Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here too, and we're talking today about maple syrup.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to lie to you, dear listeners.
Speaker 1: I want something maple like right now.
Speaker 2: I need too. This was I don't know if this
Speaker 2: came from a listener or it came from many listeners
Speaker 2: or just my own brain, but we not even thinking.
Speaker 2: I just throw this one to Livia. Uh kind of
Speaker 2: forgetting that I don't want to give I don't want
Speaker 2: to doc's Olivia, but let's just say she lives in
Speaker 2: the New England area.
Speaker 1: Uh huh sure.
Speaker 2: So she was like, oh yeah, baby, right up my alley,
Speaker 2: let's do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have the impression that she'll eat a thing
Speaker 1: of maple cotton knee to hand it to her.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I could feel the joy coming through Libya's keyboard
Speaker 2: in this one, which is always nice for sure.
Speaker 1: And the timing's amazing too, because the showing season is
Speaker 1: basically just wrapped up as far as I can tell.
Speaker 1: And I think it was a good one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Olivia also just as a little thing. Remember we've
Speaker 1: said that she always has great titles, and this one
Speaker 1: was how to Drink a Tree's Blood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's gonna be the title.
Speaker 1: Oh good, Okay, good.
Speaker 2: I mean I might put in parentheses maple syrup, you
Speaker 2: Sicico or something like that.
Speaker 1: Sure. I like that. Anytime Siico ends up in a title,
Speaker 1: I think something great has.
Speaker 2: Happened, including the movie Sicico.
Speaker 1: So is there a movie called Sicico? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Wasn't that didn't wasn't that one a Harmony Korean's movie
Speaker 2: or Krine? I don't know, I think so. No, No,
Speaker 2: that was Michael Moore, Sorry, Michael. Oh yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 2: documentary one, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, about the American healthcare system and how broken
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, so chuck, all right, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about maple syrup. We both want some maple syrup. This
Speaker 1: is fair warning to anyone listening. You're gonna want some maple,
Speaker 1: and that's okay. It's okay to want something maple, even
Speaker 1: if you don't have.
Speaker 2: It, that's right. But if we're gonna start with maple syrup,
Speaker 2: we got to start with the maple tree. There are
Speaker 2: all kinds of maple trees. But if you and and
Speaker 2: you can get sugary sap from other kinds of maple trees,
Speaker 2: but if you want the real gold, and if you
Speaker 2: want the real gold standard industry wide, you're gonna tap
Speaker 2: into that sweet, sweet sugar maple, the Acer sacarum, because
Speaker 2: that's the one that has the real good stuff, that
Speaker 2: has the highest concentration of sugar in its sap. And uh,
Speaker 2: like you said, you might tap a red maple if
Speaker 2: that's all you got around, but you need a lot
Speaker 2: more of it to end up with what you want.
Speaker 2: So you really want, you really want that sugar maple.
Speaker 1: Right, And if you say, okay, guys, I'm all fine
Speaker 1: to sugar maple, where do I go? They're all over
Speaker 1: the place. Actually, they have a pretty great range. We're
Speaker 1: talking about North America, Northern North America, which includes the
Speaker 1: northeastern US, southeastern Canada. We're talking New Brunswick, We're talking
Speaker 1: Nova Scotia. Yeah, don't leave out Quebec, because Southern Quebec
Speaker 1: is the far and away the largest producer of maple
Speaker 1: syrup in the world. Parts of Ontario and then Maine,
Speaker 1: all the way down in North Carolina you can find
Speaker 1: sugar maples. There are some places that sugar maples grow
Speaker 1: that they're not going to they're not going to make
Speaker 1: maple syrup as much there because there's also an addition
Speaker 1: to the actual tree itself. There are environmental conditions, climate
Speaker 1: conditions that have to take place, and they're so variable
Speaker 1: that maple syrup production and maple sugar production has resisted
Speaker 1: industrialization throughout its lifetime. And that just makes me cheer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's like you have to tap a tree
Speaker 2: that grows in the woods to do that, and I
Speaker 2: bet they've tried, but they haven't figured out a way
Speaker 2: to build a factory around a forest with trees going.
Speaker 1: Through it, right, Yeah, as far as I know, no
Speaker 1: one's tried that. Well, I guess the biodome kind.
Speaker 2: Of punts, Yeah, probably so. But what we're about to describe,
Speaker 2: everybody is one of the wonders of nature. I didn't
Speaker 2: know anything about this stuff, so it was all new
Speaker 2: to me, and I was kind of blown away. It
Speaker 2: was kind of a mind bomb, if you will, for me.
Speaker 2: The magic to the maple syrup, obviously is that sap,
Speaker 2: and that sap has a very specific function in a tree.
Speaker 2: The sapwood is a part of the tree. It's also
Speaker 2: called the xylum. It's in that tree trunk just outside
Speaker 2: of the heartwood, and it has tissue in that sapwood
Speaker 2: in the xylum that moves water and minerals around from
Speaker 2: the roots to the leaves. It's kind of like the
Speaker 2: freeway system, if you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or it's circulatory system hormones too. That's what sap is.
Speaker 1: It's minerals, water, hormones, all the stuff that the tree
Speaker 1: is moving to itself to help repare wounds and to
Speaker 1: produce photosynthesis, and then also move the products from photosynthesis,
Speaker 1: which is like starches back down to the roots. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got stuff moving up and down the tree trunk.
Speaker 1: But if you you walk up to sugar maple in
Speaker 1: the summer and you put a tap into it, it's
Speaker 1: going to just be like this, that was useless and
Speaker 1: it kind of hurt. There's a specific time when you
Speaker 1: want to tap a sugar maple to get the constituent
Speaker 1: maple SAP.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that is in the major producing parts,
Speaker 2: which is what we described before. That will be generally
Speaker 2: between like February and April, with a peak in March.
Speaker 2: And that is because and this is the second sort
Speaker 2: of astounding part of this stuff, that xylum that sap
Speaker 2: would it's moving stuff all around, but it's also really
Speaker 2: good at holding energy reserves during times where it needs it.
Speaker 2: So they are the cells called ray parinama that use
Speaker 2: enzymes that turn those starches Josh was talking about into
Speaker 2: sugars and it's a great way to store that energy.
Speaker 2: But that sugar also protects the tissue from freezing during
Speaker 2: the winter, So it's just sort of sitting there like
Speaker 2: in the perfect conditions to be tapped in those months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there's this kind of positive pressure that builds
Speaker 1: up in the tree because on nights where it's freezing
Speaker 1: and that turn into days that get above freezing. Right,
Speaker 1: So when the icicles start to really drip, I've seen
Speaker 1: the sap itself starts moving up and down. And when
Speaker 1: it moves up, normally, when there's leaves on the tree,
Speaker 1: transpiration or basically evaporation at the leaf surface that relieves
Speaker 1: that pressure. But remember this is a time when the
Speaker 1: sugar maples don't have leaves yet, so it can't kind
Speaker 1: of relieve that pressure, and the pressure builds up and
Speaker 1: builds up, and so if you go to a sugar
Speaker 1: maple at specifically the right time, when it's freezing at night,
Speaker 1: not freezing in the day, and you put a tap
Speaker 1: into it, that's when the SAP's going to come out.
Speaker 1: And like you said, those starches have been converted to
Speaker 1: sugars as energy stores, so that's also when the sap
Speaker 1: is going to be at its sweetest. There is a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks that you can tap a specific kind
Speaker 1: of tree in a specific location under specific climate conditions.
Speaker 1: To get the sap. You're gonna need to make maple syrup.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I just love maple syrup so much
Speaker 1: more than I did before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, it's you know, once once those conditions
Speaker 2: leave that step, it didn't dry up, but it stops
Speaker 2: running freely. If you could get to it, it wouldn't taste
Speaker 2: the same, like you said, it would be kind of bitter,
Speaker 2: but you can't get to it anyway. And this is
Speaker 2: like a seasonal cycle, Like this is when the trees
Speaker 2: are beginning to bud again, you know, like we said,
Speaker 2: at peaks and march basically. And if you let's say
Speaker 2: you tapped a tree and you got a little bit
Speaker 2: of that good stuff and you put it on your tongue,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't taste like the final result. It's sweet. You
Speaker 2: can taste the sweetness, but it's about you know, the
Speaker 2: SAP ranges from about one to three percent of that
Speaker 2: sweetness at that point, so like it needs to be
Speaker 2: processed after that point because what you really want to
Speaker 2: get it too is a sugar concentration about sixty six percent, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which means you have to boil it. You have to
Speaker 2: boil down about forty gallons to get one gallon of syrup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's actually there was this maple syrup researcher from
Speaker 1: the turn of the last century named C. W. Jones,
Speaker 1: and he came up with what's called the Jones rule
Speaker 1: of eighty six. And I'm not sure how it works.
Speaker 1: It seems a little magical, but you can take the
Speaker 1: percentage of sugar that's found in the sap naturally that
Speaker 1: you just got out of the tree, and multiply that
Speaker 1: percentage by eighty six and it will tell you how
Speaker 1: many gallons you need to boil down to get one
Speaker 1: gallon of maple syrup at sixty six percent sugar concentration.
Speaker 2: That's right, And usually it's about that forty gallon range. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people have you know, we're not the first persons to
Speaker 2: enjoy this. Stuff like has a very long history among
Speaker 2: indigenous North American groups and they used it for all
Speaker 2: kinds of stuff. There's a lot of different stories like
Speaker 2: like you know, who's the first person to eat oyster?
Speaker 2: Like how do they figure out this tree sap was
Speaker 2: something you wanted, like the first person to tap it?
Speaker 2: And it probably no one knows for sure. It probably
Speaker 2: happened by accident. There's a lot of stories. One of
Speaker 2: them is that there was a tomahawk in a tree.
Speaker 2: That tomahawk got pulled out and there just happened to
Speaker 2: be a container below it that caught that sap and
Speaker 2: some indigenous person was like, oh well, let me take
Speaker 2: that water that's in this bucket from the rain and
Speaker 2: boil some meat for dinner. And they're like wait a minute,
Speaker 2: this is like, you know, has a sweet taste to it.
Speaker 2: So it was a complete accident. It's kind of a
Speaker 2: nice story. My money's probably on just another kind of accident.
Speaker 2: Maybe someone just sort of tasted it with their finger
Speaker 2: because a woodpecker pecked a hole in a tree and
Speaker 2: they're like, hey, may maybe we can use this something
Speaker 2: because they had long use SAPs and gums for other things,
Speaker 2: so it wasn't like any big like revelation that something
Speaker 2: from a tree was useful.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, totally. That's a good point. Another suggests is
Speaker 1: that somebody noticed a sapsicle and try that, because the
Speaker 1: sugar content of the sap itself has a lower freezing
Speaker 1: point than the water, so the water separates out as
Speaker 1: it freezes, and then the sap, the sugary sap eventually
Speaker 1: freezes more with a higher concentration of sugar. And if
Speaker 1: somebody broke that off and licked it, they'd be like,
Speaker 1: wait to get to the bottom of what's going on here,
Speaker 1: because this is de lish.
Speaker 2: I would love a real sapsicle. That'd be fun.
Speaker 1: We should also say this, so the the Europeans who
Speaker 1: came over to colonize North America got this, like learned
Speaker 1: about maple syrup directly from the indigenous people who were here,
Speaker 1: like the Abenaki, the how to know Sni, the Ojibwa,
Speaker 1: the Algonquin. All of them had methods and techniques for
Speaker 1: getting maple sap out of sugar maple trees, and they
Speaker 1: had like their own techniques. Each group had a slightly
Speaker 1: different technique, but ultimately what it usually boiled down to
Speaker 1: was cutting a laceration in the bark of the tree,
Speaker 1: possibly putting like a hollow twig in there to serve
Speaker 1: as the tap. Sometimes they just let it trickle down
Speaker 1: the bark of the tree, and then they would usually
Speaker 1: catch it in like a little birch bark container. The
Speaker 1: ones that I saw look like little tiny rowboats, which
Speaker 1: I bet you could use as rowboats after the sugaring season.
Speaker 2: That's right after they got that sap you know, like
Speaker 2: I said, it was still you still have to process
Speaker 2: it and boil it down. There were different techniques that
Speaker 2: they used, you know, depending what tribe you were from,
Speaker 2: but one of them most certainly was probably putting heated
Speaker 2: rocks into a container and kind of boiling and evaporating
Speaker 2: out the water that way a lot slower process actually. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, sometimes they would just put it over hot
Speaker 2: fire and let it happen. Sometimes they would just leave
Speaker 2: it out in the sun and take like the real
Speaker 2: slow roll approach to get the water out of there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Also they from that I guess, the sapsicle kind
Speaker 1: of thing, they figured out that you could also freeze
Speaker 1: it out like you could freeze the water out, remove
Speaker 1: the ice, and you've just basically evaporated a bunch of
Speaker 1: water from the sap. So there was probably different techniques
Speaker 1: that could also be combined to just to get it
Speaker 1: more and more closer to what you wanted. And we
Speaker 1: should say that the indigenous peoples of North America who
Speaker 1: were doing this pre contact, they were not making syrup
Speaker 1: nearly as much from what we understand. They were making
Speaker 1: this into sugar, sugar cakes, granulated sugar. They were making
Speaker 1: sugar out of the maple sap, which is essentially the
Speaker 1: same thing. You're boiling it down further than you would syrup,
Speaker 1: but you let it dry. Once it gets to a
Speaker 1: thickened state, you let it dry it. Then you break
Speaker 1: it up and you've got maple sugar on your hands.
Speaker 2: Specifically, for one drive, it was sort of a seasonal
Speaker 2: shift for the Ogway people. Like in the wintertime they
Speaker 2: would break up into smaller groups of like a dozen
Speaker 2: or so and travel around and hunt and ice fish
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, and in the spring they would
Speaker 2: come back together and form like these bigger communities. And
Speaker 2: that sugaring process and tapping those trees was kind of
Speaker 2: the first big thing that they did so they could
Speaker 2: you know, store it as long as possible, hopefully all
Speaker 2: year long, and then you know, did their other spring
Speaker 2: and summer stuff like you know, plant and harvest and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. But sugaring season kind of kicked off
Speaker 2: of the coming back together, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: That's another thing I love about it is that's what
Speaker 1: it's called. When you go and you collect the sap
Speaker 1: to make maple syrup or maple sugar from, it's called
Speaker 1: the sugaring season. The place where you boil down the
Speaker 1: SAPs called the sugar shack.
Speaker 2: The sugar bush.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the stand of trees of sugar maples together is
Speaker 1: called the sugar bush. Kind of like a wooded area.
Speaker 1: Another name for that. Not the evergreen scrub bush that's
Speaker 1: found out in chaparral country. This is just a group
Speaker 1: of sugar maples together in an area. That's your sugar bush.
Speaker 1: I just love this whole thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When they would pass pass it back and forth,
Speaker 2: they would say, give me some sugar, baby. That's really
Speaker 2: I love it that. The word sugar is a very
Speaker 2: pleasing sound to my ear.
Speaker 1: So sure, especially and also when you think of the snow.
Speaker 1: I think of the snow and like the maples in
Speaker 1: the snow like visually, and then thinking of the word
Speaker 1: sugar with all that stuff too. Just gosh, that almost
Speaker 1: makes me want to go do like basically move and
Speaker 1: buy like a little parcel of land that has some
Speaker 1: sugar maples on it and just make like a gallon
Speaker 1: once a year or something like that. Seems like a
Speaker 1: lot to do just for a gallon of maple syrup
Speaker 1: that I could probably buy from somebody else for much much,
Speaker 1: much cheaper and less effort. But it just seems nice,
Speaker 1: you know, like a pleasant way to be.
Speaker 2: Oh, people do that, I mean, I know in this
Speaker 2: article Livia said that like doing it in your house
Speaker 2: isn't super recommended because all the steam creates from boiling
Speaker 2: it down. But I've seen videos like there are definitely
Speaker 2: people that tap trees on their land and just get
Speaker 2: small amounts of sugar and like, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: like somebody might get honey from bees and set a
Speaker 2: little stand on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I was looking at like a map
Speaker 1: or sugaring I guess supply house and they had like
Speaker 1: three four hundred dollars evaporation pans that you basically put
Speaker 1: on like a propane gas like heater or burner, And yeah,
Speaker 1: you could, you could do it wherever. But yes, I
Speaker 1: think I would build a little sugaring shack or sugar
Speaker 1: shack just a yeah, just a wood burn into a
Speaker 1: sign to hang over the door that said sugar shack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And if some paote happened to find its way
Speaker 2: in there, so be it. So we should mention before
Speaker 2: we take our break. You know, they were obviously eating
Speaker 2: this stuff in a lot of ways, the indigenous peoples.
Speaker 2: They were making corn meal based breads with it. They
Speaker 2: would put it on all kinds of like meats and fish,
Speaker 2: and I imagine it tasted just so great. So it
Speaker 2: was the flavor for them, but it was also a
Speaker 2: very calorie rich thing in the early spring when their
Speaker 2: winter food was sort of dwindling, right, and so you know,
Speaker 2: and as we'll see later, their health properties too, So
Speaker 2: they probably had a hunch about that as well.
Speaker 1: And don't forget the tiny rowboats that you could put
Speaker 1: in like a laker a pond. After sure, that's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's take that break, all.
Speaker 2: Right, We'll be right back and talk more about maple
Speaker 2: right after.
Speaker 1: This, So Chuck I said that European colonizers got there
Speaker 1: just total awareness of maple sugaring or syruping from the
Speaker 1: local indigenous people. One of the things that the local
Speaker 1: indigenous peoples got from the Europeans were metal pots, which
Speaker 1: vastly improved the process of making maple syrup and make
Speaker 1: maple sugar for the indigenous tribes. Like that, no longer
Speaker 1: did youift to put a heated rock in some sort
Speaker 1: of bowl with some sap and just weight Like this
Speaker 1: just increased things tremendously.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I wonder if they collected in that or if
Speaker 2: they stuck to their baby boats.
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope baby boats. That's my that's my wish.
Speaker 2: I think so too. So early on in that colonization process,
Speaker 2: you know, the settlers, obviously we're doing the same thing,
Speaker 2: collecting it and using their methods. It was cheaper than
Speaker 2: importing cane sugar from the Caribbean, Yeah, which is where
Speaker 2: that was all coming from. And it became like the
Speaker 2: de facto sweetener of the United States at some point,
Speaker 2: and then later became a sort of a cause, an
Speaker 2: abolitionist cause. I think in the eighteenth century, abolitionists and
Speaker 2: Quakers were using like maple like as a way to say, hey,
Speaker 2: let's not especially founding father Benjamin Rush, like, hey, let's
Speaker 2: not support these British slave based plantations in the Caribbean
Speaker 2: that we're getting this cane sugar, Like, we can get
Speaker 2: our own sweet stuff right here and export it and
Speaker 2: not promote slavery, and it tastes great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but in that export, if you made enough to export,
Speaker 1: you could also undercut the sugar market in Great Britain
Speaker 1: back home, so you were really kind of hobbling the
Speaker 1: slave slave based plantation societies by doing that. Thomas Jefferson
Speaker 1: was like, I'm on board, let's do this, because it
Speaker 1: fit into his vision of the United States being a
Speaker 1: collective of Yaouman farmers who are basically, you know, growing
Speaker 1: enough for themselves in a little as sell Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: just plant some sugar maples too, and it'll be great.
Speaker 1: Because one of the things that makes sugaring attractive is
Speaker 1: that it takes place in this weird in between time
Speaker 1: when there's normally not a lot to do on a
Speaker 1: family farm. Now you have a whole other revenue stream
Speaker 1: and you're getting a bunch of maple syrup out of
Speaker 1: it too, just by sugaring adding that to like your
Speaker 1: yearly thing.
Speaker 2: So we did mention earlier that you know, they probably
Speaker 2: tried to turn this into a large scale thing, but
Speaker 2: it just failed kind of time after time because it's
Speaker 2: such a labor intensive thing. And you know, but as
Speaker 2: a result, you know, maple you know, I think I
Speaker 2: said at one point it was like the most common
Speaker 2: sweetener in the US. That kind of started falling away
Speaker 2: because it's so labor intensive. And by the second half
Speaker 2: of the nineteenth century, cane sugar prices fell a lot,
Speaker 2: and then beat sugar started being produced. So maple sugar,
Speaker 2: it just, you know, as far as being a sweetener,
Speaker 2: kind of fell by the wayside for a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but they started, you know, people still like that flavor,
Speaker 2: especially on things like pancakes and waffles, so they needed
Speaker 2: to unfortunately kind of cut it with other stuff. So
Speaker 2: they maple producers started cutting it with that cane sugar
Speaker 2: I mentioned in corn syrup, and that's where we get
Speaker 2: you know, missus Butterworth. That's where we get that pancake
Speaker 2: syrup that we have today.
Speaker 1: I have Missus Butterworth written right there.
Speaker 2: I mean what else is there aunt Jemima? Those are
Speaker 2: the only two. And I don't think it's called Auntjemima anymore,
Speaker 2: is it? Or is it?
Speaker 1: No? No, it's I can't remember what they call, like
Speaker 1: Old Mill or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they changed the name. Here's my secret. Like,
Speaker 2: if I go to the restaurant and they have the
Speaker 2: maple syrup at the nice brunch, I love it. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to turn my nose up and I know
Speaker 2: that's the gold, but man, I love that that buttery
Speaker 2: pancake syrup.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, me too. So I was thinking about what
Speaker 1: I was raised on. I didn't have real maple syrup
Speaker 1: until I was I don't know, probably in my forties,
Speaker 1: to tell you the truth, I finally was like the same,
Speaker 1: I want to see what this is like and ordered
Speaker 1: some and it. I mean, it's pretty good, but it
Speaker 1: is a different animal from what I grew up on,
Speaker 1: which wasn't even missus Butterworth's. My mom was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's too expensive. She would make a one to one
Speaker 1: simple syrup and then put a little bit of artificial
Speaker 1: maple flavoring in it, and that was that is maple
Speaker 1: syrup to me, and I love it still like, that's
Speaker 1: still my favorite kind of syrup.
Speaker 2: Now, when you say you ordered it, what does that
Speaker 2: mean ordered it off the shelf at the grocery store.
Speaker 1: No, I ordered some online first, I think, before I
Speaker 1: noticed that you could get it at grocery store. Wow, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, organic, real maple syrup. Where are you
Speaker 1: gonna find that? And yeah, apparently just about everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have that stuff around. And here's
Speaker 2: what I didn't know either, is that U and I
Speaker 2: know Canadians and Northeastern people in the of the United
Speaker 2: States are probably like, you guys are such rude.
Speaker 1: Oh they're a gas right now.
Speaker 2: But hey, I grew up in Georgia, like this is
Speaker 2: just wasn't a thing. It's not a thing down here
Speaker 2: like it is up there. So I didn't know you
Speaker 2: had to refrigerate it. So I went through the stage
Speaker 2: of like, you know, why do I have mold spores
Speaker 2: on my maple syrup and Missus Butterworth is just fine
Speaker 2: sitting right next to it on the shelf.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm a little nervous about the syrup I got
Speaker 1: because it's been in my pantry for a long time
Speaker 1: and it still doesn't have mold, so it's got like
Speaker 1: anti freeze or something cut into it.
Speaker 2: Is this stuff you ordered in your forties? Yeah, you
Speaker 2: haven't gone through one bottle.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't, because it is it's so different from
Speaker 1: what I like, or what I'm used to is maple syrup,
Speaker 1: that it's like a special kind of thing. It's not
Speaker 1: what I go for now anytime I'm like syrup, like,
Speaker 1: it's a very occasional thing for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you, man. I definitely came on to
Speaker 2: it late, and it was definitely like in a restaurant
Speaker 2: somewhere where they, you know, had a little cup on
Speaker 2: the table next to me. I was like, Oh, this
Speaker 2: is really.
Speaker 1: Good in a cup, like a little Sellow cup.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, like the little little logoramic. You know,
Speaker 2: I gotcha, I gotcha beside the waffle.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting You kind of said that that maple
Speaker 1: syrup production is kind of slowly but surely kind of
Speaker 1: bounced back and forth, but never really kind of gotten huge.
Speaker 1: I think we've made that point very clearly by now.
Speaker 1: But in the late twentieth century, especially, like I think
Speaker 1: around the seventies, it did kind of get a boost
Speaker 1: because people are like, you know what, we can use
Speaker 1: those vacuum pumps that we used to pump milk on
Speaker 1: our family farm and plastic tubing that we'll just connect
Speaker 1: to the taps and we can make this a lot
Speaker 1: easier on ourselves. Because if you are a traditional sugaring operation,
Speaker 1: you have pails hanging from your taps, that's in a tree,
Speaker 1: and every day you have to go collect the pails
Speaker 1: and immediately start boiling it so that it doesn't grow bacteria.
Speaker 1: This is like you just kick back and let it
Speaker 1: all come to you, and it's probably going into a
Speaker 1: pretty decent size advance machine that's handling all of the
Speaker 1: processing for you as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, the advent of the reverse osmosis machine
Speaker 2: became a really big deal because that was just a
Speaker 2: way more efficient way to remove water from the sap
Speaker 2: before you boil it down. So I think they can
Speaker 2: get about ninety percent of the water out with the
Speaker 2: reverse osmosis machine, So that really drastically reduces the boiling
Speaker 2: time to get down to that really sugary good stuff. Right.
Speaker 2: And the other thing is, you know, back in the day,
Speaker 2: they had to use you know, wood fired boilers and stuff,
Speaker 2: like that. Now they use propane. So lots of little
Speaker 2: things kind of came along to make it more industrial,
Speaker 2: but still not you know, it's still trees in a
Speaker 2: forest that you're tapping. It's not like some big like
Speaker 2: I said, like a factory built around it or something.
Speaker 1: I was reading a lot of stuff explaining how this
Speaker 1: whole thing works, and one of the sites that has
Speaker 1: some good explainers is greens Sugar House. And they still
Speaker 1: use wood.
Speaker 2: Oh really, they.
Speaker 1: Said, they're one of the few who uses wood still.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's a benefit to that or just
Speaker 2: they like to be old school and tout that.
Speaker 1: I think maybe old school. I don't know. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: all of this put together, reverse osmosis, vacuum pumps, plastic tubing,
Speaker 1: when you combine it. By the mid nineties, I think
Speaker 1: maple syrup production in the US and Canada together increased
Speaker 1: four hundred percent over just like a couple decades earlier.
Speaker 1: So still not industrialized, but enough now that like you
Speaker 1: can start to supply the world with maple syrup. And
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. You know, climate changes put a dent
Speaker 2: in almost everything, and maple the maple industry is no
Speaker 2: stranger to that, especially in the US. But snow cover
Speaker 2: is a pretty big deal. So it's not snowing as much,
Speaker 2: and snow cover helps insulate those roots, so that's no
Speaker 2: great not a great thing. The trees are also more
Speaker 2: affected by disease and invasive species that come with warmer temperature,
Speaker 2: and all of this has resulted in I don't know
Speaker 2: about a consensus, but a lot of scientists are saying that,
Speaker 2: like this may be a Canada only thing in the
Speaker 2: not too distant future, Like that range is reducing, and
Speaker 2: it's reducing northward.
Speaker 1: Right, remember our plant migration episode? Like that, Yeah, for sure,
Speaker 1: so you said that there the range of sugar maples
Speaker 1: is moving northward aka plant migration. There are other things
Speaker 1: that have happened over the years with the sugar bushes.
Speaker 1: Remember stands of sugar maples that we figured out, like
Speaker 1: that's not good, we should try something different. And these
Speaker 1: family farmers basically just did something logical, and we're like, well,
Speaker 1: let's just tear down some of these other trees and
Speaker 1: plant more sugar maples. And so the sugar bush turned
Speaker 1: into a very almost a monoculture basically where it was
Speaker 1: nothing but sugar maples, and that makes sense economically on
Speaker 1: the short term, but in the long term it's not
Speaker 1: good because it reduces biodiversity.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure. And we should mention there is another
Speaker 2: plant called a sugar bush, but we're not talking about that,
Speaker 2: just so save your emails.
Speaker 1: I did. I was talking it's a chaparral plant. It's
Speaker 1: a scrub bush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who wants that?
Speaker 1: I guess people who like the chaparral. People who live
Speaker 1: in like twenty nine palms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So you know, biodiversity is an important part
Speaker 2: of any thriving ecosystem, and sugar maples are no different.
Speaker 2: Once you simplify that tree species, you know it's gonna
Speaker 2: drive out certain kinds of birds, and those kinds of
Speaker 2: birds might be feeding on the invasive little insect critters,
Speaker 2: so they need to protect that biodiversity. So places are
Speaker 2: now sort of realizing we need to not just cut
Speaker 2: down swas of other things to plant sugar maples, and
Speaker 2: Vermont is one of them, and they enacted an effort
Speaker 2: that now requires twenty five percent of trees and a
Speaker 2: sugar bush to be other species other than that sugar maple.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So That was nice to come full circle
Speaker 1: like that and realize like, yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 1: do that. There's reasons to keep things biodiverse. I love
Speaker 1: it when nature's like, no, that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to how I had it before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, if you're wondering about the trees themselves,
Speaker 2: they have to be about forty years old, so even
Speaker 2: when they were planning these things, it takes decades and
Speaker 2: decades to be able to tap them, and they have
Speaker 2: to be a certain size. They can only be about
Speaker 2: ten inches in diameter and are generally only tapped once
Speaker 2: unless they're big mamas. If they're over eighteen inches, you
Speaker 2: might be able to tap that thing a second time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which kind of raised the question for me. Not
Speaker 1: beg the question, it just raised it like can you
Speaker 1: hurt like does it hurt the tree when you're removing
Speaker 1: sap because it seems kind of sensible, like it's not
Speaker 1: like it naturally exudes the sap, So if you're coming
Speaker 1: along as a person and removing it, like is the
Speaker 1: tree like hey I need that, and it seems to
Speaker 1: be not the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's good. I think I had that same question
Speaker 2: years ago. About coal seams if I'm not Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I asked that on the show. I was like,
Speaker 2: I always wondered if like just removing all of this
Speaker 2: stuff from the Earth's core is like not a great thing.
Speaker 1: I could see that you leave in holes and destabilizing it,
Speaker 1: It's going to turn into Swiss cheese eventually.
Speaker 2: You know what, you might have said that fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: I probably did Swiss cheese. But with as far as
Speaker 1: the sap goes, removing it and harming the sugar maple.
Speaker 1: That doctor Jones from University of Vermont who came up
Speaker 1: with the Jones rule of eighty six, he did a
Speaker 1: study and estimated that something like four to nine percent
Speaker 1: of an eight to ten inch diameter trees total carbohydrate
Speaker 1: reserves are removed during a sugaring season, and that people
Speaker 1: don't tap trees that small, like you said, ten inches
Speaker 1: in diameter minimum. So the bigger trees probably have even
Speaker 1: more reserves and lose less of a person. And so no,
Speaker 1: over a sugaring season, you're probably not going to tap
Speaker 1: enough sap to actually harm the tree in any way.
Speaker 2: That's great, but you did make one mistake. I believe
Speaker 2: it's pronounced doctor Jones.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, it definitely stood out to me too. But
Speaker 1: I uh, what's weird is I thought of Sean Connery
Speaker 1: and not Harrison Ford. Oh something's wrong with me. Oh man,
Speaker 1: that's a sign of something or other. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: like a psychiatric test that gives you that, Like a
Speaker 1: picture of Sean Conry picture of Harrison Ford says which
Speaker 1: one's doctor Jones, and you better pick Harrison Ford or
Speaker 1: else they're going to institutionalize you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Or I mean if you would have said Shila both,
Speaker 2: I would just just walk into traffic after that.
Speaker 1: They don't even want to diagnose that one.
Speaker 2: No. Uh So we should talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: how this stuff is processed. You know, if, like we
Speaker 2: mentioned sort of the home processors, or if you're just
Speaker 2: a small scale producer, you're probably probably have that sugar
Speaker 2: house on your property. If you have a larger operation,
Speaker 2: you're probably collecting from nearby but taking it to a
Speaker 2: central boil boiler location like a larger sugar house obviously,
Speaker 2: and then inside that sugar house. You know, evaporation is
Speaker 2: a big part of it. You know, we talked about
Speaker 2: indigenous people evaporating out all that water. You still need
Speaker 2: to do the same thing on a small scale. I
Speaker 2: know you mentioned like the the propane heater, like the
Speaker 2: turkey fryer kind of thing that you repurposed, or a
Speaker 2: wood fryer. But when you get larger, you know, it's
Speaker 2: gonna be larger machines and they're you know, they're gonna
Speaker 2: be a little they're gonna have more bells and whistles
Speaker 2: on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you repurposed the turkey frier because you didn't read
Speaker 1: online that you're not supposed to drop a frozen turkey
Speaker 1: in a deep fryar because you almost caught your house
Speaker 1: on fire. So your partner said, no, you need to
Speaker 1: get that out into a sugar shack and make some
Speaker 1: syrup with it instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and by god, please do not fry your turkey
Speaker 2: indoors either at all.
Speaker 1: Oh, good Lord, who does that?
Speaker 2: A video of a guy doing it, it's not good.
Speaker 1: Was he running it off a generator that he had
Speaker 1: indoors as well? No?
Speaker 2: No, I mean it was a standard propane situation, but
Speaker 2: he did it like in his kitchen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can find a video of anybody doing
Speaker 2: anything dumb these days.
Speaker 1: One other thing we're not going to talk about him,
Speaker 1: but I urge you if you're like I kind of
Speaker 1: like this, this sounds neat. Look up evaporator pants. They're
Speaker 1: really cool, very cool. So something that I had no
Speaker 1: idea that's actually kind of the fact of the podcast
Speaker 1: possibly the flavor of maple syrup. The maple flavor itself.
Speaker 1: It's not really present very much in the SAP from
Speaker 1: what I understand, it's actually a result of the Mayard reaction.
Speaker 1: The same thing that turns bread into toast. Yeah, makes
Speaker 1: some duck delicious all it does all sorts of amazing things,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the I think the caramelization process.
Speaker 1: It gives that that SAP. It's maple flavor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we have a pretty good detailed description of that
Speaker 2: in our Toast episode, which I think was quite good.
Speaker 2: So go check that one out.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: And by the way, we want to mention there's a
Speaker 2: new thing on Apple podcast where, oh yeah, if you
Speaker 2: mentioned something from like a past episode that I think
Speaker 2: something will now pop up on your podcast player that
Speaker 2: like tells you where that episode is, which is kind
Speaker 2: of cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it has a link that you can click. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Apple has done some just amazing stuff for their
Speaker 1: podcast app and player now and it's like, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: hats off to them for the design and thought that
Speaker 1: they put into it. So yeah, I say go check
Speaker 1: it out because we I think we have a whole
Speaker 1: channel there now.
Speaker 2: So back to the process. Though, after you have that
Speaker 2: boiling going on and get rid of that water, you're
Speaker 2: evaporating the water, you still are going to have to
Speaker 2: filter that stuff out because something's in there called sugar sand.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, concentrated minerals and stuff, and it
Speaker 2: might you know, make it look cloudy. And this is
Speaker 2: stuff that you want to either sell on the side
Speaker 2: of the road or sell in the store, and so
Speaker 2: you're going to filter it from there. And to me,
Speaker 2: this next thing was the fact of the podcast. If
Speaker 2: you're if you're a fan of wine, you know that
Speaker 2: tear war is a thing where a grape growing from
Speaker 2: a certain vine out of certain soil in a certain
Speaker 2: place on Earth, under certain climate conditions will taste different
Speaker 2: than that same grape grown elsewhere. And that's the same
Speaker 2: thing with maple trees. It has a tear war and
Speaker 2: if you are a highly sort of specialized maple syrup producer,
Speaker 2: or a sugarer. I guess sugar daddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sugar edady.
Speaker 2: You can be like well known for your particular tear
Speaker 2: war and you can charge like a lot more money.
Speaker 2: I don't know by a lot more money, but you
Speaker 2: can have like an elevated price because you have such
Speaker 2: a specialized tear war to your tree and syrup.
Speaker 1: Right, you're like my sugar maples are fertilized only with
Speaker 1: pig feces coming from pigs that are fed on a
Speaker 1: diet of organic truffles.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe, so you.
Speaker 1: Could get a lot of money for that syrup, is
Speaker 1: what I understand.
Speaker 2: I think so.
Speaker 1: So. Canada is far and away the largest exporter of
Speaker 1: maple syrup. They essentially supply the world with syrup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they produce about Back in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: O Livia found four hundred and fifty seven million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of maple syrup Canada produced and sold. The US
Speaker 1: follows at thirty five million. That eus about thirteen million.
Speaker 1: But Canada makes so much maple syrup that the US,
Speaker 1: which produces a ton of maple syrup, still imports more
Speaker 1: than it exports or sells from Canada.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that's just another reason that we need
Speaker 2: to stay good friends with Canada.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they got the syrup.
Speaker 2: That's right, And we're going to be expressing that sentiment
Speaker 2: on our summer tour all across Canada. The good will
Speaker 2: will be flowing hopefully tapped, just like the maple syrup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the Dove and the Olive branch.
Speaker 2: Tour Quebec alone. We need to shout them out. I
Speaker 2: know you mentioned they were the biggest producer. They produce
Speaker 2: about seventy percent I'm sorry, seventy two percent of the
Speaker 2: world supply of maple syrup, fifty five million taps going
Speaker 2: in Quebec alone, and they have what some people call
Speaker 2: a cartel. In Canada. There's a government sort of endorse
Speaker 2: industry group called the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers or shortened
Speaker 2: with their French name, the PPAQ that basically acts as
Speaker 2: the go between between the eight thousand producers and the customers.
Speaker 2: And like they're really in the business. It's not just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we want to make sure everything's going okaya. They like
Speaker 2: they tell you how to market it, how to sell it,
Speaker 2: what to do with the reserves. Like they're really, really involved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like the Opec of maple syrup. Essentially, they
Speaker 1: have a strategic reserve that they started in two thousand
Speaker 1: that can hold up the ten million gallons. I saw
Speaker 1: them also described as a mafia by an independent syrup producer,
Speaker 1: because if you produce maple syrup in Quebec, it does
Speaker 1: not matter if you're a member of the PPAQ. You
Speaker 1: still have to give them a cut of your proceeds
Speaker 1: from the sale of maple syrup. So like they set
Speaker 1: the prices, they can make the price artificially high low
Speaker 1: depending on what they want to do. And this is
Speaker 1: not to say like this is just all bad. They
Speaker 1: have done a lot of good for maple syrup producers
Speaker 1: across Quebec. But they're apparently also extremely aggressive in enforcing
Speaker 1: their rules.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the deal. Here in the United States,
Speaker 2: if you want to talk about the top producers, look
Speaker 2: no further than Vermont. Vermont very well known for their
Speaker 2: maple syrup, and New York State is after that, and
Speaker 2: then you know other New England states. But you also
Speaker 2: got to throw in, oddly, maybe not oddly, Virginia, Wisconsin, Ohio,
Speaker 2: and Minnesota as other decent sized producers. But it's really
Speaker 2: the name of the game, and the US is Vermont.
Speaker 1: Vermont, the old VAT and I say we take a break,
Speaker 1: but first we cannot not mention the ppaq's strategic reserves
Speaker 1: and not mentioned the great maple Syrup Heist of twenty
Speaker 1: eleven to twenty twelve. Yeah, take it away, Oh okay, Well, apparently,
Speaker 1: starting in twenty eleven, a group of thieves slowly tapped
Speaker 1: off twenty seven hundred tons of maple syrup from barrels
Speaker 1: inside one of the PPAQ strategic warehouses. And nobody caught
Speaker 1: this for months because they either filled the barrels with
Speaker 1: water or they left them empty, but either way, the
Speaker 1: barrels were in place, so anybody walking through the warehouse
Speaker 1: would not think anything was amiss. And it wasn't until
Speaker 1: an audit that it was found. And I think out
Speaker 1: of twenty seven also, this whole I think the whole
Speaker 1: thing was like thirteen million dollars worth of maple syrup
Speaker 1: that was stolen, and they only got back four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of the twenty seven hundred tons, and even
Speaker 1: that they were like, we got to destroy this because
Speaker 1: it's basically been through the Ringer, you know, stolen and
Speaker 1: recovered and all that, and several people went to prison.
Speaker 1: One of them I think his name is Richard Valliers.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to seven years and ten months filed
Speaker 1: US for this heist. That's how serious Quebec takes its
Speaker 1: maple syrup.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll take that second break and we'll finish
Speaker 2: up right after this. All right, we're back, and let's
Speaker 2: talk about other parts of the world, because we mentioned
Speaker 2: Europe produces some maple syrup, and you know it happens
Speaker 2: here and there. They you don't have like the big
Speaker 2: swings between day and night that you really need to
Speaker 2: cause the sap to run super well. So a lot
Speaker 2: of times they'll work with other trees. Birch trees can
Speaker 2: produce a sap. Other kinds of maple trees I mentioned
Speaker 2: can produce sap. You're probably not going to make that
Speaker 2: into maple syrup. You're probably using it for making like
Speaker 2: you know, like an additive, like making beer, making vinegar,
Speaker 2: maybe as something in a drink. I know, there's a
Speaker 2: pretty rich tradition in South Korea of their native maple tree,
Speaker 2: the goroso tree, where they I mean this sounds dangerous
Speaker 2: to me. They get together in a hot room and
Speaker 2: drink like five gallons each of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah each, That sounds.
Speaker 2: Like like I thought that amount of intake of liquid
Speaker 2: would kill you.
Speaker 1: Well, essentially, it's supposed to do the opposite that. It's
Speaker 1: like a health tonic essentially, and then the sauna action
Speaker 1: you're sweating out toxins and you're replacing it with this
Speaker 1: healthful sap. But I mean, if they've been doing it
Speaker 1: for this long and people aren't over at the very least,
Speaker 1: it's not harmful.
Speaker 2: I just wonder how many how long that is, like
Speaker 2: over five gallon time.
Speaker 1: I don't know, five gallons of anything.
Speaker 2: Say like five gallons of water will kill you on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you can toxify.
Speaker 2: Really, but yeah, they've been doing it for a long time.
Speaker 2: Northern China also drinks the sap of certain kinds of
Speaker 2: maple trees. But you know, outside of Europe, there are
Speaker 2: places in the United States, like the Pacific Northwest, where
Speaker 2: they're tapping big leaf maples. The thing is, you just
Speaker 2: need a lot more about twice as much actually to
Speaker 2: get a gallon of syrup because it's just not as sugary, right,
Speaker 2: And here's the other thing too, that not only do
Speaker 2: they need a lot more to produce the syrup, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't have that same kind of climate consistency as
Speaker 2: far as like freezing every night and getting warm the
Speaker 2: next day. So it's sort of between November and March.
Speaker 2: It seems like, and maybe if you're someone out there
Speaker 2: doing this, you can correct me, but it seems like
Speaker 2: it's tap as available sort of.
Speaker 1: So you've got a bunch of syrup on your hands.
Speaker 1: You followed all of the processing tips that we gave
Speaker 1: you time, was that your maple syrup would be assigned
Speaker 1: a grade one of three grades fancy, A or B.
Speaker 1: Fancy was like the most delicate, Bee's the most robust.
Speaker 1: But people didn't understand that. They thought fancy was the
Speaker 1: best place, like cats up. Right, you think cats up
Speaker 1: is much better than catchup because it's fancy. That's not
Speaker 1: the case. So they changed it. Now it's all grade A.
Speaker 1: But then they assign different categories based on the flavor
Speaker 1: and the color of it.
Speaker 2: That's right. They have golden, amber, dark, and very dark,
Speaker 2: and that ranges respectively as delicate, rich, robust, and strong. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the very dark the strongest one you're probably going to
Speaker 2: be cooking with that the lightest, that golden delicate one,
Speaker 2: maybe putting it in a cocktail or something like the
Speaker 2: stuff that you've off the grocery store shelf or get ordered,
Speaker 2: I guess to be delivered to live on your home
Speaker 2: shell forever for your pancakes and waffles. That's gonna be
Speaker 2: that amber maple syrup, right.
Speaker 1: And then there's other stuff too, like say you didn't
Speaker 1: get the sugar sand out and it's cloudy, or it
Speaker 1: has a slightly off taste, like maybe you sugared a
Speaker 1: little too late in the season. That's graded. It's not
Speaker 1: an A grade, and they don't sell it in the stores. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's graded as maple syrup for processing. And so if
Speaker 1: you have like a maple taste in some industrially produced,
Speaker 1: commercially available food, it's that kind of maple syrup. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever had waffle crisp cereal in the nineties,
Speaker 1: you were eating maple syrup for processing.
Speaker 2: That's right. I did mention the refrigerator. If you don't
Speaker 2: open it, you can keep it on that shelf for
Speaker 2: about three years, but afterward you apparently do need to
Speaker 2: refrigerate it. And it can go for another three years.
Speaker 2: It's that high sugar content basically that's keeping it nice
Speaker 2: in pristine. But you know, as happened to me, once
Speaker 2: you open that stuff, it can get little mold spores.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta go check mine, because I really don't
Speaker 1: think it's molded. But let's say that you want something
Speaker 1: besides syrup. You're just so syruped out, you drank five
Speaker 1: gallons of it, and you want something other than the syrup.
Speaker 1: What are you going to turn to? Chuck?
Speaker 2: Well, I know everyone's seen those little maple leaf shaped
Speaker 2: candies a door at a rest stop in New England
Speaker 2: and I'm sure all over Canada. But yeah, they're usually
Speaker 2: shaped like little maple leaves. They heat that stuff up
Speaker 2: and pour it into molds to cool down. It can
Speaker 2: be like a softer, light colored thing, depending on how
Speaker 2: hot you get it, or that dark, hard candy. And
Speaker 2: I've had those. Those are delicious.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There's also maple cream, which is essentially whipped maple syrup.
Speaker 2: Oh baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's something called sugar on snow, which where
Speaker 1: you take a pack of snow packed together, which is
Speaker 1: why they call it a pack, and you pour boiling
Speaker 1: syrup onto it and it immediately congeals into like a
Speaker 1: caramel consistency, and you basically eat it like a candy.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they put it on like a popsicle or a
Speaker 1: sucker stick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds pretty good. We got to mention to
Speaker 2: all our New England friends. I don't know if they
Speaker 2: have these in Canada, but the maple creamy is like
Speaker 2: a saucer of ice cream. And of course at any
Speaker 2: local county fair you're gonna get your maple cotton candy
Speaker 2: or a Quebec specialty, the delicious maple syrup pie.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try that when we're in Montreal for sure,
Speaker 1: me too. I'm also going to try to find some
Speaker 1: maple sugar there too. Apparently when you bake with it,
Speaker 1: you can substitute I've seen one for one or three
Speaker 1: quarters for one with white granulated sugar in your recipe,
Speaker 1: and especially if you're making something fall like like a
Speaker 1: banana bread or apple pie or something like that, it
Speaker 1: apparently just steps up the flavor quite a bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, and I know last year I mentioned my
Speaker 2: maple old fashioned, which is now my kind of go
Speaker 2: to sweetener for my old fashions. It's really yummy.
Speaker 1: Well you should try some maple sugar.
Speaker 2: In there, man, instead of the syrup.
Speaker 1: No, I mean you make the syrup with sugar, right.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I just put syrup in there.
Speaker 1: But what do you make the syrup from? Is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: From the bottle off the shelf at publics.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you made your own. We gave people
Speaker 1: like a whole recipe, didn't we.
Speaker 2: No? No, no, no, that was a That was a
Speaker 2: pumpkin spice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should use maple sugar in that then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, good call. But I use maple syrup right
Speaker 2: out of the bottle for my other favorite old fashion
Speaker 2: very nice that public.
Speaker 1: So you don't order it, no, just go to the
Speaker 1: store get it like a sucker. So you mentioned that
Speaker 1: it actually has some nutritional value, right, Yeah? I saw
Speaker 1: that it has ninety five percent of your daily value
Speaker 1: of manganese. Like beat that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does manganese do for you? Everything?
Speaker 1: Thirty seven percent of your daily value of viboflaving, which
Speaker 1: is a B vitium vitamin. Also has potassium, which is
Speaker 1: why I said vitium, calcium, zinc loads of antioxidants apparently,
Speaker 1: and it has a lower glycemic index score than sugar
Speaker 1: by far, so it spikes your blood sugar much less
Speaker 1: than sugar does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And they have evidence that some of
Speaker 2: the compounds from maple syrup can enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's in that's maple sera, Which means it's
Speaker 1: time for listener mail.
Speaker 2: All right, this is a quick note from Kyle metzker
Speaker 2: Kyle says, Hey, guys, I was recently listening to the
Speaker 2: old episode from twenty eighteen on the Concord. Hey, we
Speaker 2: just mentioned another old episode, so that'll probably pop up
Speaker 2: on your little Apple player by the way. Nice and
Speaker 2: my ongoing quest to simultaneously listen to the back catalog
Speaker 2: as well as new episode. So Kyle, you are sandwiching
Speaker 2: my friend. That's right way to do it, I think.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: He said, Josh, you were continually amazed that the Concord
Speaker 2: fuel was kerosene. Is that was very primitive or old school,
Speaker 2: But actually almost all jet fuel was kerosene and has
Speaker 2: been since its inception. Basically, its two uses are jet
Speaker 2: fuel and household cooking and lighting fuel. I wanted to
Speaker 2: keep this in short and sweet guys, I love you too,
Speaker 2: and love the show.
Speaker 1: Short and sweet, very appropriate for maple syrup episode. Sew,
Speaker 1: that's right, that was who metzker Kyle? Hey, Kyle, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot for that. We appreciate it. No idea that
Speaker 1: kerosene's been jet fuel forever, so thanks for that. And
Speaker 1: if you want to be like Kyle and send us
Speaker 1: an email that I say thanks for that about you
Speaker 1: can send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows