Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart Happens. Hi'm Marshall Brain with today's question, what
Speaker 1: is maple syrup and how do they make it? Maple
Speaker 1: syrup comes from the sap of maple trees. Yes, just
Speaker 1: the normal sap that's running underneath the bark in the
Speaker 1: early spring. If you cut the bark or drill a
Speaker 1: hole into certain species of maple trees, clear sap will
Speaker 1: leak out of the cut. This sap is very thin,
Speaker 1: almost like water, but it contains about two sugar. If
Speaker 1: you boil this watery sap to drive off the water,
Speaker 1: you eventually get maple syrup. It takes thirty to forty
Speaker 1: gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. One
Speaker 1: tree might give you ten gallons of sap over the
Speaker 1: course of four weeks. The best days to collect sap
Speaker 1: are the days where the temperature is above freezing during
Speaker 1: the day and below freezing at night prior to bud formation.
Speaker 1: The sugar or rock maple and the black maple are
Speaker 1: the two trees that give you the best syrup. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people also tapped the red maple before people collected the
Speaker 1: sap in buckets by drilling a hole into the tree
Speaker 1: and pounding in a wooden tube for the bucket to
Speaker 1: hang on. Today, most commercial operations use plastic taps and
Speaker 1: plastic tubing so the sap can flow to a central location.
Speaker 1: The sap is evaporated in large flat pans that are
Speaker 1: heated with wood, gas or electricity. Maple syrup is definitely
Speaker 1: a northern thing to do. Maple syrup comes from places
Speaker 1: like Quebec and Ontario in Canada, and in the United States,
Speaker 1: it comes from Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont,
Speaker 1: and Wisconsin. People in the north where it gets snowy
Speaker 1: and cold are the kind of people who have maple
Speaker 1: trees in their backyard. Do you have any ideas or
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Speaker 1: e mail at podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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