March Means Maple Syrup

First, temperature matters: Warm-ish days and cold nights stimulate sap flow in the tree after a sluggish winter. You probably already knew that. But there’s another reason: Once the branches begins to bud, the sap takes on a bitter flavor, and the syrup loses its sweet taste. The season usually lasts about six weeks, but the heaviest sap flow might only last between 10 to 20 days.

The short season and the precise weather that must take place for its production would be enough alone to make maple syrup a precious commodity. But add to that the fact that it takes roughly 5.5 days for the average maple tree to produce 40 gallons of maple sap — which boils down to make just one gallon of syrup — and you can see why maple syrup averages roughly $40 per gallon.

Sugar maples aren’t the only trees whose sap can be tapped and then boiled down to make syrup. Birch, black walnut, and even pine sap have been used to make syrup, though different trees impart different flavors, and some have even less sugar content than maples. For instance, birch syrup requires twice as much sap per gallon as maple syrup, and it costs three to four times the average cost of maple syrup — which could be why there are no large commercial birch syrup producers in Michigan.

The type of hardwood forests that sugar maples typically grow in cover more than five million acres in Michigan — their foliage, which turns red, yellow and orange in the fall, is partly what makes this state so pretty in autumn.