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- [00:00]
Chuck
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Josh
Guaranteed Human Everyone deserves to be connected.
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Chuck
in benefits they leave out.
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Josh
Qualifying credit required with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also tell you about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com BankGuy Capital One NA Member FDIC on eBay, every find has a story. Like if you're looking for a vintage band tee. Not just a tee, the band tee. You wore it everywhere until your ex boyfriend stole it. Now you're on ebay and there it is. Same tee from the same tour. The things you love have a way of finding their way back to you. Especially on ebay. Where else can you find that mint trading card you search for everywhere that's out of print? Or your first car, the one you wish you'd never sold? It has to be ebay. Shop ebay for millions of finds, each with a story. Ebay Things People Love welcome to Stuff
- [01:37]
Chuck
youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.
- [01:46]
Josh
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck. And Jerry's here too. And we're talking today about maple syrup. And I'm not going to lie to you, dear listeners. I want something maple. Like right now.
- [02:00]
Chuck
I do too. This was. I don't know if this came from a listener or it came from many listeners or just my own brain, but we not even thinking. I just threw this one to Livia. Kind of forgetting that I don't want to give. I don't want to dox Livia, but let's just say she lives in the New England area.
- [02:17]
Josh
Uh huh, sure.
- [02:18]
Chuck
So she was like, oh yeah, baby, right up my alley. Let's do it.
- [02:22]
Josh
Yeah. I have the impression that she'll eat a thing of maple cotton candy as you hand it to her.
- [02:27]
Chuck
Yeah. I could feel the joy coming through Livia's keyboard in this one, which is
- [02:31]
Josh
always nice, for sure. And the timing's amazing too, because the sugaring season is basically just wrapped up, as far as I can tell. And I think it was a good one. Yeah, yeah. Livia also just does a little thing. Remember we've said that she always has great titles. And this one was how to Drink a Tree's Blood.
- [02:50]
Chuck
Yeah, I think that's going to be the title.
- [02:53]
Josh
Oh, good. Okay, good.
- [02:54]
Chuck
I mean, I might put in parentheses maple syrup, you sicko. Or something like that.
- [02:59]
Josh
Sure, I like that. Anytime sicko ends up in a title, I think something great has happened. Including the movie Sicko. So is there a movie called Sicko?
- [03:09]
Chuck
Yeah, wasn't that. Wasn't that one a Harmony Korine's movie? Or Korine?
- [03:15]
Josh
I don't know.
- [03:17]
Chuck
I think so. No, no, that was Michael Moore.
- [03:19]
Josh
Sorry, Michael Moore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, the documentary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. About the American healthcare system and how broken it is. Yeah. So, Chuck. All right, so let's talk about maple syrup. We both want some maple syrup. This is fair warning to anyone listening, you're going to want something maple. And that's okay. It's okay to want something maple even if you don't have it.
- [03:41]
Chuck
That's right. But if we're gonna start with maple syrup, we gotta start with the maple tree. There are all kinds of maple trees, but if you. And you can get sugary SAP from other kinds of maple trees. But if you want the real gold, and if you want the real gold standard industry wide, you're gonna tap into that sweet, sweet sugar maple, the acer saccarum, because that's the one that has the real good stuff that has the highest concentration of sugar and it's SAP. And like you said, you might tap a red maple if that's all you got around. But you need a lot more of it to end up with what you want. So you really want that sugar maple.
- [04:17]
Josh
Right. And if you say, okay, guys, I'll find a sugar maple, where do I go? They're all over the place. Actually, they have a pretty great range. We're talking about North America, northern North America, which includes the northeastern us, Southeastern Canada. We're talking New Brunswick. We're talking Nova Scotia.
- [04:35]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [04:36]
Josh
Don't leave out Quebec, because southern Quebec is the far and away the largest producer of maple syrup in the world. Parts of Ontario and then Maine, all the way down in North Carolina, you can find sugar maples. There are some places that sugar maples grow that they're not going to. They're not going to make maple syrup as much there because there's also, in addition to the actual tree itself, there are environmental conditions, climate conditions that have to take place. And they're so variable that maple syrup production and maple sugar production has resisted industrialization throughout its lifetime. And that just makes me cheer.
- [05:17]
Chuck
Yeah. Because it's like you have to tap a tree that grows in the woods to do that. And I bet they've tried, but they haven't figured. Figured out a way to build a factory around a forest with trees going through it.
- [05:29]
Josh
Right? Yeah. As far as I know, no one's tried that. Well, I guess the biodome kind of counts.
- [05:35]
Chuck
Yeah, probably so. But what we're about to describe everybody is one of the wonders of nature. I didn't know anything about this stuff, so it was all new to me, and I was kind of blown away. It was kind of a mind bomb, if you will. For me, the magic to the maple syrup, obviously, is that SAP. And that SAP has a very specific function in a tree. The sapwood is a part of the tree that also called the xylem. It's in that tree trunk just outside of the heartwood. And it has tissue in that sapwood, in the xylem that moves water and minerals around from the roots to the leaves. It's kind of like the freeway system, if you will.
- [06:11]
Josh
Yeah. Or it's circulatory system hormones, too. That's what SAP is. It's minerals, water, hormones, all the stuff that the tree's moving to itself to help repair wounds and to produce photosynthesis and then also move the products from photosynthesis, which is like starches, back down to the roots. Right. So you've got stuff moving up and down the tree trunk. But if you walk up to a sugar maple in the summer and you put a tap into it, it's going to just be like this. That was useless and it kind of hurt. There's a specific time when you want to tap a sugar maple to get the constituent maple SAP.
- [06:53]
Chuck
That's right. And that is in the major producing parts, which is what we described before. That will be generally between like, February and April, with a peak in March. And that is because. And this is the second sort of astounding Part of this stuff, that xylem, that sapwood, it's moving stuff all around, but it's also really good at holding energy reserves during times where it needs it.
- [07:17]
Josh
Right.
- [07:17]
Chuck
So. So there are these cells called ray parenchyma that use enzymes that turn those starches Josh was talking about into sugars. And it's a great way to store that energy. But that sugar also protects the tissue from freezing during the winter. So it's just sort of sitting there, like in the perfect conditions, waiting to be tapped in those months.
- [07:37]
Josh
Yeah, because there's this kind of positive pressure that builds up in the tree because on nights where it's freezing and that turn into days that get above freezing. Right. So when the icicles start to really drip, I've seen the SAP itself starts moving up and down. And when it moves up, normally when there's leaves on the tree, transpiration or basically evaporation at the leaf surface, that relieves that pressure. But remember, this is a time when the sugar maples don't have leaves yet, so it can't kind of relieve that pressure. And the pressure builds up and builds up. And so if you go to a sugar maple at specifically the right time, when it's freezing at night, not freezing in the day, and you put a tap into it, that's when the SAP's going to come out. And like you said, those starches have been converted to sugars as energy stores. So that's also when the SAP is going to be at its sweetest. There is a couple weeks that you can, you. You can tap a specific kind of tree in a specific location under specific climate conditions. To get the SAP, you're going to need to make maple syrup. And I mean, I just love maple syrup so much more than I did before.
- [08:49]
Chuck
Yeah, for sure. It's, you know, once. Once those conditions leave that SAP, it didn't dry up, but it stops running freely. If you could get to it, it wouldn't taste the same. Like you said, it would be kind of bitter, but you can't get to it anyway. And this is like a seasonal cycle. Like, this is when the trees are beginning to bud again. Like we said, it peaks in March, basically. And if you, let's say you tapped a tree and you got a little bit of that good stuff and you put it on your tongue, it wouldn't taste like the final result. It's sweet. You can taste the sweetness, but it's about. The SAP ranges from about 1 to 3% of that sweetness at that point. So like it needs to be processed after that point because what you really want to get it to is a sugar concentration of about 66%.
- [09:38]
Josh
Yeah.
- [09:39]
Chuck
Which means you have to boil it. You have to boil down about 40 gallons to get 1 gallon of syrup.
- [09:45]
Josh
Yeah, there's actually, there is this maple syrup researcher from the turn of the last century named C.W. jones, and he came up with what's called the Jones Rule of 86. And I'm not sure how it works. It seems a little magical. But you can take the percentage of sugar that's found in the SAP naturally that you just got out of the tree and multiply that percentage by 86, and it will tell you how many gallons you need to boil down to get one gallon of maple syrup at 66% sugar concentration.
- [10:15]
Chuck
That's right. And usually it's about that 40 gallon range people have. You know, we're not the first perfect persons to enjoy this stuff. Like, it has a very long history among indigenous North American groups, and they used it for all kinds of stuff. There's a lot of different stories, like who's the first person to eat an oyster? How do they figure out this tree SAP was something you wanted, the first person to tap it? And no one knows for sure. It probably happened by accident. There's a lot of stories. One of them is that there was a tomahawk in a tree. That tomahawk got pulled out and there just happened to be a container below it that caught that SAP. And some indigenous person was like, oh, well, let me take that water that's in this bucket from the rain and boil some meat for dinner. And they're like, wait a minute. This is like, you know, has a sweet taste to it. So it was a complete accident. It's kind of a nice story. My money's probably on just another kind of accident. Maybe someone just sort of tasted it with their finger because a woodpecker pecked a hole in a tree. And they're like, hey, maybe we can use this something. Because they had long use saps and gums for other things. So it wasn't like any big revelation that something from a tree was useful.
- [11:31]
Josh
Sure, yeah, totally. That's a good point. Another one, another suggestion is that somebody noticed a sapsicle 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, we need to get to the bottom of what's going on here, because this is delish.
- [12:01]
Chuck
I would love a real SAP sickle. That'd be fun.
- [12:04]
Josh
We should also say this. So the. The. 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 Ojibwe, the Algonquin. 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, and then they would usually catch it in, like, a little birch bark container. The ones that I saw look like little tiny row boats, which I bet you could use as rowboats after the sugaring season.
- [13:00]
Chuck
That's right after they got that SAP. 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.
- [13:31]
Josh
Yeah, also they've. They from that, I guess, the sapsical 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 particular 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. 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.
- [14:27]
Chuck
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. But sugaring season kind of kicked off of the coming back together, which is kind of cool.
- [15:04]
Josh
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 boil down the SAP is called the sugar shack.
- [15:20]
Chuck
The sugar bush.
- [15:21]
Josh
Yeah, the stand of trees 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.
- [15:42]
Chuck
Yeah. When they would pass. Pass it back and forth, they would say, give me. Give me some sugar, baby.
- [15:47]
Josh
Nice. That's right.
- [15:49]
Chuck
It's really. I love it. The word sugar is a very pleasing sound to my ear, so I agree, especially.
- [15:54]
Josh
And also, when you think of the snow. I think of the snow and, like, the maples in the snow, like, visually. And then thinking of the word sugar with all that stuff, too, it's just. Gosh, that almost makes me want to go do, like, basically move and buy, like, a little parcel of land that has 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. But it just seems nice, you know, like a pleasant way to be.
- [16:28]
Chuck
Oh, people do that. I mean, I know in this article, Livia 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.
- [16:49]
Josh
Yeah, for sure. I was looking at, like, a maple or 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.
- [17:17]
Chuck
Yeah. And if some peyote happened to find its way in there, so be it.
- [17:21]
Josh
So be it.
- [17:23]
Chuck
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.
- [17:44]
Josh
Right.
- [17:45]
Chuck
And, and so, you know, and as we'll see later, they're health properties too. So they, they probably had a hunch about that as well.
- [17:51]
Josh
And don't forget the tiny rowboats that you could put in like a lake or a pond after sugar. Yeah, let's take that break.
- [17:59]
Chuck
All right, we'll be right back and talk more about maple right after.
- [18:13]
Josh
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- [18:47]
Advertiser/Host
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- [18:50]
Josh
Huh.
- [18:51]
Chuck
I wonder if this can beat the market. Everyone's talking about the NASDAQ 100, but let's get more specific. Software. Actually too broad. How about software that, that's already profitable? Companies that beat the last five quarters. Oh, and I want founders who are marathon runners. That's discipline. Yeah, let's see what that looks like.
- [19:15]
Advertiser/Host
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- [19:59]
Josh
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- [20:10]
Chuck
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- [20:28]
Josh
Each episode busts myths, decodes health trends, and gives you practical, trustworthy advice straight from the people behind the counter. No white coats, no lectures. Just real talk, real answers, and maybe a few laughs. Listen to beyond the script on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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 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. This just increased things tremendously.
- [21:42]
Chuck
Yeah, I wonder if they collected in that or if they stuck to their baby boats.
- [21:48]
Josh
I hope Baby boats. That's my wish. I think so too.
- [21:53]
Chuck
So early on in that colonization process, 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, let's not support these British slave based plantations in the Caribbean that Are we're getting this cane sugar. Like we can get our own sweet stuff right here and export it and not promote slavery. And it tastes great.
- [22:42]
Josh
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, 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 yaman 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. Now you have a whole other revenue stream and you're getting a bunch of maple syrup out of it too, just by sugaring, adding that to like your, your yearly thing.
- [23:35]
Chuck
So we did mention earlier that, you know, they, they probably tried to turn this into a large scale thing, but it just fail kind of time after time because it's such a labor intensive thing. 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 US that kind of started falling away because it's so labor intensive. And by the second half of the 19th century, cane sugar prices fell a lot. And then beet sugar 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. Yeah, but they started, you know, people still like that flavor, especially on things like pancakes and waffles. So they needed to unfortunately kind of cut it with other stuff. So they, 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.
- [24:32]
Josh
I have Mrs. Butterworth written right there.
- [24:35]
Chuck
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?
- [24:41]
Josh
No, no, it's. I can't remember what they call like old mill or something like that.
- [24:45]
Chuck
Yeah, yeah, they changed the name. 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.
- [24:59]
Josh
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 40s to tell you the trut. I finally was like, same. I want to see what this. 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.
- [25:36]
Chuck
Now when you say you ordered it, what does that mean? Ordered it off the shelf at the grocery store?
- [25:40]
Josh
No, I ordered some online first, I think before I noticed that you could get it at grocery stores.
- [25:45]
Chuck
Wow. Okay.
- [25:46]
Josh
Yeah, because I'm like, organic, real maple syrup. Where are you going to find that? And apparently just about everywhere.
- [25:53]
Chuck
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.
- [26:03]
Josh
Oh, they're aghast right now.
- [26:05]
Chuck
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.
- [26:11]
Josh
No.
- [26:12]
Chuck
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.
- [26:24]
Josh
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.
- [26:34]
Chuck
Is this stuff you ordered in your 40s?
- [26:36]
Josh
Yeah.
- [26:37]
Chuck
You haven't gone through one bottle?
- [26:39]
Josh
No, I haven't. Because it is. It's so different from what I like or what I'm used to is maple syrup that 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.
- [26:56]
Chuck
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. And I was like, oh, this is
- [27:06]
Josh
really good in a cup. Like a little solo cup.
- [27:09]
Chuck
No, no, no, no. Like the little, the little medical ramekin, you know, I gotcha, I gotcha beside the waffle.
- [27:14]
Josh
So what, what's interesting, you kind of said that, that maple syrup production is 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. 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.
- [28:15]
Chuck
Yeah, for sure. The advent of the reverse osmosis machine became a really big deal because 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 water out with the reverse osmosis machine. So that really drastically reduces the boiling time to get down to that really sugary good stuff.
- [28:36]
Josh
Right.
- [28:37]
Chuck
And the other thing is, you know, back in the day they had to use, you know, wood fired 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. It's not like some big, like I said, like a factory built around it or something.
- [28:58]
Josh
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.
- [29:07]
Chuck
Oh, really?
- [29:08]
Josh
They said they're one of the few who uses wood still.
- [29:11]
Chuck
I wonder if there's a benefit to that or just they like to be old school and tout that.
- [29:16]
Josh
I think maybe old school, I don't know. Yeah. 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 US and Canada together increased 400% over just a couple decades earlier. So still not industrialized, but enough now that you can start to supply the world with maple syrup. And that's. That's definitely what's happening.
- [29:46]
Chuck
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 about a 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.
- [30:24]
Josh
Right. Remember our plant migration episode? It's like that.
- [30:28]
Chuck
Yeah, for sure.
- [30:29]
Josh
So you said that 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 they're 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.
- [31:13]
Chuck
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.
- [31:20]
Josh
I did. I was talking. It's a chaparral plant. It's like scrub bush.
- [31:25]
Chuck
Yeah. Who wants that?
- [31:27]
Josh
I guess people who like the chaparral. People who live in like 29 palms. Yeah.
- [31:31]
Chuck
Okay. 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 gonna 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% of trees in a sugar bush to be other species other than that. Sugar maple.
- [32:08]
Josh
Right. Yeah. So that was nice to Come full circle like that and realize like, yeah, you don't want to do that. 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.
- [32:23]
Chuck
Yeah, for sure. If you're wondering about the trees themselves, they have to be about 40 years old. So even when they were planting 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.
- [32:45]
Josh
Yeah. Which kind of raised the question for me. Not beg the question. It just raised it. 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 need that. And it seems to be not the case.
- [33:09]
Chuck
Yeah, that's good. 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.
- [33:27]
Josh
I could see that you're leaving holes and destabilizing it. It's going to turn into Swiss cheese eventually.
- [33:32]
Chuck
You know what? You might have said that 15 years ago.
- [33:35]
Josh
I probably did Swiss cheese. But with as far as the. 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 trees, 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.
- [34:18]
Chuck
That's great. But you did make one mistake. I believe it's pronounced Dr. Jones.
- [34:24]
Josh
Right. Yeah, it definitely stood out to me too. But what's weird is I thought of Sean Connery and not Harrison Ford.
- [34:32]
Chuck
Oh, interesting.
- [34:33]
Josh
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 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.
- [34:50]
Chuck
Yeah. Or, I mean, if you would have said Shia LaBeouf, I would just, just walk into traffic after that.
- [34:57]
Josh
They don't even want to diagnose that one. No.
- [35:00]
Chuck
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, evaporation is a big part of it. 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 the, the propane heater, like the turkey fryer kind of thing that you repurposed, or a wood fryer, 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.
- [35:49]
Josh
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, nope, you need to get that out into a sugar shack and make some syrup with it instead of.
- [36:04]
Chuck
Yeah. And by God, please do not fry your turkey indoors either at all.
- [36:08]
Josh
Oh, good Lord. Who does that?
- [36:10]
Chuck
I saw a video of a guy doing it. It's not good.
- [36:13]
Josh
Was he running it off a generator that he had indoors as well?
- [36:17]
Chuck
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.
- [36:27]
Josh
One other thing, we're not going to talk about them, but I urge you, if you're like, I kind of like this. It sounds neat. Look up evaporator pans. They're really cool.
- [36:36]
Chuck
Very cool.
- [36:38]
Josh
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.
- [37:09]
Chuck
Yeah. 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.
- [37:16]
Josh
It was.
- [37:17]
Chuck
And by the way, we want to mention there's a new thing on Apple podcast where 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.
- [37:31]
Josh
Yeah, I think it has a link that you can click.
- [37:34]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [37:35]
Josh
Like, Apple's done some just amazing stuff for their podcast app and player now. 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.
- [37:52]
Chuck
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 concentrated minerals and stuff, and it might 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. And that's the same thing with maple trees. It has a terroir. And if you are a highly sort of specialized maple syrup producer, or a sugar, I guess. Sugar daddy.
- [38:48]
Josh
Yeah, sugar daddy.
- [38:50]
Chuck
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.
- [39:02]
Josh
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 trees. Truffles.
- [39:12]
Chuck
Yeah, maybe.
- [39:12]
Josh
So you could get a lot of money for that syrup is what I understand.
- [39:17]
Chuck
I think so.
- [39:18]
Josh
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 US follows at 35 million. The EU is about 13 million. But Canada makes so much maple syrup that the us which produces a ton of maple syrup, still imports more than it exports or sells from Canada.
- [39:51]
Chuck
That's right. And that's just another reason that we need to stay good friends with Canada.
- [39:56]
Josh
Yeah, because they got the syrup.
- [39:57]
Chuck
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.
- [40:06]
Josh
Yeah, it's the Dove and the Olive
- [40:07]
Chuck
branch tour, Quebec alone. We need to shout them out. I know you mentioned they were the biggest producer. They produce about 70%. I'm sorry, 72% of the world 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 the 8,000 producers and the customers. And they're really in the business. It's not just like, yeah, we want to make sure everything's going okay, eh? They tell you how to market it, how to sell it, what to do with the reserves. They're really, really involved.
- [40:55]
Josh
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 are, 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, like, they, they set the prices. They. They can make the price artificially high, low, depending on what they want to do. And this is not to say, like, 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.
- [41:44]
Chuck
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 US Is Vermont.
- [42:09]
Josh
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 2011-2012.
- [42:23]
Chuck
Yeah, take it away.
- [42:25]
Josh
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. And even that they were like, we got to destroy this because it's basically been through the wringer, you know, stolen and recovered and all that. And several people went to prison. One of them, I think his name is Richard Vallieres, he was sentenced to 7 years and 10 months for this heist. That's how serious Quebec takes its maple syrup.
- [43:30]
Chuck
All right, we'll take that second break, and we'll finish up right after this.
- [43:44]
Josh
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- [44:18]
Advertiser/Host
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- [45:26]
Josh
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- [45:38]
Chuck
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- [45:55]
Josh
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- [46:33]
Chuck
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 SAP. Other kinds of maple trees I mentioned can produce SAP. You're probably not gonna 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. 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 5 gallons each of this stuff.
- [47:25]
Josh
Yeah, each.
- [47:27]
Chuck
That sounds like. I thought that amount of intake of liquid would kill you.
- [47:31]
Josh
Well, essentially, it's supposed to do the opposite, that 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, not harmful.
- [47:48]
Chuck
I just wonder how many, how long that is.
- [47:50]
Josh
Like over five gallons. I don't know. Five gallons of anything. That's what I'm saying.
- [47:55]
Chuck
Like five gallons of water will kill you, won't it?
- [47:57]
Josh
Yeah, I think you can toxify.
- [47:59]
Chuck
Oy. 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.
- [48:21]
Josh
Right.
- [48:22]
Chuck
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 same kind of climate consistency as far as like freezing every night and getting warm the next day. 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.
- [48:46]
Josh
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, Bs, the most robust. But people didn't understand that. They thought fancy was the best. Like cats up, right? You think catsup 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.
- [49:23]
Chuck
That's right. They have golden, amber, dark and very dark. And that ranges respectively as delicate, rich, robust and strong. Yeah, the very dark, the strongest one. You're probably going to be cooking with that, the lightest, that golden, delicate one. Maybe 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 gonna be that amber maple syrup, right?
- [49:55]
Josh
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.
- [50:28]
Chuck
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 as happened to me, once you open that stuff, it can get little mold spores.
- [50:51]
Josh
Yeah, I gotta 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?
- [51:06]
Chuck
Well, I know everyone's seen those little maple leaf shaped candies.
- [51:10]
Josh
Adorable.
- [51:11]
Chuck
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.
- [51:30]
Josh
Yeah. There's also maple cream, which is essentially whipped maple syrup.
- [51:34]
Chuck
Oh, baby.
- [51:35]
Josh
Yeah. And there's something called sugar on snow 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.
- [51:56]
Chuck
Yeah, that sounds pretty good. We gotta 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 syrup ice cream. And of course, at any local county fair you're gonna get your maple cotton candy or a Quebec specialty, the delicious maple syrup pie.
- [52:16]
Josh
I'm going to try that when we're in Montreal for sure.
- [52:19]
Chuck
Me too.
- [52:20]
Josh
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 1 for 1 or 3/4 for 1 with white granulated sugar in your recipe. And if, 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, yeah.
- [52:43]
Chuck
Oh, and I know last year I mentioned my maple Old Fashioned.
- [52:48]
Josh
Oh, yeah.
- [52:48]
Chuck
Which is now my kind of go to sweetener for my old fashions. It's really yummy.
- [52:52]
Josh
Well, you should try some maple sugar
- [52:55]
Chuck
in there, man, instead of the syrup.
- [52:58]
Josh
No, I mean, you make the syrup with sugar, right?
- [53:02]
Chuck
Oh, no, I just put syrup in there.
- [53:03]
Josh
But what do you make the syrup from, is what I'm saying.
- [53:06]
Chuck
From the bottle off the shelf at Publix.
- [53:09]
Josh
Oh, I thought you made your own. We gave people, like, a whole recipe, didn't we?
- [53:12]
Chuck
No, no, no, no. That was a pumpkin spice syrup that I made.
- [53:17]
Josh
You should use maple sugar in that then.
- [53:20]
Chuck
Yeah. Okay. Good call. But I use maple syrup right out of the bottle for my other favorite, old Fashioned.
- [53:27]
Josh
Very nice. At Publix, Hunt, you don't order it.
- [53:29]
Chuck
No, just go to the store and get it. Like a sucker.
- [53:33]
Josh
So you mentioned that it actually has some nutritional value, right? I saw that it has 95% of your daily value of manganese. Like, beat that.
- [53:43]
Chuck
Yeah. What does manganese do for you? Everything.
- [53:46]
Josh
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.
- [54:06]
Chuck
Yeah, for sure. And they have evidence that some of the compounds from maple syrup can enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics.
- [54:13]
Josh
Yeah, and that's. And that's maple syrup, which means it's time for listener mail.
- [54:21]
Chuck
All right, this is a quick note from Kyle Metzger. Kyle says. Hey, guys. I was recently listening to. 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.
- [54:37]
Josh
Nice.
- [54:38]
Chuck
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.
- [54:46]
Josh
Nice.
- [54:46]
Chuck
He said, Josh, you were continually amazed that the Concord fuel was kerosene, as that was very primitive or old school, but. 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. I wanted to keep this one short and sweet, guys. Love you too, and love the show.
- [55:09]
Josh
Short and sweet. Very appropriate for our maple syrup episode. Chuck.
- [55:12]
Chuck
That's right.
- [55:13]
Josh
That was who? Metzger.
- [55:14]
Chuck
Kyle.
- [55:15]
Josh
Hey, Kyle, thanks a lot for that. We appreciate it. No idea that kids 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 stuffpodcastheartradio.com
- [55:36]
Chuck
Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. In Orlando. Meetings reach another level thanks to a growing list of award winning restaurants, a world class convention center, a great hotel community, easy access through the airport, and of course the weather.
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Josh
That's right, Chuck Andrew Moyes VP of Fan Expo HQ had this to say about Orlando Often we will bring our entire team to Orlando for the event and that includes our executive level team members as well and we're able to give them a great experience with luxury hotels, special restaurants, all those key things to feed into the proper executive experience. He also said that Orlando's easy airport access and close proximity to hotels and transportation make it a top choice for hosting major events.
- [56:32]
Chuck
And while you may know Orlando for its attractions, industries like healthcare, aerospace and advanced manufacturing make it a hub for cutting edge businesses. Or in the words of Mr. Moyes, Orlando can really be that destination where you can innovate, collaborate and look to the future. And that's what makes Orlando unbelievably real. Learn more@orlandoforbusiness.com youm know there are a lot of things in life that seem durable until the weather gets involved. That's where KETER comes in. They make high quality resin based outdoor furniture, storage and more. We're talking about sheds, deck boxes, all the good stuff designed to handle real life. Their signature collection looks just like genuine wood, but unlike the real thing, it won't rot, rust or fade on you. No sanding, no staining, no maintenance guilt trips. Just stylish, long lasting outdoor gear that keeps looking great season after season. Explore the signature collection@keter.com and other major online retailers. That's K-E-T-E-R.com Geico presents a 30 second podcast between your podcast Today's story is shared by one of our listeners. It's called Betrayed by Bill. It was in that moment I caught who was staring back at me in betrayal or more like what, my insurance bill. With trembling hands I grabbed my phone and switched to geico, saving about $900 in the process and never to be betrayed again. Now that was bloody riveting.
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Chuck
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