Maple Syrup History

History of maple syrup: Maple syrup comes from the sugar maple tree, maple trees can be found all over the world. But only in the North Eastern part of North America has the right climate to harvest the sap that makes maple syrup.

Which countries produce and process maple syrup?:
Canada currently leads in producing maple syrup, USA shortly follows after. Maple syrup is mainly produced in two provinces, Quebec and Ontario.

How is maple syrup marketed, packaged and labelled?:
Maple syrup can be packaged in cans, glass bottles, plastic bottles and clear jars. This product is usually labelled by its class.There are five different classes of maple syrup. The first class is No.1 extra light, its light transmission is more than 75% with subtle taste and a golden colour. The second class is No.1 light, its light transmission is between 60.5% and 74% with subtle tastes and a golden with a mild sweet maple flavour. The third class is the No.1
Trees are tapped using a drill to make a small hole for the spile, once the spile is inserted in the tree the sap will drip out. It usually takes about twenty days for a maple tree to fully drip all it's sap out into a bucket. The sap is then all collected in a large holding tank and then fed into the sugar house. The sap is poured into an evaporator, the maple sugar evaporators are specifically designed to boil off hundreds of gallons of water quickly so the sap is concentrated into maple syrup. This is called boiling down, the evaporator works by heating the sap so it is almost boiling, as the water boils off and the sugar becomes more concentrated the sap moves to the pan. The pan is located in the rear part of the evaporator. In the pan the sap actually becomes syrup, once it's syrup it gets filtered to remove clumps of sugar and sugar sand. After the filtering process the syrup is bottled and sent off to