How to Drink a Tree's Blood

11:30Chuck Bryant: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 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, well, you need to get to the bottom of what's going on here because this is delish.

12:00Josh Clark:I would love a real sapsicle. That'd be fun.

12:02Chuck Bryant:We should also say this. So 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. and all of them had methods and techniques for getting maple sap out of sugar maple trees. And they had like their own techniques. Each group had a slightly different technique, but ultimately what it usually boiled down to was cutting a laceration in the bark of the tree, possibly putting like a hollow twig in there to serve as the tap. Sometimes they just let it trickle down the bark of the tree.

12:48Chuck Bryant:And then they would usually catch it in like a little birch bark container, the ones that I saw looked like little tiny rowboats, which I bet you could use as rowboats after the sugaring season. That's right.

13:00Josh Clark: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 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.

13:31Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Also, 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've just basically evaporated a bunch of water from the sap. So there was probably different techniques that could also be combined too, 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 sap, which is essentially the same thing.

14:15Chuck Bryant:You're boiling it down further than you would syrup, but you let it dry. Once it gets to a thickened state, you let it dry, then you break it up and you've got maple sugar on your hands.

14:26Josh Clark: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.

14:59Josh Clark:But sugaring season kind of kicked off of the coming back together, which is kind of cool.

15:04Chuck Bryant: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 it's called the sugaring season the place where you um boil down the sap is called the sugar shack um the the the sugar bush yeah the stand of trees um of sugar maples together it's 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.

15:41Josh Clark:Yeah. When they would pass it back and forth, they would say, give me some sugar, baby. Nice. That's right. I love it. The word sugar is a very pleasing sound to my ear, so I agree.

15:53Chuck Bryant:Especially, and also when you think of the snow, I think of the snow and the maples in the snow visually, and then thinking of the word sugar with all that stuff, too. It's just, gosh. It 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.

16:27Josh Clark: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 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 up a little stand on the side of the road.

16:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah, for sure. I was looking at like a 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. Yeah. Just a wood burn into a sign to hang over the door that said sugar shack. Yeah.

17:17Josh Clark:And if some peyote happened to find its way in there, so be it. So be it. 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 and so you know and as we'll see later their health properties too so they probably had a hunch about that as well

17:50Chuck Bryant:And don't forget the tiny rowboats that you could put in like a lake or a pond after sugaring something. That's right. Yeah.

17:57Josh Clark:Let's take that break. All right. We'll be right back and talk more about Maple right after this.

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21:12Chuck Bryant:So, Chuck, I said that European colonizers got their just total awareness of maple sugaring or syruping from 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 some sort of bowl with some sap and just wait like this. This just increased things tremendously. Yeah.

21:50Josh Clark:I wonder if they collected in that or if they stuck to their baby boats.

21:54Chuck Bryant:I hope I hope baby boats. That's my that's my wish.

21:57Josh Clark:I think so, too. So early on in that colonization process, you know, the settlers obviously were doing the same thing. collecting it and using their methods. It was cheaper than importing cane sugar from the Caribbean, 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, hey, let's not support these British slave-based plantations in the Caribbean that we're getting this cane sugar.

22:42Josh Clark:Like, we can get our own sweet stuff right here and export it and not promote slavery. And it tastes great.

22:49Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and 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-based plantation societies by doing that. Thomas Jefferson was like, I'm on board. Let's do this. Because it fit into his vision of the United States being a collective of Yaoman 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 when there's normally not a lot to do on a family farm.

23:31Chuck Bryant:now you have a whole other revenue stream and you're getting a bunch of maple syrup out of it too um just by sugaring adding that to like your your yearly thing so uh we did mention earlier

23:43Josh Clark:that you know they 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 um 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 U S that kind of started falling away because it's so labor intensive. And by the second half of the 19th century, uh, cane sugar prices fell a lot and then beet sugar, uh, 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. Uh, but, um, they started, you know, people still like that, that flavor, especially on things like pancakes and waffles.

24:24Josh Clark:So they, they needed to, to unfortunately kind to cut it with other stuff. So they, uh, 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.

24:39Chuck Bryant:I have Mrs. Butterworth written right there.

24:42Josh Clark: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?

24:48Chuck Bryant:No, no. It's, um, I can't remember what they call it, like Old Mill or something like that.

24:52Josh Clark:Yeah. Yeah. They changed the name. Um, 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 buttery pancake syrup.

25:06Chuck Bryant: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 forties to tell you the truth. I finally was like, I want to see what 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.

25:42Josh Clark:Now when you say you ordered it, what does that mean? Ordered it off the shelf at the grocery store?

25:46Chuck Bryant:No, I ordered some online first, I think, before I noticed that you could get it at grocery stores.

25:52Josh Clark:Wow. Okay.

25:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Because I'm like, organic, real maple syrup. Where are you going to find that? And apparently just about everywhere.

25:59Josh Clark:Yeah. 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 of the United States are probably like, you guys are such rude.

26:10Chuck Bryant:Oh, they're aghast right now.

26:11Josh Clark:But hey, I grew up in Georgia. Like, this 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 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.

26:31Chuck Bryant: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.

26:41Josh Clark:Is this stuff you ordered in your forties? Yeah. You haven't gone through one bottle?

26:46Chuck Bryant:No, I haven't because it is, it's so different from what I like or what I'm used to is maple syrup. It's like a special kind of thing. It's not what I go for now anytime I'm like syrup. Like it's a very occasional thing for me.

27:03Josh Clark: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. I was like, oh, this is really good. In a cup? Like a little solo cup? No, no, no, no. Like the little medical ramekin, you know. I gotcha, I gotcha. Beside the waffle.

27:22Chuck Bryant:So what's interesting, you kind of said that maple syrup production has 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.

28:01Chuck Bryant:And every day you have to go collect the pails and immediately start boiling it so that it doesn't grow bacteria. this is like you just kick back and let it all come to you and it's probably going into a pretty decent size advanced machine that's handling all of the processing for you as well

28:21Josh Clark:yeah for sure uh the the advent of the reverse osmosis machine became a really big deal uh because that's 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 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. Right. Uh, and the other thing is, uh, you know, back in the day they had to use, um, you know, wood fired, um, 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.

29:00Josh Clark:It's not like some big, uh, like I said, like a factory built around it or something.

29:04Chuck Bryant: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.

29:13Josh Clark:Oh, really?

29:15Chuck Bryant:They said they're one of the few who uses wood still.

29:18Josh Clark:I wonder if there's a benefit to that or just they like to be old school and tout that.

29:23Chuck Bryant:I think maybe old school. I don't know.

29:25Josh Clark:Yeah.

29:26Chuck Bryant: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 U.S. 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 definitely what's happening.

29:52Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. You know, climate change has put a dent in almost everything. And maple, the maple industry is no stranger to that, especially in the U.S. 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 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 of 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.

30:31Chuck Bryant:Right. Remember our plant migration episode? It's like that.

30:35Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure.

30:36Chuck Bryant:So you said that there, 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 and were 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, 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.

31:19Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And we should mention there is another plant called a sugar bush, but we're not talking about that. Just so. Save your emails.

31:26Chuck Bryant:I did. I was talking, it's a chaparral plant. It's a scrub bush.

31:31Josh Clark:Yeah. Who wants that?

31:33Chuck Bryant:I guess people who like the chaparral. People who live in like 29 palms. Yeah, okay.

31:38Josh Clark: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 going to 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 percent of trees in a sugar bush to be other species other than that sugar maple. Right.

32:15Chuck Bryant: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 there's reasons to keep things biodiverse. I love it when nature's like, no, that's not going to work. Let's go back to how I had it before.

32:29Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. If you're wondering about the trees themselves, they have to be about 40 years old. So even when they were planning 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.

32:51Chuck Bryant: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 i need that and it

33:13Josh Clark:seems to be not the case yeah that's good um i think i had that same question years ago about coal seams if i'm not mistaken 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

33:34Chuck Bryant:I could see that. You're leaving holes and destabilizing it. It's going to turn into Swiss cheese eventually.

33:39Josh Clark:You know what? You might have said that 15 years ago.

33:41Chuck Bryant:I probably did. Swiss cheese. But 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 tree's 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.

34:25Josh Clark:That's great. But you did make one mistake. I believe it's pronounced Dr. Jones.

34:30Chuck Bryant:Right. Yeah, it definitely stood out to me, too. But I what's weird is I thought of Sean Connery and not Harrison Ford. Oh, interesting. Something's wrong with me. Oh, man. 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.

34:57Josh Clark:Yeah. Or I mean, if you would have said Shia LaBeouf, I would just walk into traffic after that.

35:04Chuck Bryant:They don't even want to diagnose that one.

35:06Josh Clark: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 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 propane heater, like the turkey fryer kind of thing that you repurposed or a wood fryer.

35:48Josh Clark: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.

35:56Chuck Bryant: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.

36:11Josh Clark:Yeah. And by God, please do not fry your turkey indoors either at all.

36:15Chuck Bryant:Oh, good Lord. Who does that?

36:17Josh Clark:I saw a video of a guy doing it. It's not good.

36:20Chuck Bryant:Was he running it off a generator that he had indoors as well?

36:24Josh Clark: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.

36:33Chuck Bryant: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.

36:42Josh Clark:Very cool.

36:45Chuck Bryant:So something that I had no idea, it's 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, makes duck delicious, does all sorts of amazing things. And it's part of the, I think the caramelization process, it gives that sap its maple flavor. Yeah.

37:17Josh Clark: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. It was. And by the way, we want to mention there's a new thing on Apple podcast where.

37:28Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah.

37:28Josh Clark: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. Yeah.

37:38Chuck Bryant:I think it has a link that you can click.

37:41Josh Clark:Yeah.

37:41Chuck Bryant:Like Apple's done some just amazing stuff for their podcast app and PlayerNow. 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.

37:58Josh Clark: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, you know, concentrated minerals and stuff. And it might, you know, 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.

38:40And that's the same thing with maple trees.

38:43Josh Clark:It has a terroir. And if you are a highly sort of specialized maple syrup producer or a sugarer, I guess, sugar daddy. Yeah, sugar daddy. 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.

39:09Chuck Bryant: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.

39:18Josh Clark:Yeah, maybe so.

39:20Chuck Bryant:You could get a lot of money for that syrup is what I understand.

39:23Josh Clark:I think so.

39:25Chuck Bryant:So Canada is far and away the largest exporter of maple syrup. They essentially supply the world with syrup. Yeah. I think they produce about, back in 2023, Livia found$457 million worth of maple syrup Canada produced and sold. The U.S. follows at$35 million. The EU is about$13 million. But Canada makes so much maple syrup that the U.S., which produces a ton of maple syrup, still imports more than it exports or sells from Canada.

39:58Josh Clark:That's right. And that's just another reason that we need to stay good friends with Canada. Because they got the syrup. That's right. And we're going to be expressing that sentiment on our summer tour all across Canada. The goodwill will be flowing, hopefully, tapped just like the maple syrup.

40:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's the Dove and the Olive Branch tour.

40:16Josh Clark:Quebec alone, we need to shout them out. I know you mentioned they were the biggest producer. They produce about 70 percent. I'm sorry, 72 percent 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 they're really in the business. It's not just like, Like, yeah, we want to make sure everything's going okay, eh?

40:54Josh Clark:They tell you how to market it, how to sell it, what to do with the reserves. Like, they're really, really involved.

41:02Chuck Bryant: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 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 they set the prices. They can make the price artificially high, low, depending on what they want to do. And this is not to say this is just all bad. They have done a lot of good for maple syrup producers across Quebec, but they're apparently also extremely aggressive in enforcing their rules.

41:51Josh Clark:Yeah, I think that's the deal. Here in the United States, if you want to 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 U.S. is Vermont.

42:16Chuck Bryant: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.

42:30Josh Clark:Yeah, take it away.

42:31Chuck Bryant: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 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.

43:15Chuck Bryant:And even that they were like, we got to destroy this because it's basically been through the ringer, you know, stolen and recovered and all that. And several people went to prison. One of them, I think his name is Richard Valliers. He was sentenced to seven years and 10 months for this heist. That's how serious Quebec takes its maple syrup.

43:36Josh Clark:All right. We'll take that second break and we'll finish up right after this.

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47:05Josh Clark: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 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 a 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.

47:42Josh Clark:I know there's a pretty rich tradition in South Korea of their native maple tree, the Goroso tree, where they, I mean, this sounds dangerous to me. They get together in a hot room and drink like five gallons each of this stuff. Yeah, each. That sounds like, how about that amount of intake of liquid would kill you?

48:03Chuck Bryant: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.

48:20Josh Clark:I just wonder how long that is, like over a period of time.

48:24Chuck Bryant:I don't know. Five gallons of anything. That's what I'm saying. Like five gallons of water will kill you on it. Yeah, I think you can toxify.

48:32Josh Clark: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. Right. Right. 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.

49:06Josh Clark: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.

49:18Chuck Bryant: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's the most robust, but people didn't understand that. They thought fancy was the best. People are idiots. Like ketchup, right? You think ketchup 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 assign different categories based on the flavor and the color of it that's

49:55Josh Clark:right they have golden amber dark and very dark and that ranges uh respectively as delicate rich robust and strong yeah um the very dark the strongest one you're probably going to be cooking with that uh the lightest that golden delicate one maybe uh 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 going to be that amber maple syrup.

50:27Chuck Bryant: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 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.

51:00Josh Clark:That's right. I did mention the refrigerator. 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.

51:23Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I got to 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?

51:39Josh Clark:Well, I know everyone's seen those little maple leaf shaped candies. Adorable. 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. Yeah.

52:03Chuck Bryant:There's also maple cream, which is essentially whipped maple syrup. Oh, baby. 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.

52:29Josh Clark:Yeah, that sounds pretty good. We got to 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 serve 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.

52:48Chuck Bryant:I'm going to try that when we're in Montreal for sure.

52:51Josh Clark:Me too.

52:52Chuck Bryant: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.

53:15Josh Clark:Yeah. Oh, and I know last year I mentioned my maple old fashioned.

53:20Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah.

53:21Josh Clark:Which is now my kind of go to sweetener for my old fashions. It's really yummy.

53:25Chuck Bryant:Well, you should try some maple sugar in there, man.

53:29Josh Clark:instead of the syrup?

53:31Chuck Bryant:No, I mean, you make the syrup with sugar, right?

53:34Josh Clark:Oh, no, I just put syrup in there.

53:36Chuck Bryant:But what do you make the syrup from, is what I'm saying?

53:39Josh Clark:From the bottle off the shelf at Publix.

53:41Chuck Bryant:Oh, I thought you made your own. We gave people like a whole recipe, didn't we?

53:44Josh Clark:No, no, no, no. That was a pumpkin spice syrup that I made.

53:49Chuck Bryant:You should use maple sugar in that then.

53:52Josh Clark:Yeah, okay. Good call. But I use maple syrup right out of the bottle for my other favorite old-fashioned.

53:59Chuck Bryant:Very nice. At Publix, you don't order it?

54:01Josh Clark:No, just go to the store and get it like a sucker.

54:05Chuck Bryant:So you mentioned that it actually has some nutritional value, right? Yeah. I saw that it has 95 % of your daily value of manganese. Like, beat that. Yeah.

54:16Josh Clark:What does manganese do for you? Everything.

54:19Chuck Bryant:37 % of your daily value of riboflavin, which is a B-vitamin. vitamin. Also has potassium, which is why I said vitium. 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.

54:38Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. And they have evidence that some of the compounds from maple syrup can enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics. Yeah.

54:46Chuck Bryant:And that's and that's maple syrup. which means it's time for listener mail.

54:54Josh Clark: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 Concord. Hey, we just mentioned another old episode. So that'll probably pop up on your little Apple player, by the way. Nice. 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 to do it, I think.

55:18Chuck Bryant:Nice.

55:19Josh Clark: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 is kerosene and has been since its inception. Basically, its two uses are jet fuel and household cooking and lighting fuel. Want to keep this one short and sweet, guys. Love you two and love the show.

55:41Chuck Bryant:Short and sweet. Very appropriate for a maple syrup episode, Chuck. That's right. That was who, Metzger?

55:47Josh Clark:Kyle. Hey, Kyle.

55:49Chuck Bryant:Thanks a lot for that. We appreciate it. 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 stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.

56:08Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

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