Why Grade A Maple Syrup Is So Expensive | So Expensive Food | Insider Business

[Music] inside this century-old tree how its pure Grade A maple syrup made exclusively from this SAP with no added sugar it's the purest form of maple syrup you can get but it's extremely rare and time consuming to make to retrieve this Liquid Gold Jeffrey needs to individually tap thousands of trees by hand and extract their saps slowly drop by drop it could take hours or even days for the sap to reach its final destination and after that about 10 hours to get one single gallon of syrup Farms like this one in New York State's Hudson Valley then sell that gallon for over two hundred dollars that's almost 29 times more expensive than popular imitation syrup which sells for seven dollars despite the price Grade A maple syrup is incredibly sought after so much so that 18 million dollars of it was once stolen in one of the largest heists in Canadian history but why is Grade A maple syrup worth so much and why is it so expensive [Music] I love very dark maple syrup it's got these beautiful notes of like toffee and caramel it's a little buttery and it's got that really strong maple flavor which I really like I love it on obviously on Pancakes on waffles but it's really great too to slather on some ribs too so adding that sweetness that maple flavor the basics of making maple syrup are all the same you boil sap but from tree to like jug of syrup there's a lot of different variables in that process that affect the taste as well Jeffrey and his wife Ashley ruppressed have been making syrup syrup they produce limited batches of syrup that have been tapped Wood-Fired and bottled right here on their 50 plus Acre Farm in the Hudson Valley outside of Vermont New York has the most tappable maple trees in the U.S currently we have around 1200 trees so we're not a huge Farm still manageable for my husband and I [Music] though many May associate it with Autumn maple syrup is actually a product of sprank during the summer months the maple tree absorbs energy from the Sun as well as water and minerals from the soil starch is then created and stored in the roots through the winter in Spring as the snow begins to melt the starch turns to sugar or sucrose and circulates throughout the tray and it's the ideal time for Jeffrey to tab While most of the trees are sugar Maples they also pull sap from other types really sugar Maples are the predominant species that are tapped just because the sugar content in the sap itself is so high I would say 25 to 30 percent red Maples we tap and then the rest are sugar Maples to be tapped a maple tree needs to reach at least 40 years old but they can live for up to 400 years and if tapped properly producers like Jeffrey can reuse the same tree for decades there's no harm to the tree you want to tap where there's not any like major like large knots or flaws or anything above like good crowns good diameter of the tree healthy trees no rotten spots and stuff like that so this is a really good spot and when tapping it's super important to go as quick as possible in and out make sure like all the wood comes out foreign [Music] that's nice and round you're good to go [Music] just white the sap is ready when the temperature is above freezing during the day and below freezing at night wind can also affect the flow of the sap today is a really good day we had a nice hard freeze last night and it's warm today so that pressure in the tree is really pushing sap out so it's a really really good day drives a spout one and a half to two and a half inches deep into a hole 5 16 of an inch wide he then fits every tree with a tube like this one in Jeffrey's and Ashley's Forest lines of tubes transports sap to a sugar house for processing in the US there are three grades of maple syrup substandard processing grade and the highest quality grade A to be sold as grade A it needs to contain no more than 68.9 solids have a consistent color and contain no sediment in comparison cheap commercial table Syrup can contain anything from artificial colorings to harmful chemicals so table syrup that is actually not maple syrup it's usually corn syrup or cane syrup maybe a little bit of maple flavoring added to it because it's not from a maple tree at all for grade A the time of year also affects the quality of the syrup the earlier in the season it's harvested the lighter the syrup it's all the same process to produce these colors it's the sap that changes throughout the season that actually changes the color and the taste of the syrup usually we'll start out with a lighter syrup a golden and Amber and you usually end on very dark syrup at the end of the season today Ashley and Jeffrey will likely Harvest grade a very dog it's the darkest color that we produce as well which has the strongest maple flavor and that is really popular for us here on the market these factors are reflected in the price with Jeffrey and Ashley's premium syrups going for a little over two hundred dollars per gallon premium syrups are so valuable that between 2011 and 2012 6 million gallons worth over 14 million US Dollars was stolen from producers in the Canadian province of Quebec the world's largest supplier of maple syrup The Heist was so large that it affected the global Supply it remains to this day the most valuable hoist in Canadian history known as the great maple syrup Heist in the U.S table syrup is still the first choice with 75 percent of consumers preferring it over pure maple syrup but here in the Hudson Valley premium syrup like Jeffrey and Ashley's has no equals I grew up in the fifth generation restaurateur tours in the Hudson Valley there is more of an increase in the demand for the maple syrup I find that it's drawing an influx of people and an attention to the Hudson Valley they think that the usage of both the Red Maple and the sugar maple trees does have a little bit more of a well-rounded flavor to it I typically use the the dark maple syrup being kind of a middle of the road it has an excellent flavor profile that does pair well with sweet dishes Savory dishes you just simply can't get that same flavor profile or balance from honey or any other type of sweeteners the maple the almost that Oaky type flavor does carry through with it and balances very well grade A I find it suits very well for multiple applications actually get ready to begin evaporating and filtering the freshly drawn sap to get this app up the evaporator in the Sugar House it first needs to reach this building the sap house with the help of a vacuum the network of tubes carries it to a giant stainless steel collection tank the first point of entry gets pulled into this big bin and we have pumps going all the way up to our Sugar House up there which pushes sap up into there and that's where we evaporate up to the shop sugar larger holding tank this is where filtration and evaporation begin Ashley and Jeffrey's Farm runs on a wood evaporator we boil as hot as we can get our Firebox we are testing it constantly you're measuring the bricks of the syrup which is basically the viscosity of the syrup making sure it gets to the correct density when it's pulled from the tree and before reaching the evaporator sap contains 98 water and two percent Sugar by the time it evaporates it should be ready at 33 water and 67 sugar Precision is key here Jeffrey needs to make sure the syrup reaches exactly 68.9 density we'll just boil away most of the water content from the sap until it reaches the perfect maple syrup consistency because once once you evaporate too much of the water content out of this app it goes from syrup to like a candy to a sugar many farms today especially larger ones tend to use oil-powered evaporators neither method affects the taste of the syrup but the wooden evaporator is more labor intensive which is another factor that drives up the price we do have a lot of storms that come through so a lot of the trees that do fall we use the Firebox to evaporate from sap to finished syrup Jeffrey and Ashley have to be mindful of the entire process trees can fall on your main line you can have a pretty catastrophic day if that happens all of your syrup is just pouring out of your main line you definitely have to be paying attention unless you have a lot of automated systems going and even then sometimes things happen but that is one thing that can't be controlled the weather recently warming temperatures and changes in freeze and thaw Cycles have affected maple trees and syrup production and the quality of Ashley and Jeffrey's products we've seen a change even in just this few years long periods of freezing in the middle of the season are really hard because you could have two weeks where it's a really hard freeze and sap is not flowing and then a few weeks later it's really warm and the trees just stop producing sap so the seasons have become shorter but we're also seeing every year we're we're tapping a little earlier and seeing sap flows a little earlier too so the season might be moving a little earlier as well and ending earlier too despite the challenges maple syrup forms like Ashley and Jeffries in New York continue to thrive we're a great support system for each other and it's it's always nice to walk out your back door and be in your sugar woods and business [Music]

Channel: Business Insider

Views: 1,261,834

Keywords: Business Insider, Business News, Maple syrup, So Expensive

Id: rCzx_MTtb_U

Length: 11min 57sec (717 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023