Maple Syrup

Maple syrup and maple sugar are made from the sap of certain species of maple trees found only in Canada and parts of North America. A hole is cut into the trunk of the tree, the sap runs down a metal spigot, and is caught in buckets or collection tubes below. Maple sap is watery, almost flavourless, and needs to be reduced to roughly a quarter of its volume to produce maple syrup, and further reduced to produce maple sugar. Large quantities of sap are needed to produce only a small amount of maple syrup, one of the main reasons that the syrup is so expensive.