Go to Vermont, find a sugar operation, and ask for the AA grade, or “Vermont Fancy”. It looks like ginger ale, tastes like vanilla, and usually isn’t sold in commercial quantity. My uncle’s operation keeps it all for the families who work there.
Usually made from the first batch of the season, in my experience it’s rather rare. Taste it and you will achieve enlightenment!
One factor I haven’t seen mentioned: Real maple flavor is delicious, and one almost never gets any other opportunity to eat some. In fact, I can’t think of any other widely available restaurant food that includes it. There is a fake approximation in McDonald’s McGriddles, but it is decidedly NOT delicious.
When I make blueberry pie, there is always extra syrup left over. No one in the house uses any other kind of syrup until it’s gone, and the rate of pancake making around here quintuples when there is any in the house. It also gets poured on vanilla ice cream and goodness knows what all. But that’s not the blueberry syrup you would get in a restaurant. The stuff there is kool-aid purple and tastes like a Jolly Rancher.
Real maple syrup is delicious, shelf-stable, and the best-tasting product in its price/use category.
The earliest sap comes out before the tree has “woken up” for the season. It is the lightest, and has the “cleanest” flavors. This sap is rare and unpopular on the market. As someone said above, it is wonderful if you have access to some.
As the season continues the sap runs faster and is pulled up from the deeper roots, so there are more minerals and such in it. (more “terroir”) These are the darker “lower” grades of syrup. People who say they don’t like maple syrup because it has a “metallic” flavor were introduced to late-season syrup.
But there is another way syrup gets darker, and that’s with heat. I prefer all of the stages of sap when they have been caramelized into a darker colored syrup. The best processors do this over a longer time over a low heat, producing a syrup that is also thicker. It can be faked by cooking over a higher heat, and this results in a flavor closer to black treacle. IMO doing it this way masks the maple, and you might as well have started with cheaper corn syrup.
Exactly what I was thinking. I’d read that, and my bottle said that. It’s the most irritating thing for me because I like maple syrup, but don’t want cold syrup on my warm pancakes. Thought about warming it, but never now how much I’ll use at a time.
Different sap runs definitely affect the flavor, but this isn’t due to it later being ‘more refined’.
You can of course refine syrup more, by boiling it further, but this creates different products … not “syrup” as we know it, but caramelized maple syrup, maple candy and sugar. These are certainly delicious, but they are not what is normally referred to as “maple syrup”. The best is maple candy poured directly on snow outside a sugar shack to cool it!
“Syrup” always has around the same amount of sugar in it - around 66-68% - a product of how long it is boiled (or of osmosis if this method is used). The differences in flavor come from different trace flavors that vary with the sap run, location of the tree, etc. But dark or light, they are all processed nearly the same amount, to create the correct “syrup” concentration of sugar.
That’s an affect of the maple lobby and the Food and Drug Act. I recall the table syrups all being marketed as maple flavored in my youth.
The fake stuff uses flavoring to attempt to approximate the flavor of maple, as opposed to blueberry (or other berry flavors), or honey, or just straight corn syrup (which is disappointing - I tried Karo once when we were out of the regular).
Not my experience.
This I agree with.
Nope. Maple is a tasty flavor.
Quoting for juxtaposition.
Good article.
Interesting, learned something new.
I don’t know your experience, but mine is from store bought real maple, and it is runnier than table syrup. I even have a cite:
I’ve been using real syrup for years, ever since I found out most of them are just flavored corn syrup (no offense to corn syrup, i’d just rater have the real thing if possible), but I’ve never been able to fine it other than A style. Where do you even get the others? I really would like to try B (and C too now that I’ve heard of it’s existence, right here).
I don’t see the problem. I warm it in a little metal creamer and either pour what is left back in the jug or slip a baggie over the pitcher & refirgerate. No mold problems when yet.
I thought that might make the pancakes soggy. I like to keep the…not crispness, but lack of moisture on the browned outside as long as I can. I usually dip each bite in the syrup instead of covering pancakes, for that reason.
