered it off the shelf at the grocery store?
25:59 Josh Clark? No, I ordered some online first, I think, before I noticed that you could get it at grocery stores.
26:05 Speaker 02 Wow, okay.
26:05 Josh Clark? Yeah, because I'm like, organic, real maple syrup. Where are you going to find that? And apparently just about everywhere.
26:12 Speaker 02 Yeah. I, I mean, we have that stuff around. And here's what I didn't know either is that, and I know Canadians and Northeastern people in the, of the United States are probably like, you guys are such rude.
26:22 Josh Clark? Oh, they're aghast right now.
26:24 Speaker 02 But hey, I grew up in Georgia. Like this is just wasn't a thing. It's not a thing down here like it is up there. So I didn't know you had to refrigerate it. So I, I went through the stage of like, you know, why do I have mold spores on my maple syrup? And Mrs. Butterworth is just fine, sitting right next to it on the shelf.
26:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, I'm a little nervous about the syrup I got because it's been in my pantry for a long time and it still doesn't have mold. So it's got like antifreeze or something cut into it.
26:53 Speaker 02 Is this stuff you ordered in your 40s?
26:56 Josh Clark? Yeah.
26:57 Speaker 02 You haven't gone through one bottle?
26:58 Josh Clark? No, I haven't because it is, it's so different from what I like or what I'm used to as maple syrup that I, it's like a special kind of thing. It's not, it's not what I go for now. Anytime I'm like syrup, like it's a, it's a very occasional thing for me.
27:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'm with you, man. I definitely came onto it late and it was definitely like in a restaurant somewhere where they, you know, had it in a little cup on the table next to me. And I was like, oh, this is really good.
27:26 Josh Clark? In a cup? Like a little solo cup?
27:28 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no, like the little, the little metal ramekin, you know?
27:31 Josh Clark? I got you. I got you.
27:32 Speaker 02 Beside the waffle.
27:33 Josh Clark? So what, what's interesting, you kind of said that, that. Maple syrup production is kind of slowly but surely kind of bounced back and forth, but never really kind of gotten huge. I think we've made that point very clearly by now. But in the late 20th century, especially like I think around the 70s, it did kind of get a boost because people were like, you know what? We can use those vacuum pumps that we use to pump milk on our family farm and plastic tubing that will just connect to the taps. And we can make this a lot easier on ourselves because if you are a traditional sugaring operation, you have pails hanging from your taps that's in the tree.
28:14 Josh Clark? And every day you have to go collect the pails and immediately start boiling it so that it doesn't
28:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:20 Josh Clark? grow bacteria. This is like you just kick back and let it all come to you and it's probably going into
28:28 Josh Clark? a pretty decent sized, advanced machine that's handling all of the processing for you as well.
28:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. The advent of the reverse osmosis machine became a really big deal because that was just a way more efficient way to remove water from the sap before you boil it down. So I think they can get about 90% of the water out with the reverse osmosis machine. So that really drastically reduces the boiling time to get down to that really sugary good stuff.
28:55 Josh Clark? Right.
28:56 Speaker 02 And the other thing is, you know, back in the day, they had to use, you know, wood fired boilers and stuff like that. Now they use propane. So lots of little things kind of came along to make it more industrial, but still not, you know, it's still trees in a forest that you're tapping. It's not like some big, like I said, like a factory built around it or something.
29:17 Josh Clark? I was reading a lot of stuff explaining how this whole thing works. And one of the sites that has some good explainers is Green's Sugar House and they still use wood.
29:26 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
29:27 Josh Clark? Mm hmm. They said they're one of the few who uses wood still.
29:30 Speaker 02 If I wonder if there's a benefit to that or just they like to be old school and tout that.
29:35 Josh Clark? I think maybe old school. I don't know.
29:37 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:38 Josh Clark? So all of this put together, reverse osmosis, vacuum pumps, plastic tubing. When you combine it by the mid 90s, I think maple syrup production in the US and Canada together increased 400% over just like a couple decades earlier. So still not industrialized, but enough now that like you can start to supply the world with maple syrup and that's, that's definitely what's happening.
30:05 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. You know, climate change just put a dent in almost everything and maple, the maple industry is no stranger to that, especially in the US. But snow cover is a pretty big deal, so it's not snowing as much and snow cover helps insulate those roots. So that's no great, not a great thing. The trees are also more affected by disease and invasive species that come with warmer temperatures. And all of this has resulted in, I don't know about a consensus, but a lot of scientists are saying that like this may be a Canada only thing in the not too distant future. Like that range is reducing and it's reducing northward.
30:43 Josh Clark? Right. Remember our plant migration episode? It's like that.
30:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure.
30:49 Josh Clark? So you said that there, the, the range of sugar maples is moving northward, AKA plant migration. There are other things that have happened over the years with these sugar bushes. Remember stands of sugar maples that we figured out like, that's not good. We should try something different. And these family farmers basically just did something logical or like, well, let's just tear down some of these other trees and plant more sugar maples. And so the sugar bush turned into a very, almost a monoculture, basically.
31:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
31:22 Josh Clark? Where it was nothing but sugar maples. And that makes sense economically on the short term, but in the long term, it's not good because it reduces biodiversity.
31:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And we should mention, there is another plant called a sugar bush, but we're, we're not talking about that just so save your emails.
31:39 Josh Clark? I did, I was talking, it was a, it's a chaparral plant. It's like scrub bush.
31:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, who wants that?
31:46 Josh Clark? I guess people who like the chaperone, people who live in like 29 palms.
31:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay. So you know biodiversity is an important part of any thriving ecosystem and sugar maples are no different. Once you simplify that tree species, you know, it's gonna drive out certain kinds of birds and those kinds of birds might be feeding on the invasive little insect critters. So they need to protect that biodiversity. So places are now sort of realizing we need to not just cut down swaths of other things to plant sugar maples and Vermont is one of them. And they enacted an effort that now requires 25% of trees in a sugar bush to be other species other than that sugar maple.
32:27 Josh Clark? Right. Yeah. So that was nice to come full circle like that and realize like, you know, you don't want to do that. There's reasons to keep things biodiverse. I love it when nature's like, no, that's not gonna work. Let's go back to how I had it before.
32:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. If you're wondering about the trees themselves, they have to be about 40 years old. So even when they were planting these things, it takes decades and decades to be able to tap them. And they have to be a certain size. They can only be about 10 inches in diameter and are generally only tapped once unless they're big mamas. If they're over 18 inches, you might be able to tap that thing a second time.
33:04 Josh Clark? Yeah, which kind of raised the question for me, not beg the question, it just raised it. Like, can you hurt? Like, does it hurt the tree when you're removing sap? Because it seems kind of sensible, like it's not like it naturally exudes the sap. So if you're coming along as a person and removing it, like is the tree like, hey, I need that? And it seems to be not the case.
33:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, that's good. I think I had that same question years ago about coal seams.
33:37 Speaker 02 If I'm not mistaken.
33:37 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
33:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think I asked that on the show. I was like, I always wondered if like, just removing all of this stuff from the earth's core is like, not a great thing.
33:47 Josh Clark? I could see that. You're leaving holes and destabilizing it. It's gonna turn into Swiss cheese eventually.
33:52 Speaker 02 You know what? You might have said that 15 years ago.
33:54 Josh Clark? I probably did.
33:55 Speaker 02 Swiss cheese.
33:56 Josh Clark? But with, as far as the sap goes, removing it and harming the sugar maple, that Dr. Jones from University of Vermont, who came up with the Jones Rule of 86, he did a study and estimated that something like 4 to 9% of an 8 to 10 inch diameter trees' total carbohydrate reserves are removed during a sugaring season, and that people don't tap trees that small. Like you said, 10 inches in diameter minimum, so the bigger trees probably have even more reserves and lose less of a percentage. So, no, over a sugaring season, you're probably not going to tap enough sap to actually harm the tree in any way.
34:37 Speaker 02 That's great. But you did make one mistake. I believe it's pronounced Dr. Jones.
34:43 Josh Clark? Right? Yeah, it definitely stood out to me too, but I, what's weird is I thought of Sean Connery and not Harrison Ford.
34:51 Speaker 02 Oh, interesting.
34:53 Josh Clark? Something's wrong with me. That's a sign of something or other. I'm sure there's like a psychiatric test that, that gives you that. Like a picture of Sean Connery, picture of Harrison Ford, says which one's Dr. Jones, and you better pick Harrison Ford, or else they're going to institutionalize you.
35:09 Speaker 02 Yeah. Or, I mean, if you would have said Shia LaBeouf, I would just, just walk into traffic after that.
35:16 Josh Clark? They don't even want to diagnose that one.
35:18 Speaker 02 No. So, we should talk a little bit about how this stuff is processed. You know, if, like, we mentioned sort of the home processors, or if you're just a small-scale producer, you're probably, probably have that sugar house on your property. If you have a larger operation, you're probably collecting from nearby, but taking it to a central boil, boiler location, like a larger sugar house, obviously. And then, inside that sugar house, you know, evaporation is a big part of it. You know, we talked about indigenous people evaporating out all that water. You still need to do the same thing on a small scale. I know you mentioned, like, the- The propane heater, like the turkey fryer kind of thing that you repurposed or a wood fryer.
36:01 Speaker 02 But when you get larger, you know, it's going to be larger machines and they're, you know, they're going to be a little, they're going to have more bells and whistles on them.
36:09 Josh Clark? Yeah, you repurposed the turkey fryer because you didn't read online that you're not supposed to drop a frozen turkey in a deep fryer because you almost caught your house on fire. So your partner said, no, you need to get that out into a sugar shack and make some syrup with it instead.
36:23 Speaker 02 Yeah. And by God, please do not fry your turkey indoors either, at all.
36:28 Josh Clark? Oh, good Lord. Who does that?
36:30 Speaker 02 I saw a video of a guy doing it. It's not good.
36:33 Josh Clark? Was he running it off a generator that he had indoors as well?
36:36 Speaker 02 No, no. I mean, it was a standard propane situation, but he did it like in his kitchen. Yeah, I mean, you're going to find a video of anybody doing anything dumb these days.
36:46 Josh Clark? One other thing, we're not going to talk about them, but I urge you, if you're like, I kind of like this, this sounds neat. Look up evaporator pans. They're really cool.
36:55 Speaker 02 Very cool.
36:57 Josh Clark? So something that I had no idea, this is actually kind of the fact of the podcast possibly, the flavor of maple syrup, the maple flavor itself, it's not really present very much in the sap, from what I understand. It's actually a result of the Maillard reaction, the same thing that turns bread into toast.
37:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:14 Josh Clark? Makes duck delicious.
37:19 Josh Clark? Does all sorts of amazing things and it's part of the, I think the caramelization process. It gives that, that sap its maple flavor.
37:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. We have a pretty good detailed description of that in our toast episode, which I think was quite good. So go check that one out.
37:35 Josh Clark? It was.
37:36 Speaker 02 And by the way, we want to mention, there's a new thing on Apple Podcast where,
37:40 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
37:41 Speaker 02 if you mention something from like a past episode, that I think something will now pop up on your podcast player that like tells you where that episode is, which is kind of cool.
37:51 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think it has a link that you can click.
37:54 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:54 Josh Clark? Like, Apple's done some just amazing stuff for their podcast app and player now. And it's like, yeah, I mean, hats off to them for the design and thought that they put into it. So I say, go check it out because I think we have a whole channel there now.
38:11 Speaker 02 So back to the process, though, after you have that boiling going on and get rid of that water, you're evaporating the water, you still are going to have to filter that stuff out because something's in there called sugar sand. It's like concentrated minerals and stuff and it might make it look cloudy. And this is stuff that you want to either sell on the side of the road or sell in the store. And so you're going to filter it from there. And to me, this next thing was the fact of the podcast. If you're a fan of wine, you know that terroir is a thing where a grape growing from a certain vine, out of certain soil, in a certain place on earth, under certain climate conditions, will taste different than that same grape grown elsewhere. And that's the same thing with maple trees.
38:56 Speaker 02 It has a terroir. And if you are a highly specialized maple syrup producer or a suggerer, I guess. Sugar daddy?
39:07 Josh Clark? Yeah, sugar daddy.
39:10 Speaker 02 You can be like well-known for your particular terroir and you can charge like a lot more money. I don't know about a lot more money, but you can have like an elevated price because you have such a specialized terroir to your tree and syrup.
39:21 Josh Clark? Right. You're like, my sugar maples are fertilized only with pig feces coming from pigs that are fed 100% on a diet of organic truffles.
39:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, maybe so.
39:33 Josh Clark? You could get a lot of money for that syrup is what I understand.
39:36 Speaker 02 I think so.
39:37 Josh Clark? So Canada is far and away the largest exporter of maple syrup. They essentially supply the world with syrup.
39:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:45 Josh Clark? I think they produce about, back in 2023, Livia found $457 million worth of maple syrup Canada produced and sold. The US follows at 35 million. The EU is about 13 million. But Canada makes so much maple syrup that the US, which produces a ton of maple syrup, still imports more than it exports or sells from Canada.
40:11 Speaker 02 That's right, and that's just another reason that we need to stay good friends with Canada.
40:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, cuz they got the syrup.
40:17 Speaker 02 That's right, and we're gonna be expressing that sentiment on our summer tour all across Canada. The goodwill will be flowing, hopefully tapped just like the maple syrup.
40:25 Josh Clark? Yeah, it's the Dove and the Olive Branch Tour.
40:29 Speaker 02 Quebec alone, we need to shout them out. I know you mentioned they were the biggest producer. They produce about 70%, I'm sorry, 72% of the world's supply of maple syrup. 55 million taps going in Quebec alone. And they have what some people call a cartel in Canada. There's a government sort of endorsed industry group called the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, or shortened with their French name, the PPAQ, that basically acts as the go-between between the 8,000 producers and the customers. And like, they're really in the business. It's not just like, yeah, we wanna make sure everything's going okay, eh? They like, they tell you how to market it, how to sell it, what to do with the reserves, like, they're really, really involved.
41:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, they're like the OPEC of maple syrup, essentially. They have a strategic reserve that they started in 2000 that can hold up to 10 million gallons. I saw them also described as a mafia by an independent syrup producer in Quebec. Because if you are, if you produce maple syrup in Quebec, it does not matter if you're a member of the PPAQ, you still have to give them a cut of your proceeds from the sale of maple syrup. So like, they, they set the prices, they, they can make the price artificially high, low, depending on what they wanna do. And this is not to say like, this is just all bad. They have done a lot of good for maple syrup producers across Quebec,
41:58 Josh Clark? but they're apparently also extremely aggressive in enforcing their rules.
42:03 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think that's the deal. Here in the United States, if you wanna talk about the top producers, look no further than Vermont. Vermont, very well known for their maple syrup. And New York State is after that. And then, you know, other New England states, but you also got to throw in oddly, maybe not oddly, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota as other decent sized producers. But it's really the name of the game in the US is Vermont.
42:28 Josh Clark? Vermont, the old VT. And I say we take a break, but first we cannot not mention the PPAQ's strategic reserves and not mention the great maple syrup heist of 2011 to 2012.
42:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, take it away.
42:44 Josh Clark? Oh, okay. Well, apparently, starting in 2011, a group of thieves slowly tapped off 2,700 tons of maple syrup from barrels inside one of the PPAQ's strategic warehouses. And nobody caught this for months because they either filled the barrels with water or they left them empty. But either way, the barrels were in place. So anybody walking through the warehouse would not think anything was amiss. And it wasn't until an audit that it was found. And I think out of 27, also, this whole, I think the whole thing was like $13 million worth of maple syrup that was stolen. And they only got back 450 of the 2,700 tons.
43:27 Josh Clark? And even that, they were like, we got to destroy this because it's basically been through the wringer, you know, stolen and recovered and all that. And several people went to prison. One of them, I think his name is Richard Valiers. He was sentenced to seven years and 10 months for this, for this heist. That's how serious Quebec takes its maple syrup.
43:49 Speaker 02 All right, we'll take that second break and we'll finish up right after this.
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44:25 Josh Clark? Hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.
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44:42 Josh Clark? These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivcard on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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45:08 Speaker 02 But a lot of people still talk themselves out of therapy. They think it's too expensive, they're not sure if it'll actually work, they don't know how to find the right therapist, or they just get overwhelmed trying to navigate the whole system.
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46:49 Speaker 02 All right, we're back and let's talk about other parts of the world because we mentioned Europe produces some maple syrup and you know, it happens here and there. They don't have like the, the big swings between day and night that you really need to cause the sap to run super well. So a lot of times they'll work with other trees. Birch trees can produce sap. Other kinds of maple trees I mentioned can produce sap. You're probably not going to make that into maple syrup. You're probably using it for making like, you know, like an additive, like making beer, making vinegar, maybe as something in a drink. I know there's a pretty rich tradition in South Korea.
47:27 Josh Clark? Yeah.
47:28 Speaker 02 Of their native maple tree, the goroso tree, where they, I mean, this sounds dangerous to me. They, they get together in a hot room and drink like five gallons each of this stuff.
47:40 Josh Clark? Yeah, each.
47:42 Speaker 02 That sounds like, like, I thought that amount of intake of liquid would kill you.
47:46 Josh Clark? Well, essentially it's supposed to do the opposite. It's like a health tonic essentially. And then the sauna action, you're sweating out toxins and you're replacing it with this healthful sap. But I mean, if they've been doing it for this long and people aren't keeling over, at the very least, it's not harmful.
48:03 Speaker 02 I just wonder how many, how long that is, like over what period of time?
48:07 Josh Clark? Five gallons? I don't know. Five gallons of anything.
48:09 Speaker 02 That's what I was saying. Like five gallons of water will kill you, won't it?
48:12 Josh Clark? Yeah, I think you can toxify.
48:15 Speaker 02 Oy, but yeah, they've been doing it for a long time. Northern China also drinks the sap of certain kinds of maple trees. But you know, outside of Europe, there are places in the United States, like the Pacific Northwest, where they're tapping big leaf maples. The thing is, you just need a lot more, about twice as much actually, to get a gallon of syrup because it's just not as sugary.
48:35 Josh Clark? Right.
48:37 Speaker 02 And here's the other thing too, that not only do they need a lot more to produce the syrup, but it doesn't have that, that same kind of climate consistency as far as like freezing every night and getting warm the next day. So it's sort of between November and March, it seems like, and maybe if you're someone out there doing this, you can correct me, but it seems like it's, it's tap as available, sort of.
49:00 Josh Clark? So you've got a bunch of syrup on your hands. You followed all of the processing tips that we gave you. Time was that your maple syrup would be assigned a grade, one of three grades, fancy, A, or B. Fancy was like the most delicate, B is the most robust, but people didn't understand that. They thought fancy was the best.
49:21 Speaker 02 People are idiots.
49:22 Josh Clark? Like catsup, right? You think catsup is much better than ketchup because it's fancy. That's not the case. So they changed it. Now it's all grade A, but then they assigned different categories based on the flavor and the color of it.
49:38 Speaker 02 That's right. They have golden, amber, dark, and very dark, and that ranges respectively as delicate, rich, robust, and strong.
49:46 Josh Clark? Yeah.
49:47 Speaker 02 The very dark, the strongest one, you're probably going to be cooking with that. The lightest, that golden delicate one, maybe putting it in a cocktail or something. Like the stuff that you buy off the grocery store shelf or get ordered, I guess, to be delivered. To live on your home shelf forever. For your pancakes and waffles, that's, that's going to be that amber maple syrup.
50:10 Josh Clark? Right. And then there's other stuff too. Like say you didn't get the sugar sand out and it's cloudy. Or it has a slightly off taste, like maybe you sugared a little too late in the season. That's graded, it's not an A grade and they don't sell it in the stores. Instead, it's, it's graded as maple syrup for processing. And so if you have like a maple taste in some industrially produced commercially available food. It's that kind of maple syrup. So if you've ever had waffle crisp cereal in the 90s. You were eating maple syrup for processing.
50:43 Speaker 02 That's right. I did mention the refrigerator.
50:49 Speaker 02 If you don't open it, you can keep it on that shelf for about three years. But afterward, you apparently do need to refrigerate it and it can go for another three years. It's that high sugar content basically that's keeping it nice and pristine. But you know, as happened to me, once you open that stuff, it can get little mold spores.
51:06 Josh Clark? Yeah, I gotta go check mine because I really don't think it's molded. But let's say that you want something besides syrup. You're just so syruped out. You drank five gallons of it and you want something other than the syrup. What are you going to turn to Chuck?
51:22 Speaker 02 Well, I know everyone's seen those little maple leaf shaped candies.
51:26 Josh Clark? Adorable.
51:26 Speaker 02 At a rest stop in New England and I'm sure all over Canada. But yeah, they're usually shaped like little maple leaves. They heat that stuff up and pour it into molds to cool down. It can be like a softer, light colored thing depending on how hot you get it. Or that dark, hard candy. And I've had those, those are delicious.
51:45 Josh Clark? Yeah, there's also maple cream, which is essentially whipped maple syrup.
51:50 Speaker 02 Oh, baby.
51:51 Josh Clark? Yeah, and there's something called sugar on snow, which where you take a pack of snow packed together, which is why they call it a pack, and you pour boiling syrup onto it and it immediately congeals into like a caramel consistency. And you basically eat it like a candy. Sometimes they put it on like a popsicle or a sucker stick.
52:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, that sounds pretty good. We gotta mention to all our New England friends, I don't know if they have these in Canada, but the maple creamy is like a soft syrup ice cream. And of course, at any local county fair, you're going to get your maple cotton candy or a Quebec specialty, the delicious maple syrup pie.
52:31 Josh Clark? I'm going to try that when we're in Montreal for sure.
52:34 Speaker 02 Me too.
52:35 Josh Clark? I'm also going to try to find some maple sugar there too. Apparently when you bake with it, you can substitute, I've seen one for one or three quarters for one with white granulated sugar in your recipe. And especially if you're making something fall like, like a banana bread or apple pie or something like that, it apparently just steps up the flavor quite a bit.
52:58 Speaker 02 Yeah. Oh, and I know last year I mentioned my maple old fashioned.
53:03 Josh Clark? Oh, yeah.
53:03 Speaker 02 Which is now my kind of go to sweetener for my old fashions. It's really yummy.
53:08 Josh Clark? Well, you should try some maple, maple sugar in there, man.
53:12 Speaker 02 Instead of the syrup?
53:14 Josh Clark? No, I mean, you make the syrup with sugar, right?
53:17 Speaker 02 Oh, no, I just put syrup in there.
53:19 Josh Clark? But what do you make the syrup from, is what I'm saying?
53:22 Speaker 02 From the bottle off the shelf at Publix.
53:24 Josh Clark? Oh, I thought you made your own. We gave people like a whole recipe, didn't we?
53:27 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no, that was a, that was a pumpkin spice syrup that I made.
53:32 Josh Clark? You should use maple sugar in that, then.
53:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, okay. Good call. But I use maple syrup right out of the bottle for my other favorite old fashioned.
53:42 Josh Clark? Very nice. At Publix, then you don't order it?
53:45 Speaker 02 No, just go to the store, get it like a sucker.
53:48 Josh Clark? So you mentioned that it actually has some nutritional value, right?
53:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
53:52 Josh Clark? I saw that it has 95% of your daily value of manganese. Like, beat that.
53:59 Speaker 02 Yeah. What does manganese do for you? Everything.
54:01 Josh Clark? 37% of your daily value of riboflavin, which is a B vitam vitamin, also has potassium, which is why I said vitam, calcium, zinc, loads of antioxidants, apparently, and it has a lower glycemic index score than sugar by far. So it spikes your blood sugar much less than sugar does.
54:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, for sure. And they have evidence that some of the compounds from maple syrup can enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics.
54:29 Josh Clark? Yeah. And that's in that's maple syrup, which means it's time for listener mail.
54:37 Speaker 02 All right, this is a quick note from Kyle Metzger. Kyle says, hey, guys, I was recently listening to the old episode from 2018 on the Concorde. Hey, we just mentioned another old episode, so that'll probably pop up on your little Apple player, by the way.
54:52 Josh Clark? Nice.
54:53 Speaker 02 In my ongoing quest to simultaneously listen to the back catalog as well as new episodes. So Kyle, you are sandwiching, my friend. That's the right way, right way to do it, I think.
55:01 Josh Clark? Nice.
55:02 Speaker 02 He said, Josh, you are continually amazed that the Concorde fuel was kerosene, as that was very primitive or old school. But actually, almost all jet fuel was kerosene and has been since its inception. Basically, its two uses are jet fuel and household cooking and lighting fuel. Wanted to keep this one short and sweet, guys. Love you too, and love the show.
55:24 Josh Clark? Short and sweet, very appropriate for our maple syrup episode, Chuck.
55:27 Speaker 02 That's right.
55:28 Josh Clark? That was, uh, who Metzger?
55:29 Speaker 02 Kyle.
55:31 Josh Clark? Hey Kyle, thanks a lot for that. We appreciate it. Uh, no idea that kerosene's been jet fuel forever, so thanks for that. And if you want to be like Kyle and send us an email that I say thanks for that about, you can send it off to [email protected] .
55:51 Speaker 00 Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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